Hi,

I think I should take action after loading time of Prepar3d5 grew over 12 min now.

Here's my situation: I added FLAi plus the complete ORBX collection plus around 100 other aiports and stuff. No heavy planes so far. All this (and more, not yet installed into Prepar3d5) took Prepar3d4.5 around 5 min to load. Long enough but bearable. 12 min is beyond.

The biggest step in loading time came with the complete ORBX range which I added via add-on.xml (into a "library") contrary to scenery.cfg in Prepa3D4.5. This makes me think that, perhaps, it's just the add-on.xml method making loading so slow. 

This is supported by occasional reports that Prepa3d5 and/or the xml method seems to go on loading even all deactivated sceneries. I usually use SimStarter to deactive all sceneries which I don't use. I am not yet 100% sure, but my observations seem to support that claim. So, deactivating sceneries does not seem to help with loading time in any way.

Can anyone confirm/deny loading times are generally longer using add-on.xml and/or independent on deactivated sceneries. In this case I would be inclined to re-install all scenery (where possible) and notably ORBX the old way via scenery.cfg, as nasty as it may be.

Thanks for any hints, Michael

LM has never admitted publicly what P3d5 is actually checking for during the initial program loading phase and no user has been interested enough to find out what's happening using Process Monitor. So we'll just have to take LM staff at their word that load times will be faster with the next hotfix. The prevailing opinion here is that P3d5 is checking textures and SimObjects for corruption and duplication (or maybe even indexing them to create a searchable databae). If that is true then the structure of scenery library probably doesn't matter.

My load times were never more than four or five.minutes when using VOXATC. Now without it, load times are about 7 minutes. I have no idea what that means, except that VOXATC creates and manages its own AI traffic.

a P3D452 observation ......... using a few Orbix airports + LC etc, installed in an addon.xml library.

loading times with objectflow & orbixlibraries active at least 10mins longer (less than 5 without).

always turn those + airports off when not flying their way.

mind you, when i use & have a slow load, all is fine.though.

Edited June 14, 20205 yr by vadriver

Disable flai and time how long it takes to load up. AI takes way longer than anything else.

Hello Michael,

You are absolutely right with your assumption. Using the add-on.xml method does indeed increase the loading time compared to the scenery.cfg. When I changed my own installation to the xml-method after the release of v4 I encountered the same problem and did some tests with my 250 somewhat non-ORBX add-ons: Loading time with them registered via the scenery.cfg was around one minute but over 5 minutes with the xml-method.

What helped my to decrease the times was to combine multiple airports in a single xml. For example, I moved all Aerosoft airports into a single file. You could to the same on a continent or country base instead of the developer.

ORBX does now also use the xml-method for their library approach and uses an individual xml for every scenery. Hence, the loading time will significantly increase if you have a large ORBX collection and move them to the library outside of the sim. But, combining the ORBX xmls to a single file would not play well with Central and therefore I still avoid to install ORBX to a library.

What I said here was only about scenery add-ons. But Dave is right and a large AI add-on will further add-to the load time (here, with no difference between xml or scenery.cfg). The more simobjects (aka AI aircraft) and liveries you have, the longer will be the loading time.

35 minutes ago, Wolkenschreck said:

What helped my to decrease the times was to combine multiple airports in a single xml. For example, I moved all Aerosoft airports into a single file. You could to the same on a continent or country base instead of the developer.

Highly recommended. IMHO you should also make sure that you didn't split up \scenery and \texture into two separate addon components. 

But on my computer, AI is definitely the limiting factor too. I have several AI packages (only the aircraft, not the flight plans), and they all require at least 5 minutes per package to be processed when P3D is started (i9 9900K, fully SSDd)

Best regards

 

I found the same thing, I have about 400 entries in my library and all my ORBX products are in the scenery.cfg. Loading time about 3 to 4 minutes.

I do not use FLAI but Utlive 1.2 is no increase in loading time.

On my system ( M2 ) the loading time till the Scenario menu takes 3-4 minutes. Loading scenery depends on the sceneries that are active ..

I have all airports as separate xml entries as I like to be in control. Only the departure airport and arrival airport are active.

My long loading times are coming from the FranceVFR scenery which always have 2-3 entries per region and I have all France regions... 

Thanks for the input so far, guys,

FLAi definitely makes the least trouble, it adds perhaps a minute, which is neglibible in view of the rest. Christoph's (Wolkenschreck) observation seems to confirm this, although I am reluctant to combine several airports into one as such non standard-installations are a nightmare in case something goes South. I already hear the couple of wannabe chief-moderators at the Prepar3d forum crying "How dare you...?"

I forgot to add, this is already from SSDs (Prepar3d itself, the ORBX libray, and the C:/...documents folders). I wouldn't even start to think about a mechanical drive.

