Removing offline mesh files

[solito 65]

At performance boost tricks I read you can save almost 60Gbs deleting the offline mesh files at the ....CGL folder.- Is that true ? No bad consequences doing that ? So why does that files exist ?

Thanks 

[zorro747 32]

I also read that thread and followed the advice. Removed. Nothing wrong was noticed.

[solito 65]

Doesnt those files work as a fix cache  ?

[Riche 5]

Following 

[HUSSAR 272]

I dit not notice any improvement once it was removed.

[Ixoye 1,821]

Saving 60 Gb space is good enough for me even if it doesn't give a performance improvement.

[RobJC 2,069]

How do you do this with steam?

[cianpars 1,165]

Not come across that one before.  I would like to hear a little more about the rationale for this, where the mesh folders reside and what any disadvantages and consequences might be.  I could certainly make use of an extra 60 GB of space on my m2 drive.  

[Bert Pieke 7,585]

On 10/17/2022 at 5:49 AM, zorro747 said:

I also read that thread and followed the advice. Removed. Nothing wrong was noticed.

Does your world still look the same? 😉

[F737MAX 5,599]

30 minutes ago, RobJC said:

How do you do this with steam?

Go to your 'Official' folder location and find the CGL folder.
Mine is located at: Z:\AppData\Roaming\MSFS\Packages\Official\Steam\fs-base-cgl\CGL

Select all files EXCEPT the file called DB_Notices.txt, then delete / copy them to another location.

As a 'belt-and-braces' approach, I would not permanently delete these files from your recycle bin / elsewhere until you have tested various regions of the sim world. I have not noticed any problems from taking this delete action.

No performance improvements or losses, yet the extra 60 GB of drive space is useful.

[cianpars 1,165]

Those mesh files are there for a reason. Presumably they are there for when you are flying offline.  But if you could delete them, why did MS not say that we could delete them and does deleting them cause any slowdown in loading?  I still would like a bit more rationale, but may follow your advice to simply move the files to another location until I am satisfied that nothing adverse happens.

I wonder whether the next sim update is going to simply recreate them though.

[Bert Pieke 7,585]

2 hours ago, cianpars said:

Those mesh files are there for a reason.

I would tend to agree... just leave them alone. 😉

[zorro747 32]

13 hours ago, Bert Pieke said:

Does your world still look the same? 😉

I did not notice anything wrong. The advantage for me was just to free up my hard dics space. The sim loading time did not change.

If you have any doubts, just make files backup  and remove them from the sim folder and test it. 

[Fielder 3,671]

If you have the Xbox version, MSFS installation onto the console allows option to not DL the mesh files (saves tens of Gigabytes). 

[AnkH 2,262]

Well, if 60GB hard disk space is relevant for you, I suggest considering getting a bigger drive. SSD storage was never cheaper, so I really wonder how 60GB can be an issue anyway nowadays...