Loading times with extra scenery

[GSalden 4,655]

Today I tested the loading time of MSFS. I was surprised to see how extra scenery drives up the loading time from startup to main UI.

My system : 7940X 14 core@4.7 GHz / 32 Gb 3600 / 2 Tb SDD M2 / RTX 3090

I have downloaded almost everything from the Netherlands and some scenery from Frankfurt at Flightsim.to. I have purchased 5 extra AP. MSFS de Luxe Premium.

Here the loading times :

59 sec - Prosim ac - no freeware sceneries

3 min 15 sec - 68 sceneries - 15.2 Gb

4 min 17 sec - 75 sceneries - 17.4 Gb

5 min 32 sec - 81 sceneries - 19.1 Gb

7 min 11 sec - 87 sceneries - 29,1 Gb (addon AP added)

9 min 39 sec - 94 sceneries - 30.4 Gb

10 min 9 sec - 106 sceneries - 31.9 Gb

11 min 16 sec - 114 sceneries - 33.5 Gb

17 min 12 sec - 138 sceneries - 37.3 Gb

 

If I compare that to the 3-4 minutes loading time of P3D with TE NL + FT Amsterdam that exceeds 80 Gb, then MSFS loads slow.

If I enable all NL scenery in MSFS it is 26 Gb and as I fly from/to Amsterdam I like them on.

I am wondering what will happen if I start to add extra freeware scenery for the rest of Europe. Surely I will only activate where I flying over but I am wondering if 150+ Gb will take an hour to load.

Package Manager sits inside the Community folder and disabled scenery is put in a backup folder inside PM. Therefore the Community folder will always be large. Putting not used scenery outside MSFS might speed up loading time as the Community folder then will be smaller.

I did not test performance when flying.

Regards, Gerard

[FlightSimToday 56]

I have symbollic/junction (is that the correct spelling haha) linked my scenery off the community folder. So when I need the scenery I simply link it back in and then back out when its not in use.

 

So far so good. Its the same idea of how Orbx install the scenery when you install out of the sim folder.

 

If this makes any sense at all.

[pmb 5,137]

There is a MS Addon Linker at Flightsim.to. A lot of people, including me, use ist. It works via symbolic links and only activates the sceneries I need, and I activate them (basically) on a per-country level.

My linker addons folder is close to 300 GB at present (payware and freeware), and I don't even dare to try activating all of them at the same time. Startup times may become hours. I use a (non M2-) SSD for scenery.

The linker works at present, startups is a few minutes depending on what is active. However, looking into the future we'll soon face a situation where we'll have to lower granularity of active sceneries to the city level... which certainly doesn't make sense.

Asobo will definitely have to work on this. There's already an active topic on the official forum for this.

Kind regards, Michael

[JacquesBrel 639]

33 minutes ago, GSalden said:

I have downloaded almost everything from the Netherlands and some scenery from Frankfurt at Flightsim.to

What kind of sceneries have you installed? Do you have photogrammetry sceneries installed?

For reference, my community folder (on an SSD drive) contains 90 Gb of sceneries and loading takes 2 min 30 secs from I click the start button in Steam until the main menu appears. I have no photogrammetry sceneries installed.

[devgrp 1,233]

3 minutes ago, JacquesBrel said:

What kind of sceneries have you installed? Do you have photogrammetry sceneries installed?

For reference, my community folder (on an SSD drive) contains 90 Gb of sceneries and loading takes 2 min 30 secs from I click the start button in Steam until the main menu appears. I have no photogrammetry sceneries installed.

Same here, I have 169gb and it takes about 2-3 minutes to get to the world map 

[GSalden 4,655]

6 minutes ago, JacquesBrel said:

What kind of sceneries have you installed? Do you have photogrammetry sceneries installed?

For reference, my community folder (on an SSD drive) contains 90 Gb of sceneries and loading takes 2 min 30 secs from I click the start button in Steam until the main menu appears. I have no photogrammetry sceneries installed.

All photogrammetry objects from GE converted for MSFS. 
I have the feeling that converted objects put an extra load on MSFS’s loading time.

If I only enable the 5 payware AP + Prosim 737 the loading time is less than 2 minutes. Those are directly made for MSFS.

[JacquesBrel 639]

Just now, GSalden said:

All photogrammetry objects from GE converted for MSFS. 
I have the feeling that converted objects put an extra load on MSFS’s loading time.

That's most likely the cause of your issue. It's not just the size of your community folder that affects loading times, it's mainly the amount of files in the folder.

The scraping tools that are used for grabbing photogrammetry data from Google Earth are quite inefficient when converting the data for MFS. They create several thousand very small texture files, and because MFS needs to build an index of everything in the community folder, it takes quite a while if you have around 500.000 files or more, which you can easily have if you download a handful of large photogrammetry sceneries. I just checked the Rotterdam Port scenery, and that alone contains 30.000+ files. So around 15 similar sceneries will leave a steaming pile of around half a million files in your community folder, which will take a little while to index when loading.

 

[pmb 5,137]

2 minutes ago, JacquesBrel said:

That's most likely the cause of your issue. It's not just the size of your community folder that affects loading times, it's mainly the amount of files in the folder.

Yes, that's certainly true. I only have a few of those photogrammetry cities, but... there ist just no replacement available for some of them right now.

Kind regards, Michael

[GSalden 4,655]

2 hours ago, pmb said:

There is a MS Addon Linker at Flightsim.to. A lot of people, including me, use ist. It works via symbolic links and only activates the sceneries I need, and I activate them (basically) on a per-country level.

