I dont use the AddOn Linker but it sounds excellent, clever and well designed. I would however always keep all mods loaded up all the time. The loading time of the game doesnt bother me.

What would bother me is if I had enabled only certain addons for  a certain area of the world and then decided I wanna fly someplace else - but the addons for that other region have not been loaded in the Linker (in order to keep game load time low)

So this means I'd have to exit the game, enable those addons and then launch the game again.  I would prefer to have everything loaded up all the time for every session. 

Edited July 12, 20214 yr by ThrottleUp

2 hours ago, cobalt said:

This way, my Community folder never contains anything other than the links. This is a huge advantage in so many ways, including keeping load times to a minimum as well as avoiding problems with the functioning of MSFS.

This could easily be misread... load times are going to be the same, regardless of whether the actual addon folder, or a link is in the Community folder.  Disabling the addons that you are not using is what is keeping the load times to a minimum.. 🙂

9 minutes ago, ThrottleUp said:

I would however always keep all mods loaded up all the time.

You may want to rethink that, once you actually have MSFS installed.  It takes absolutely no time to accumulate 100 GB of addons..

I guess coming from FS9 where I had over 800 scenery addons I was expecting MSFS to handle addon a bit better. FS9 loading times were affected by the number of additions but not to the point where you got frustrated waiting.

MSFS seems to be struggling with a relative small number, which is a worry considering just how many there are available. My PC is not the best and improvements can be made, but it would appear I am not the only person finding this problem.

I fully appreciate that addons are highly detailed and contain a lot of files but I assumed that as we are nearly 20 years on from FS9, that Microsoft may have found a better way to handle add-ons. Especially as they want us to go out and purchase them. I would have expected some to be loaded initially and then some loaded 'on the fly' so that start up loading times were reduced.

I am using linker so can select addons that affect my route, but sometimes its just nice to fly around and see what you can find. The UK is a relatively small place, so a short flight in the UK is still going to require a reasonable number of addons selected if I am not flying directly from A to B.

It would appear that technology in this respect has not moved on a great deal.

5 hours ago, Mike S KPDX said:

This has always been the case for me.  At one time I suggested some type of loading screen that comes up when you click the .exe.  Unfortunately that idea was not well received on this forum (to say the least).  Instead I am looking at my desktop for 10 minutes wondering if anything is going on.

That's a great idea. actually something similar to what Prepar3d has, ducks his head...

21 minutes ago, Bert Pieke said:

You may want to rethink that, once you actually have MSFS installed.  It takes absolutely no time to accumulate 100 GB of addons..

You're not wrong there Bert. I just checked and my addons-linker is showing 474 aircraft entries (incl liveries) and 1021 scenery entries. Pushing 1tb of addons (but that does include 200gb of those newish POI Billboards, which I'm currently investigating).

And I very much doubt I'll be stopping getting more anytime soon. (What me, OCD?)

24 minutes ago, TurboKen said:

At one time I suggested some type of loading screen that comes up when you click the .exe.  Unfortunately that idea was not well received on this forum (to say the least).

A number of us have been asking for this for quite some time... Luckily there are 3rd party solutions that add a loading screen.  I use the one from FSUIPC7.

1 hour ago, ThrottleUp said:

So this means I'd have to exit the game, enable those addons and then launch the game again.  I would prefer to have everything loaded up all the time for every session. 

So it takes me 4 minutes to be fully up and running when I am selective about what I load.  And it perhaps takes up to 20 minutes for users with significant addons not using the linker's method to load just once, regardless of where they will fly at the time.  And performance may also suffer requiring lower settings?

+  -  *  /  =

I just did the math on that....  I just did the math.....
 

57 minutes ago, andy1252 said:

I just checked and my addons-linker is showing 474 aircraft entries (incl liveries)

And how many of those have you actually flown with?  This is beginning to remind me of my baseball card collection days....

7 minutes ago, fppilot said:

And how many of those have you actually flown with?  This is beginning to remind me of my baseball card collection days....

Numerically, the vast bulk of those will be liveries. And no, I haven't flown with all of those by any means. Numerically, the majority of the aircraft are conversions, which vary in their usability anyway and were done in the early days when there were no decent addon aircraft available.

A lot of those conversions will only ever get used on rare occasions, for example to attempt to recreate particular flights like the relatively famous Hunter through Tower Bridge flight from the 1960s, or the test flights of the XB70, cross country flight of the B58 etc. All of which can be practiced until happy and then recorded to be played back at my leisure. All the native aircraft will get a spin from time to time.

