Just now, 1st fltsimguy said:

Interesting discussion while I don't have the sim yet....Is there a manual?

Unfortunately, no manual to be found.

I put aside 1.5 TB, but have only been able to set 100 GB so far. I note someone else seems to have had success with 200 GB, so that is probably worth a try. Yes, it takes a good while!

1 minute ago, n4gix said:

Unfortunately, no manual to be found.

I have to say it!  Seriously?  Or, You must be kidding!

No joke at all. I guess no one has had the time to author a manual yet.

Have you tried turning off the internet, restarting the simulator and using the cache? It works ??

Obsidian Ant shows and explain pretty well in this video how Cache works: 

 

 

I set the creation of cache files to 400 megabytes

The download speed is not great. About 30 mbs (My internet speed is 300 mbs)

 

I set my rolling cahce to 64GB and my manual cache to 512GB. The bigger the size, the longer it takes to update.

I have no insight Into  the exact workings of the caches. But here’s a software engineers perspective.

Firstly, I created a Rolling cache of 230GB on a different SSD than the default. It took an eternity to create it - I nearly gave up. It’s a file of this size although no idea what is in. My guess it’s not real data. Likely a complicated indexing system.

FPStewy was saying about SSD vs HDD. MS have a best spec which requires a 50Mb/s internet connection. So you have to think that at that speed it will download  the “best” scenery they have. If so, Then an HDD can easily supply data from the cache at that speed. Add on any indexing that it needs to retrieve, a HDD should still be fast enough. Having said that, I still used an SSD!

is cache deleted? As someone said, that would be crazy given the data is there in a non-volatile store.

Someone also mentioned that having a large cache would be a bad idea As scenery is going to get updated. Well that’s not how a cache works. Data will/should only come from the cache if it has the most recent copy. If scenery gets updated, it won’t have the most recent copy. As an example, you file over an area known as 12345 for the first time. It gets cached. Later on, SIM will request area 12345 as it is no longer in RAM. The cache will say I have version 1. SIM will request what version is on the MS server on  internet. If it is version 1, the X MB of data comes from cache. If in the server has a version greater than 1, SIM will request area 12345 from server as cache is stale. Hope that explanation helps.

im not really clear the difference between the manual and rolling cache. From what has been said here, It sounds like to me that the manual cache is a user defined content cache where you cache your favourite places. The data  probaby getS updated if stale still. But not by random new scenery you File over.  Whereas the rolling cache just has the last XGB of scenery seen and will be replaced as new areas are encountered. 
Be interesting to know how much space is needed to cache a town/country.

pete

I would also like more detail and explanation of how the cache system in mfs works. Especially the manual cache where you can use a map to select the tiles you want to download and with a choice of low, medium or high. I did a few cities with the greater area as low, and the inner as medium and usually the downtown area as high. The size differences vary greatly which I don't understand why. For example  Houston came out to be about 6GB. My entire island of Oahu came out to be like about 15MB. Tokyo came out to be 5MB. 

What exactly gets downloaded and placed into this cache file? I really hope Asobo/MS will optimize this, especially for those who are using large cache sizes, it can really bog the system down to the point where the entire system becomes unresponsive.

Edited August 18, 20205 yr by captain420