Low Bandwidth Reported/Default scenery looks bad

[Dillon 2,197]

As we all know our bandwidth can vary throughout the day especially on WiFi (many of us are not directly plugged into our routers anymore).   My WiFi is pretty high most times of the day just the same FS will mark it as too slow at times right before my flight starts having the sim look like default FSX.  When this first happened and the sim was looking very low quality was right when I was showing it to someone.  They were not impressed and I thought I had did something wrong in a setting somewhere.  Now it’s apparent I’ll have to pre-download scenery of cities I fly to allot.  I was wondering how all this would work depending on WiFI, streaming, and Microsoft each time I fly.  Doesn’t sound like a good idea and it’s not.  All I can say is it’s too early to throw out your older sim especially when the internet goes down at your house and you opt for a flight instead of reading a book.  With this version you can kiss FS goodbye for any hiccup in your internet service.  Not sure how this can get streamlined as some reported even with downloaded scenery there’s still issues.  I found FS runs with degraded performance without the advanced scenery.  Still testing but this is a let down as this is not a dependable sim to fly.  You can’t count on it steaming correctly every time you load it up.

Edited August 20, 2020 by Dillon

[elprim 10]

So what is exactly your speed (lowest and avg)? I can squeeze only 10 Mb/s out of my modem (by Ookla). Would it be flyable?

 

[Dillon 2,197]

Mine fluctuates from as high as 25 Mb download to as low as 6Mb depending on who all is on WiFi in the house.  Last night FS crapped out while I was at 20Mb which should be enough as it usually is in the other times I’ve ran the sim.

[Dillon 2,197]

Looks like major cities are best to download so when flying to them you don't end up in low rez when you arrive in the area.

[FPStewy 538]

4 hours ago, Dillon said:

Now it’s apparent I’ll have to pre-download scenery of cities I fly to allot.  I was wondering how all this would work depending on WiFI

you have to understand how it's done, I have my data set at the lowest setting I think it's 5/mb but the cache at 300Gb, the scenery is layered so the more you fly an area the more data will eventually be downloaded for that area even at the lowest data setting. Right now I'm doing circuits at my home airport so it no longer needs to d/l layered scenery data just weather ect... until the 300Gb get full and then it will start to roll it.

[Dillon 2,197]

6 minutes ago, FPStewy said:

you have to understand how it's done, I have my data set at the lowest setting I think it's 5/mb but the cache at 300Gb, the scenery is layered so the more you fly an area the more data will eventually be downloaded for that area even at the lowest data setting. Right now I'm doing circuits at my home airport so it no longer needs to d/l layered scenery data just weather ect... until the 300Gb get full and then it will start to roll it.

Not trying to be funny but where did you learn how to adjust this?  Was it through trial and error?  I had a Cache size of 10GB and thought that was too large.  It would be nice to have something official for all of us.  When I tried lowering my download limit that didn't help.  I still got the low bandwidth error and the default came up when the sim loaded.

[FPStewy 538]

11 minutes ago, Dillon said:

where did you learn how to adjust this?

What I did was this, Options - General - Data. I set my Bandwidth to 5 MBIT/s (or 20 MBT/s) if you want, then set the path of the "Rolling Cache Path" to (drive/folder) ect... I set mine to an M.2 at this point don't adjust the cache limit. just leave it at 8 or 10 which is small. Apply and Save let it do it's thing, it could take a while depending on how fast your drive is. Exit the sim, go back in and you should see the rolling cache path set to your drive, now change the cache limit to the size you can afford on that drive. For me I set it to 300Gb the sim will then "reserve" 300Gb of space for the cache, again depending on your drive it might take several minutes. Let it do it's thing go have lunch, take a nap, ect... I have one of the fastest M.2 on the market and it took several minutes.

If you do this on a 8Tb drive then do it before yo goto bed 🙂