Long loading times with VFR scenery

[Guest david W.]

I used Ultimate Defrag. First time was about 1 month ago. Moved my Sanfrancisco scenery & FSX files to the outer edge of the HD for maximum efficiency. (I first did the regular defrag option, then afterwards the consolidate files option.)Ultimate defrag eventually moved most of my hard disk files to the outer half of the 160gb HD, leaving only the inner core free of files (80gb free)Then Just before loading this new UK scenery, I did another regular defrag using Ultimate Defrag (did not take very long, just a few fragments). Then installed the scenery (opted to install only 40 gigs worth, not the full 60 gigs) which left me with 20gb free.I am planning on instaling a second new HD, possibly a Seagate

[Guest cwright]

George, there will usually be *far* more files than directories, so checking the directories would be much more efficient.I have very few top level scenery directories (in Fsx, addon scenery and scenery, in program files the VFR scenery) so in principle FSX would only have to check three directories for changes. I'm assuming that if a deeply-nested file is changed the info goes right up to the top directory such as addon scenery.Best regards, Chris

[Guest cwright]

Adam, I checked the LOD settings. The photo scenery for each area is in two sections:1.2m and 2.4m resolution (1.2m is optional, the 2.4m must be installed).TmfViewer gives these LOD values:1.2m: LOD 152.4m: LOD 4 - 14The average 1.2m file size is about 60 Mb, with some exceeding 100 Mb.The average 2.4m file size is about 19 Mb.I would guess in a full installation there are about 650 photo scenery files of each type (there are additional 4.8m mesh files).I always assumed that lower LOD files cover the same area but at lower resolution. Surely a LOD 4 file couldn't reach all the way to Japan?I just ran more FileMon tests. It confirmed what I found previously. When loading a Japan flight, FSX stops at 5% for several minutes while furiously accessing *all* the VFR files. It accesses the 1.2m files, the mesh files, even the object files (the 3D object demo).Because of this, I would assume this curious behaviour can't really be anything to do with low LOD files.If you do install this scenery then you're in for a treat. It is truly spectacular. However, there are several serious problems and there should be a patch next week (sadly delayed by a week, perhaps because their lead designer is away on maternity leave!)You did say the performance of VFR scenery in FSX should be better. Despite these odd loading problems, I can confirm that. It runs just as smoothly as generic scenery without autogen. And with the autogen demo (the Snowdonia area) it is still smooth with good frame rates - and it looks stunning.I'm probably quite lucky. With an average to good PC (3.4 Ghz Pentium, 2 Gb RAM) I'm getting only slightly larger load times and very smooth performance. But others on the Horizon forums have been reporting very bad stutters and very long load times (e.g. 20 minutes!) If FSX insists on accessing all the VFR scenery, both on loading a flight in Japan and when actually running the flight, then this odd behaviour could explain very serious problems experienced by other users. It's worth repeating that, when FSX was accessing the VFR files during a Japan flight, the frame rate fell sharply and was very erratic.There is another thread here on curious texture accesses. I wonder if the two things could be related?I suppose the bottom line is a simple question: can you explain why FSX exhibits such strange behaviour? And can it be fixed?Just to keep things in balance, I would add that I regard FSX as a truly superb flight simulator, in fact the best I ever used. And it can only get better. I think you guys should be proud of what you've achieved.Best regards, Chris

[Guest cwright]

Mike, your comments about FS9 are interesting. I can't do any tests with FileMon because I deleted FS9 a few days ago!Quite likely much of the core software in FSX is common to FS9, so they may well suffer from similar problems. I used the old England & Wales VFR scenery in FS9 and didn't see this strange problem. But then, in FSX the resolution is 4 times higher, which means the required storage is 16 times higher (about 60 Gb for a full install). I'm still amazed by the clarity of the textures in FSX!Best regards, Chris

[Adam Szofran 0]

I stand corrected. The FSX texture file loader is not operating as intended. We are, in fact, reading the entire file contents even when we only want a small portion of the file. We're investigating to see what went wrong and hopefully we can fix it. The fix may not gain as much performance as you might think, however, due to the operating system's file cache, but it certainly won't hurt.-Adam

[Guest allcott]

That's a nice point that justifies the new openness policy beyond all shadow of a doubt - this would never have been found through tell_fs!Congratulations to all involved, there's been some heavy in-depth research going on to get to this point!And thanks to Adam for being so quick to check and acknowledge the problem - I bet that took more than a line or two of forum text would suggest to prove! Perhaps we could `sticky` this at the top of the forum so it doesn't slip down out of sight, or perhaps now might be a good time to suggest the opening of a new read-only forum:Known FSX Issueswhere these kinds of threads could be moved but read by all? Allcott

[Mace 1,904]

>Congratulations to all involved, there's been some heavy>in-depth research going on to get to this point!>And thanks to Adam for being so quick to check and acknowledge>the problem - I bet that took more than a line or two>of forum text would suggest to prove! >>Allcottyes truly allcott...this little tidbit of info is well BURIED here in this thread.May not make much diff in performance but every little bit can help.RhettAMD 3700+ (@2530 mhz), eVGA 7800GT 256 (Guru3D 93.71), ASUS A8N-E, PC Power 510 SLI, 2 GB Corsair XMS 3-3-3-8, WD 250 gig 7200 rpm SATA2, CoolerMaster Praetorian

[basys 4]