Quite happy to admit to magpie tendencies. Just another aspect of simming. Personally, there is nothing more boring to me than flying a tube from one airport to another, and that's not why I have the sim. But to be able to set up and run a trio of MiG29s in formation over Red Square is something I'm happy to spend hours playing around with (haven't figured that out for MSFS yet, but have done it in P3D).

I also have a few hundred feet of bookshelves, all fully loaded. And I've still got probably a thousand vinyl LPs and a fancy hi-fi, although they really don't get a lot of use these days. I'm acquisitve, you could say. But no baseball cards. Mind you, I was always keen on the idea of collecting old linen postcards, but eBay pushed them up into silly money years ago now (so I bought illustrated books of them instead).

cheers,

Andy

1 hour ago, chickster25 said:

I guess coming from FS9 where I had over 800 scenery addons I was expecting MSFS to handle addon a bit better. FS9 loading times were affected by the number of additions but not to the point where you got frustrated waiting.

MSFS seems to be struggling with a relative small number, which is a worry considering just how many there are available. My PC is not the best and improvements can be made, but it would appear I am not the only person finding this problem.

I fully appreciate that addons are highly detailed and contain a lot of files but I assumed that as we are nearly 20 years on from FS9, that Microsoft may have found a better way to handle add-ons. Especially as they want us to go out and purchase them. I would have expected some to be loaded initially and then some loaded 'on the fly' so that start up loading times were reduced.

I am using linker so can select addons that affect my route, but sometimes its just nice to fly around and see what you can find. The UK is a relatively small place, so a short flight in the UK is still going to require a reasonable number of addons selected if I am not flying directly from A to B.

It would appear that technology in this respect has not moved on a great deal.

I have well over 800 addons and use Addon Linker, as stated in an earlier post. Many of my addons are enhancements of scenery areas, some of which I keep permanently installed, but most are selected as needed, depending on where I am flying. Even with no addons (empty Community folder), the scenery is gorgeous in most areas, as in the U.K., for example, where I have done a lot of flying. My loading time is usually under 4 minutes.

In my experience MSFS is not "struggling" at all. In fact, I am not sure what you mean. Could it be your system slowing things down?

 

Edited July 12, 20214 yr by cobalt

Partly depends on the addon.

Some of the freeware addons that use google maps data are truly awful.  People on the main forums have reported the game taking up to 20 minutes to load with too many poorly done addons enabled.

This may of course improve with the July 27th update.

Note loading speed is  not the only reason to disable addons. You will also minimise the chances of an addon conflict, and if you do get issues then being able to disable all your aircraft of a given type, or an entire region of scenery addons, speeds up fault finding immensely.

 

Edited July 13, 20214 yr by Glenn Fitzpatrick

5 hours ago, fppilot said:

??????????

My response was to his initial post and was immediately after it.  I do not see anything in his first post that mentioned the linker.  HIs mention of the linker came well after that.

You mean from THIS initial post..."Luckily I added them using the linker system"?

Just in case anyone was unaware the "MSFS Addon Linker" does tell you how many valid addons are active and the total size of the active/valid addons in the community folder. When the linker screen is open just right click on the right side window showing the active addons in the community folder and at the bottom of the sub window the info is listed there.

Hope this may be of help.

5 hours ago, cobalt said:

have well over 800 addons and use Addon Linker, as stated in an earlier post. Many of my addons are enhancements of scenery areas, some of which I keep permanently installed, but most are selected as needed, depending on where I am flying.

I wonder if it takes longer to start the sim with all 800 add-on’s in the Community folder or if it takes longer to first go through a list of 800 add-on’s in Add On Linker, checking and unchecking 800 boxes before each flight!?

Then after spending 10 minutes in AddOn Linker, boot up the sim only to find that you missed checking a box and an airport you want to fly from has not loaded. 🤣

I have around 75 GB of add-on’s and I do not use any Linker. Everything loads every time. Sim is running in exactly 3 minutes from Desktop and I hardly have a high power modern rig.
 

With add-on’s it is about being selective. I do not install junk and that includes Google Earth based scenery. It is not so much the quantity of add-on’s but the QUALITY. Also, I don’t see the point in having 50 liveries of one aircraft though.