scenery cache questions on Oct 11 2019

[sightseer 895]

1)  is there a limit to the size of the cache or is it that we can download as much as we can physically download?

2) can the cache be made permanent?  If there is no size limit and I download 1 terabyte of data and I have to reinstall my OS or the game or whatever, it would be a shame to have to redownload all that data.

3) can the cache be on an external drive?

Edited October 11, 2019 by sightseer

[OSJJ1985 134]

2 hours ago, sightseer said:

1)  is there a limit to the size of the cache or is it that we can download as much as we can physically download?

2) can the cache be made permanent?  If there is no size limit and I download 1 terabyte of data and I have to reinstall my OS or the game or whatever, it would be a shame to have to redownload all that data.

3) can the cache be on an external drive?

This is what I have understood so far:

1) You can limit the size to whatever you prefer (and what your disk allows)

[siggy 154]

I wish the sim would allow:

• Keeping selected cache areas permanent (no deletion, but updates are ok)
• Allow extending the cache with disk space on other disks (if not, this could probably be achieved with symlinks (the 'mklink' command line command) anyway)
• Be able to mix pre-cached areas with offline areas so no extra download traffic is generated while enroute, for instance

[OSJJ1985 134]

5 hours ago, siggy said:

I wish the sim would allow:

• Keeping selected cache areas permanent (no deletion, but updates are ok)
• Allow extending the cache with disk space on other disks (if not, this could probably be achieved with symlinks (the 'mklink' command line command) anyway)
• Be able to mix pre-cached areas with offline areas so no extra download traffic is generated while enroute, for instance

Nr. 3) that's exactly what you can do according to the world video. As far as I understand you can also choose which areas to download for "online-definition". I guess they could add the ability to lock specific areas so they don't get overwritten. Something for the wishlist and surely not impossible to achieve

[JonP01 104]

It will be interesting to see technically how the offline caching works. I'd love it if the data could be stored "cheaply" (i.e high capacity mechanical drive for example) but as the flight loads up (assuming you have filed a flight plan), it could move as much data as possible from that slow drive to solid state storage - at least in such a way that access to that "slow" data in minimised and most of the time it is kept in very high speed storage.

The good thing with this sim is that I believe it is the first MS flight sim written when ultra high speed solid state storage was viable in PCs. Back when FSX came out, whilst we did have solid state hard drives, they were nothing like the speed and sophistication of the storage solutions we have available to us now.

I think the last thing anyone wants is stutters caused by scenery loading, so I am hopeful they will work very hard on eliminating this potential issue so long as the hardware is up to it.

I am sure early adopters will soon find out what hardware / configurations work best for scenery caching. Personally I won't be an early adopter as my PC is now 10 years old and I will need to build something completely new from scratch - and that won't / can't happen for a couple of years at least.