My linker addons folder is close to 300 GB at present (payware and freeware), and I don't even dare to try activating all of them at the same time. Startup times may become hours. I use a (non M2-) SSD for scenery.

The linker works at present, startups is a few minutes depending on what is active. However, looking into the future we'll soon face a situation where we'll have to lower granularity of active sceneries to the city level... which certainly doesn't make sense.

Asobo will definitely have to work on this. There's already an active topic on the official forum for this.

Kind regards, Michael

Hi Michael,

Payware addons, AP and landmarks are handmade and directly in MSFS format. 
But I have not been able to test it.

Hopefully there will be better converting tools. Otherwise we will have to buy a lot of landmark sceneryx

The most terrible outcome would be if landmarks photogrammetry scenery always will put an extra load on the system. 
In that case adding hundreds or even thousands of objects would be an issue in MSFS....

regards, Gerard 

Edited January 18, 2021 by GSalden

[GSalden 4,655]

7 minutes ago, JacquesBrel said:

That's most likely the cause of your issue. It's not just the size of your community folder that affects loading times, it's mainly the amount of files in the folder.

The scraping tools that are used for grabbing photogrammetry data from Google Earth are quite inefficient when converting the data for MFS. They create several thousand very small texture files, and because MFS needs to build an index of everything in the community folder, it takes quite a while if you have around 500.000 files or more, which you can easily have if you download a handful of large photogrammetry sceneries. I just checked the Rotterdam Port scenery, and that alone contains 30.000+ files. So around 15 similar sceneries will leave a steaming pile of around half a million files in your community folder, which will take a little while to index when loading.

 

I totally agree with you.

It even might have a negative influence on performance too.

But as I am from the Netherlands and I only fly in Europe I am looking for a lot of landmarks.

[hanhamreds 592]

I have about 150GB all enabled using add on linker, loading times are a few minutes. 

this is on a PCI 4.0e Nvme drive, but in reality any solid state drive will only make a difference in terms of a few seconds guys.
 

I don’t bother with google maps anymore, it might look ok but you are crippling your SIM with something that’s not remotely optimised/configured for. Failing that any really long loading times could be put down to something in your community folder which MSFS doesn’t like - maybe some corruption?

if you have a quality set of add ons there’s no need to enable/disable stuff to improve loading times IMO, just stop downloading cr@p.

Edited January 18, 2021 by hanhamreds

[GSalden 4,655]

4 minutes ago, hanhamreds said:

I have about 150GB all enabled using add on linker, loading times are a few minutes. 

this is on a PCI 4.0e Nvme drive, but in reality any solid state drive will only make a difference in terms of a few seconds guys.
 

I don’t bother with google maps anymore, it might look ok but you are crippling your SIM with something that’s not remotely optimised/configured for. Failing that any really long loading times could be put down to something in your community folder which MSFS doesn’t like - maybe some corruption?

if you have a quality set of add ons there’s no need to enable/disable stuff to improve loading times IMO, just stop downloading cr@p.

We are only DL all these freeware as there is nothing (yet) that enhances a country or region for it.

I rather pay for MSFS True Earth landmarks that loads fast than something that loads in 10-15 min. But there isn’t anything that covers Europe’s countries completely.

So if there is no negative framerate issue when flying I will keep the freeware for the moment and might even expand it.

But you are absolutely right that it isn’t optimized for MSFS.

 

[TacomaSailor 191]

I have more than 20 GB of addons in the community folder, including a lot of ORBX stuff.  I've made a number of detailed tests of loading times:

- everything in the Community Folder (SSD)

- nothing in the Community Folder

- AddonsLinker links in the Community Folder (actual mods are also on a SSD)

- only Working Title stuff in the Community Folder

There is less than 4-seconds difference in the time to load and get to the World Map/Welcome page (2' 6"  up to 2' 10")

There is only 13-seconds difference in the time to get from the Fly screen on the Welcome page to the Fly Now message with the plane on the taxiway (1' 51" to 2' 4"),

Turning off my AVAST security procedures only reduced the time to load everything from the Community folder by 3-seconds.

[GSalden 4,655]

3 minutes ago, TacomaSailor said:

I have more than 20 GB of addons in the community folder, including a lot of ORBX stuff.  I've made a number of detailed tests of loading times:

- everything in the Community Folder (SSD)

- nothing in the Community Folder

- AddonsLinker links in the Community Folder (actual mods are also on a SSD)

- only Working Title stuff in the Community Folder

There is less than 4-seconds difference in the time to load and get to the World Map/Welcome page (2' 6"  up to 2' 10")

There is only 13-seconds difference in the time to get from the Fly screen on the Welcome page to the Fly Now message with the plane on the taxiway (1' 51" to 2' 4"),

Turning off my AVAST security procedures only reduced the time to load everything from the Community folder by 3-seconds.

Do you have a lot converted GE —> MSFS photogrammetry scenery from Flightsim.to ?

 

Edited January 18, 2021 by GSalden

[pmb 5,137]

9 minutes ago, GSalden said:

We are only DL all these freeware as there is nothing (yet) that enhances a country or region for it.

There's been at least a thread on the ORBX forum where some unsers (including me) demanded country-based landmark packages. This shouldn't be too hard at least for the countries where ORBX already has the assets available. Moreover, given they have artists available, it should be within their abilities for other countries, too.

We'll see if it will materialize.

Kind regards, Michael