FSX/FSX-SE? Scenery management-activate everything or only selectively?

[ford_friendly 2]

As I mentioned in another post, I'm returning to simming after a period away and I've forgotten some things. I'm rebuilding my FSX world from scratch and starting to fly again.

As a Toposim Galaxy Member from waaaaay back, I have ~50GB of mesh covering the entire world. I've also got Ultimate Terrain v2 for various regions of the world.

I've forgotten the performance effect(s) of activating ALL the mesh or sceneries installed in the Scenery Library globally versus activating only areas where I'm flying.

Could someone remind or advise me about the relevant considerations and performance effects relating to this?

I vaguely remember using batch files to swap out scenery.cfg files when I used FS9 but don't remember if I did that with FSX.

 

Thanks.

[krono 13]

Hi Try Simstarter Ng, it does exactly what you are looking for. No more need for batch files.

[ms2 184]

The most visible difference, if you have a lot of addons (sceneries or aircrafts).... is the time for the sim software downloading... If I startup with all selected, I spend 6min. for the first downloading and with America alone and selected aircrafts... 2min only.

[ford_friendly 2]

14 hours ago, ms2 said:

The most visible difference, if you have a lot of addons (sceneries or aircrafts).... is the time for the sim software downloading... If I startup with all selected, I spend 6min. for the first downloading and with America alone and selected aircrafts... 2min only.

Yeah, that time relationship with respect to startup loading has been obvious for a while. I was wondering if there were any other implications, advantages or disadvantages to having every scenery package activated.

[ms2 184]

2 hours ago, ford_friendly said:

I was wondering if there were any other implications, advantages or disadvantages to having every scenery package activated.

Practically no changes for me, don't feel it.  

Logically the sim have the same datas to work in the 2 configurations... The upper datas of the scenery.cfg are charged only for the flying zone. In mine mind, the only problem with all selected is that you increase possibility of conflicts between addons.... For me, "less is more", that seem to be the best recommendation to keep in mind with sceneries selections.

I have divided mine scenery.cfg by regions folowing mine flying zones logic and have created some .cfg renamed region+scenery.cfg for each one (and keeping indeed the basic global one named worldscenery.cfg). For startup, the good region to fly is selected and renamed to the scenery.cfg name. The interest to do so, is that I have the ability to enlarge this concept to developer+scenery.cfg for sample one with "orbx only". A other is "without orbx land classes and vectors" for flying photoreals sceneries, etc.

I divided conflicts possibilities... And spend no more time on startup, because 6min. Is very long when waiting the computer work... A real nightmare if you must restart a few for tryout and fine adjustments.

[scianoir 610]

On 6/16/2018 at 11:52 AM, krono said:

Hi Try Simstarter Ng, it does exactly what you are looking for. No more need for batch files.

Although it depends on what you have installed, you can certainly save a few hundred MB of VAS by deactivating scenery you are not using. In FSX that amount of memory saved can make the difference between being able to complete a flight in a resource intensive aircraft into a resource intensive airport or ending the flight prematurely with an OOM error. 

SimstarterNG makes is a very convenient way to create and manage a variety of scenery sets of your choice covering areas you might fly in or between. As well as sets containing all my scenery for a particular country or region, I have also created what I call ‘bare bones’ scenery sets which have only the basic necessities active for different areas I might be flying in or between and then before flight I activate the origin and destination airports using SimStarterNG. 

It’s a great utility!

Bill