How do I reduce the load times?

[CFIJose 5,485]

The MSFS Addons Linker Ap by @Bad_T deserves an AVSIM Gold Star Award. It's that good and valuable.

[fppilot 4,360]

10 hours ago, kaosfere said:

If you want to do a quick assessment of what would be the heavy-hitters in your loading times, Addons Linker lets you sort your mods by both size and file count.   If you look at the list using those sorts it would give you some idea where the most gain could be had by disabling things.

But what about any mod layering and scenery layering?

[Phantoms 800]

11 hours ago, Manny said:

I don't think we should defrag SSDs

You shouldn't. However, you should optimize (trim) them. Type optimze in the Win10 search and you should get this:

 

Clicking that should bring up the Optimize screen:

 

If you have Samsung Magician then you can do it through that:

 

 

Edited December 24, 2020 by Phantoms
fixed image link

[kaosfere 3,115]

35 minutes ago, fppilot said:

But what about any mod layering and scenery layering?

You're only sorting the view, not the actual order of the scenery.  Nothing change about how it gets loaded.

[fppilot 4,360]

1 minute ago, kaosfere said:

You're only sorting the view, not the actual order of the scenery.  Nothing change about how it gets loaded.

????

 

[kaosfere 3,115]

7 minutes ago, fppilot said:

????

Maybe I misunderstood your comment.  It seemed like you were concerned about sorting by size in Addons Linker messing up mod layering?  It wouldn't do that.

Unless you're just concerned about breaking ordering in general by disabling things. In which case, yeah, you need to know what you're disabling.  But sorting it that way is a tool to use in making those decisions.

[fppilot 4,360]

Just now, kaosfere said:

Unless you're just concerned about breaking ordering in general by disabling things. In which case, yeah, you need to know what you're disabling.  But sorting it that way is a tool to use in making those decisions.

I have been active here since 1998 and do not recall a more jumbled and confusing post.  Perhaps this is due to a language difference.  I position only those Community folder  add-ons that I need for a particular flight.  So is layering for instance the eastern USA elevation anomalies mod versus add-0n airports in the same regions important?  Is layering avionics mods above or below related aircraft mods an issue?

Example. In FSX, 3rd party add-on airports needed to be layered above related photo-realistic sceneries such as Megascenery Earth USA state add-ons?

In MSFS are there any influences in the sort order of mods in the Community folder.

[kaosfere 3,115]

I don't mean to sound rude, but perhaps the confusion is because your question appears to be orthogonal to what the original post and the rest of the thread were about?  We weren't discussing load order at all -- but, rather, how to reduce load times.  I suspect coming into a thread about load times and asking a terse question about scenery order without providing context is going to get you a less than useful answer.

But, to try to helpful since the topic's now been broached:  load order doesn't really matter in the way is used to.  The Community folder is read in alphanumeric order and every package is superimposed on the one before it to create a single virtual file system.  There is no "order" aside from that.   The only point where order matters is if you have multiple mods trying to change the same file, and in that case whatever is loaded last will win.

For your purpose it is highly unlikely to matter whether you load the elevation fixes before or after the airports, because they are doing completely different things.

Does that help clarify things?

 

 

 

[marsman2020 1,310]

30 minutes ago, fppilot said:

I have been active here since 1998 and do not recall a more jumbled and confusing post.  Perhaps this is due to a language difference.  I position only those Community folder  add-ons that I need for a particular flight.  So is layering for instance the eastern USA elevation anomalies mod versus add-0n airports in the same regions important?  Is layering avionics mods above or below related aircraft mods an issue?

Example. In FSX, 3rd party add-on airports needed to be layered above related photo-realistic sceneries such as Megascenery Earth USA state add-ons?

In MSFS are there any influences in the sort order of mods in the Community folder.

The Community Folder content loads alphabetically by the name of the folders inside the community folder.

Generally order shouldn't matter except in rare cases where more then one mod is changing the same file inside the sim.  In that case you have to add letters to the front of the mod folder names to enforce whatever order is needed. The only one I'm aware of is that for a while it was recommended to load the Working Title Garmins last, after any aircraft mods, so you'd add some 'zzzs' in front of those folder names to ensure they loaded last.

The Addon Linker shows a table of all the mods that can be sorted by various parameters without physically changing any files on the drive. All the Addon linker does is create symbolic links placing (or not) things in an 'Addon Repository' folder into the Community folder.  Since symbolic links are a Windows file system item that are transparent to the simulator, this is nice because no copying of files is need to turn things on/off.

[Glenn Fitzpatrick 3,798]

This might be relevant:

 

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/microsoft/windows-10-alert-defragger-bug-defrags-ssd-drives-too-often/

 

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/microsoft/windows-10-defrag-trim-bug-still-not-fixed-after-six-months/

 

 

 

 

Edited December 24, 2020 by Glenn Fitzpatrick

[Ricardo41 5,949]

To get back to the original question (before this thread veered into pointless asides):

My community folder is completely empty before every flight. I decide where I want to fly and which plane to use and then move the appropriate mods into the community folder. After the flight is done, I move the mods back out into a separate folder. Secondly, the main problem is that people stuff their community folder like a Paul Proudhomme New Orleans Terducken with addons they probably rarely use or use only occasionally. 

My load time from World Map to Cockpit is about 3 minutes. 

[in2tech 588]

16 hours ago, Manny said:

I thought maybe Once I load the fsim, I should not close my PC from the evening. I have tried it..but it doesnwork since MSFS freezes the next morning I just leave it as is. I have to load the sim at least once a day. It doesn't stay live overnight. Anyone managed to leave it overnight and were able to use the sim?

Usually when I launch MSFS  sim for the day, it stays up the entire day usually. I have left it on during sleeping, but it's usually for really large installations, but that is just downloading. Does your PC do to sleep at some point? Might want to check the default settings? Now, when I am working on bush missions, this is not true as I have to relaunch when testing the bush trip. But I go make coffee, or something. I never have more than 3-4 items in my community, which is NOT normal, I would think? And often it is completely empty, also NOT normal 🙂

Good luck!

I will leave my PC up and running tonight ( actually this morning ) and just turn the monitor off 🙂

[CFIJose 5,485]

I have never had to defrag or optimize my SSDs with Win 10. But I also have my flightsim in a separate SSD.

[Fielder 3,662]

Well Manny pulled the plug on all our hopes :). 2 minutes no Community. 20 minutes with Community loaded. Looks like we can't have it all !!

 

[zalox 54]

Back to topic, did you use the trick to load without the opening cinematics? It saves some seconds...