Kind regards, Michael

Edited June 14, 20205 yr by pmb

11 minutes ago, pmb said:

Thanks for the input so far, guys,

FLAi definitely makes the least trouble, it adds perhaps a minute, which is neglibible in view of the rest. Christoph's (Wolkenschreck) observation seems to confirm this, although I am reluctant to combine several airports into one as such non standard-installations are a nightmare in case something goes South. I already hear the couple of wannabe chief-moderators at the Prepar3d forum crying "How dare you...?"

I forgot to add, this is already from SSDs (Prepar3d itself, the ORBX libray, and the C:/...documents folders). I wouldn't even start to think about a mechanical drive.

Kind regards, Michael

Michael, remember with FSX we had fast 5400 rpm drives and we were so lucky with that ..😄

Finally, I had to try it the hard way. I migrated all ORBX scenery (recall: I own the complete set) from the Library (add-on.xml) to the Simulator ORBX directory. The result is noticeable: Loading time was lowered from 12 (occasionally more) to 8 min. That's long enough, but still.

In more detail, you have three phases of Prepar3d5 startup. (i) nothing happens, all in the background, (ii) the logo with dots window, (iii) actual loading of scenery with the progress bar. It's the first long phase which has been reduced to nearly zero after back-migrating ORBX scenery into the Simulator. The other two phases remain nearly the same. Obviously, Prepar3d5 goes through all add-on.xml files in the first phase - supposedly including the deactivated ones - to do some administrative checkup.

As a  by-product I detected a way to effectively "back-migrate" ORBX sceneries from a Library into the Simulator. Recall: ORBX Central provides migration from Simulator into Library but not the other way round. Complete de-installation, re-download and reinstallation of 1/2 TB would have been a no-go for me (2 days of work and my ISP probably would have killed me). And yes, I make backups using ORBX Central, but no, they didn't work. At least ORBX Central didn't use them when I tried to re-install one of the sceneries into the simulator - why ever (must be a .zip vs. .c4 backup format thingy). 

The whole back-migration took me three hours and a few GB of download. I actually wrote up a recipe on how to do it, but I am a bit reluctant to present it here. It's definitely not for the beginner and given the huge amount of data involved it may cause trouble in case of mistakes. Feel free to contact me via forum messenger if you feel you need the recipe.

Kind regards, Michael

Edited June 16, 20205 yr by pmb

I'll wait until HF2. Maybe they fixed it.

1 hour ago, Nemo said:

I'll wait until HF2. Maybe they fixed it.

That would certainly be the best solution, but not sure it will happen. Their forum is full of VRAM overruns, other CTDs, graphics glitches, but I saw only few reports on long loading times. We'll see.

Kind regards, Michael

Guys, thanks for the topic

I make a test activating all my addons groups in Lorby P3DAO (thanks Lorby for your addon!) and opened p3d and I spent 18 minutes for regenerating index files in p3d and a couple of minutes more for getting the p3d interface opened. I loadead a flight situation, and them shutdown prepar3d. 

Next time I opened p3d in only 5:58 minutes will all my sceneries and simobjects loaded. Terrible faster than disabling addons as I had before. Loading time for my situation in Orbx Africa with Maddog was only 2 minutes of my time. 

I do not have a couple of addons and airports, instead I run a lot. 

This is all GB TE zones, NTE, Austrian Proffesional HD, Spain Ortho, Washington, Oregon, Nevada, Arizona, MegaScenery, Colorado Ortho, Mexico Ortho, Florida Ortho, New York Ortho, Orbx Global, Vector 5, Orbx Norway, Orbx GN GS, 10 LVFR airports, another 10 Flytampa ones, Orbx Australia 2, New Zeeland N and S orbx, resuming a pure bunch of payware in all the 5 continents, with Traffic Global ai planes, and utlive planes too. 58 Orbx addons between regions, sceneries, and object flow airports. 

I can't believe it, but it could it be that what is really slowing the loading time is just having addon.xml files deactivated?

Previously I spended more than 12 minutes loading p3d gui. And I only have in scenery.cfg Pilots 2020 NG mesh, and all my ortho aeras. I have PMDG 747/8 ngxu 737-6 - 7 -8 -9 installed, AS318-321 Maddog with 82-83 -88 and QW sp3 

Best regards

 

 

Edited June 16, 20205 yr by Gumerson
mispealling

Good info.

I did a test which took quite a while.

Then I discovered the solution...

 

Make an extra cup of coffee. Boiling kettle 2 minutes (Make sure it is full) Looking where clean cup is .1 minute Finding coffee jar and sugar ! minute.

Walking back to PC without spilling coffee 30 seconds. Result 4 and a half minutes saved. (Or not wasted).

 

word not allowed this lockdown, it's getting to me.