More Details - How To Build / Edit the Manual Cache

[Rmmm 17]

This may save some time for those new to the Manual Cache.   If deemed helpful, please consider for Tips and Tricks.  

First -- See this video in Tips and Tricks:

DETAILS on How to Create and How to Edit:

CREATE a MANUAL CACHE:

Your mouse scroll wheel does the zoom in and out which changes the resolution.  You will see the Low / Medium / High boxes get selected individually as you zoom in and out.  The grid resolution displayed increases and decreases as you go from Low to Medium to High and vice versa.   One Low Resolution box holds an 8x8 grid or 64 boxes at Medium Resolution.    One Medium Resolution box holds an 8x8 grid or 64 boxes at High Resolution.  

If you start in LOW Resolution and use RIGHT Click with your mouse then one, quite large Low Resolution box is selected.   

If you start in MEDIUM Resolution, then the entire, quite large, Low Resolution box along with just ONE of the many Medium boxes are selected.  The color code, from light to dark, shows which areas are at a given resolution.

If you zoom in so that HIGH Resolution is selected, a right click on the High Resolution box automatically selects the entire corresponding Low and Medium boxes.   In the same way, though, only one box of the High Resolution grid will be selected. 

Holding down the shift key and scrolling allows the selection of multiple boxes.   Still, to do a large area at Medium or High resolution, as the video mentions, is a very time consuming task.

EDIT a MANUAL CACHE (Before Download)

To DELETE your selection first note that any lower resolution box that contains even one higher resolution box cannot be deleted.   So first zoom in to the highest resolution applied to that area.  Then hold down the CTRL key and right click on each of the darkest, meaning highest, resolution box displayed.   If all darker, higher resolution boxes are removed, you can then zoom out and apply the same process to remove higher resolution boxes.  If only LOW resolution is shown, clicking anywhere in that box will remove the entire area.   

AFTER DOWNLOAD

Once you rename and download, the Manual Cache appears to be fixed and final.   I could not see any means to edit.  Opening the Manual Cache after download presents your cache area in shades of white instead of blue.

There should be a way to find your cache file inside FS2020, as it can have a unique name.  Those with programming knowledge may find ways to edit a completed manual cache.   But the general rule seems to be take your time before downloading.  

Comments welcome.   Please advise of any errors or ways to make this more clear.   

[ksr8810 1]

Does anyone experience a HUGELY SLOW reaction of this manual cache? I got mine 0.25 fps but totally normal in other parts of the menu and inflight display.

[hanhamreds 592]

I've seen this video, but as a few have now mentioned (and I have also experienced) creating a manual cache doesn't seem to work properly. I created a High quality cache for Seattle - yet it still looks like some worn torn City in WW2 unfortunately.

 

imo stick to the rolling cache (assuming that's actually working) for now.

[captain420 3,099]

same as what I've been experiencing, there seems to be a huge problem with creating regions in manual cache. It is extremely slow and unresponsive and makes it almost impossible to use. Manual caching a region doesn't seem to do anything, I still see those ugly spiky trees and building out in the distance. I'm starting to base my conclusion that this is definitely a VRAM issue and the problem is more apparent for those of you who fly in 4K.

[hanhamreds 592]

2 minutes ago, captain420 said:

same as what I've been experiencing, there seems to be a huge problem with creating regions in manual cache. It is extremely slow and unresponsive and makes it almost impossible to use. Manual caching a region doesn't seem to do anything, I still see those ugly spiky trees and building out in the distance. I'm starting to base my conclusion that this is definitely a VRAM issue and the problem is more apparent for those of you who fly in 4K.

I'm flying @1440p with 32mb though so not sure 

[flying_w 58]

I was hoping the manual cache might permit me to download higher res photo tiles that are present in Bing but for some reason are much lower res in the simulator.  Sadly it did not, so I'm struggling to see the advantage of manual beside a capable (32Mb/s) internet connection and rolling cache

[captain420 3,099]

1 minute ago, hanhamreds said:

I'm flying @1440p with 32mb though so not sure 

So you're still seeing the same issues as me even at 1440p?

[SierraHotel 976]

I'm using both cache's, the manual cache is great if you are flying in and out of certain areas on a regular basis. For instance London City I have manual cached.

[captain420 3,099]

9 minutes ago, SierraHotel said:

I'm using both cache's, the manual cache is great if you are flying in and out of certain areas on a regular basis. For instance London City I have manual cached.

Based on my experiences, I find no difference whether I am using manual cache or not. The sim is still the same. I guess the only added benefit would be for those with extremely slow internet speeds.

[JJ_ 41]

I'm gathering that depending on the area you are trying to improve via the Manual Cache option, the results may be the same or better than the online data being accessed 'on the fly' (pun intended). 

Based on the results (no difference) I got for the area where I live, I now want to either lower or eliminate the Manual Cache space I initially allocated, but it doesn't seem to be working. Has anyone had any success with removing or lowering allocated Manual Cache space?

Edited August 20, 2020 by JJ_

[Thordero 3]

On 8/20/2020 at 11:38 AM, JJ_ said:

I'm gathering that depending on the area you are trying to improve via the Manual Cache option, the results may be the same or better than the online data being accessed 'on the fly' (pun intended). 

Based on the results (no difference) I got for the area where I live, I now want to either lower or eliminate the Manual Cache space I initially allocated, but it doesn't seem to be working. Has anyone had any success with removing or lowering allocated Manual Cache space?

I managed to delete it from the following folder 
C:\Users\"youruser"\AppData\Local\Packages\Microsoft.FlightSimulator_8wekyb3d8bbwe\LocalCache 

there you'll find 2 .CCC files, one of them is the manual cache and the other one is the ROLLINGCACHE.CCC

I manually deleted and it worked.

[pevides1 15]

As it is right now, manual cache is pointless. Does not work in most of the places, so don´t waste time on that.

[NFBoy66 1]

On 8/20/2020 at 10:40 AM, ksr8810 said:

Does anyone experience a HUGELY SLOW reaction of this manual cache? I got mine 0.25 fps but totally normal in other parts of the menu and inflight display.

Yes, I'm having the same problem. No issues setting some cached areas up, but when I go back in to do some more the PC goes incredibly slow or just locks up. If I delete the manual cache file and start again the manual cache editing screen is working fine again

[bobcat999 8,473]

Yes, it doesn't seem to work properly at the moment, and in my tests the scenery was no better.  Although I believe the high quality cached scenery was exactly the same as when I was streaming anyway - it was just the best scenery they had available, whichever way you did it.  Looking at the same area on Bing maps, it wasn't particularly sharp.

Some areas have higher quality satellite photos than others, and it will be these areas that will benefit the most. 

I saw a YouTube video that shows the difference around the Colosseum in Rome, and that was a profound difference on high quality and cached, but they don't have this quality of coverage everywhere yet unfortunately.