Hi Folks>The FSX texture file loader is not operating as intended. >We are, in fact, reading the entire file contents >even when we only want a small portion of the file. Adam -Could you please clarify -Does this affect -a) Just the Terrain texturesor:( All textures loaded by FSX, i.e. Aircraft, Scenery, Autogen, etc.Many thanksATBPaulhttp://www.basys.f9.co.uk/resources/images..._sig_500x94.jpg

[Adam Szofran 0]

Paul,It affects the terrain textures in sceneryworldtexture. It also affects textures loaded by 3D objects like aircraft and autogen. It does not affect photoscenery created for FSX, but it does affect FS9-style photo scenery.-Adam

[Adam Szofran 0]

Thanks Chris. I'll have to investigate further once I get my copy of the Horizon scenery.-Adam

[Guest Ron Freimuth]

>Another two "pence" - In the past three days I have done a>lot of work with high resolution 0.25m/pixel photo scenery.>Today I looked at the drive where I have Windows, FSX and the>BGLs. It was totally fragmented. I had defragmented about a>week prior. I had seen this before but paid no attention.>After defrag the fragments are gone but the files are>distributed all over the disk.>Dick Boley That's not good. 'Scenery files' should be in one part of the drive. You might try copying (or, xcopying) all of FSX to another driver or Partition. Then, defragment the original partition to create a large, free area. A reboot might also be good after the defragging. Then, copy (from the GUI, or with XCOPY) the FSX files back to the original partition and delete them from the second partition. That tends to put files in directory order. Which is what one wants. Some defraggers show the names of files on the disk map. "Auslogics Disk Defrag 1.1" was mentioned here. It's free, and showed that it was defragging FSX files pretty much in order. Though, I couldn't click on the HD map to see what file was where. Just running the above defragger might move your FSX files closer together, one guy said it reduced pauses a lot. Pagefile.sys should be on another HD, if possible. Not just another partition. A lot of FSX is swapped to and from the pagefile during flights, so fast I/O is important. Also, I'd suggest 'Temporary Internet Files' be set on another drive or partition. They keep growing and are often fragmented. Defragging a drive may move them where one would rather not have them. Ron

[basys 4]

Hi FolksCheers Adamthought that might be the case.ATBPaulhttp://www.basys.f9.co.uk/resources/images..._sig_500x94.jpg

[GHD 21]

So no help for the Horizon Scenery then.George

[Guest cwright]

Adam, I've found a few more interesting things.First, I did a survey of reported loading times on the Horizon forums. In a sample of twelve, 9 were reasonable (typically 3 to 5 minutes). But 3 were unreasonable (15 to 25 minutes). So on this sample, one quarter have unreasonably large load times. That's a significant number.Second, on the subject of questionable disk access, I've found several things.As I reported earlier, when starting a flight on the other side of the world (in my case, Japan) FSX insists on accessing all the UK VFR files, creating a pause at 5% for about two minutes.I have now found that FSX continues to access the VFR files during the Japan flight. Each burst of VFR access comes at regular intervals, on one occasion every 10 minutes, regular as clockwork. On another flight it occurred every 3 minutes, so the period is not fixed. But for a given flight the VFR accesses occur with quite a consistent period. During each cycle of VFR accesses the frame rate dips erratically, sometimes going from 20 FPS to 4 or 6!Yesterday I installed the new Mega Scenery Hawaii 1m photo real scenery. You probably guessed it: during a Japan flight FSX also accesses the Hawaii scenery in exactly the same way. This strongly suggests that the problem is not specific to the Horizon scenery, but that it is specific to photo real scenery.Actually, I think FSX tends to access *all* unrelated scenery files during a flight, but of course these photo real files tend to be very large. I should add that, although I see the frame rate readout fluctuating wildly during these VFR accesses, my system only shows moderate stuttering. In general I would say performance when running the VFR scenery is excellent. FSX runs this stuff beautifully, at least on my medium to good system. However, it is certainly conceivable that these intense VFR accesses may cause very serious stuttering for some users.I'd be very interested to hear what you find after you've installed the Horizon scenery!Best regards, Chris

[Guest fatboysim]

Adam,I have this problem to. My research also focussed on the files access with FSX using the filemon utility. As you probably know, Horizon have 3 Generation X VFR products. Volume 1 is south, 2 is midlands and 3 is North.Here's a transcript from my report at horizonsimulation.com:The following are a flight in an Extra 300 at London City. My measurements are from launching FSX to a minute or so sitting on the runway, and are approximate values. However I think approximate is fine as we are comparing orders of magnitude. The file operations were documented using the filemon tool.a) MS Default scenery, all Horizon scenery switch off in the libraryLoad time 2 minsFile operations: 225,000:( Horizon volume 1, all areas enabled. Others switched offLoad time 3 minsFile operations 450,000c) All Horizon volumes enabledLoad time 12 minsFile operations 1,000,000The load time is roughly proportional to the number of file access that FSX is making. c) is longer I imagine because it is accessing more large files compared with the others. The vast majority of the file operations are on Horizon files.I saw a comment that FSX accesses Horizon even if you fly on the other side of the world. So I enabled all volumes and took the default Friday harbor flight.Load Time 5 minsFile operations 375,000And indeed FSX is looking at Horizon files even though you may never fly to a part of the world to see them. Further, when looking at the London City examples above, FSX accesses many, many files in volume 2 and 3 which are many miles away. Again why, since your flight may never get that far? Why only some see this I don't know, but for those of us that do really restricts our enjoyment of FSX and Horizon.I think there is a real issue to be investigated here. How do we get it on ACES list?