I've always used ORBX NA sceneries PNW, NORCAL, SOCAL and one day last year I decided to try the True Earth sceneries:  US Washington, US Florida, Norcal and Socal.

I added them on top of the NA sceneries because the installer said it would work fine, with the only issues being Autogen.   The results were AMAZING.

What I didn't catch on to was that this was the beginning of occasional long pauses lasting 10-30 seconds whenever I flew near the US West Coast.

I fought with those pauses for a long time without success.   About a week ago it dawned on me that there was an obvious correlation between pause locations and ORBX sceneries, so I uninstalled the ORBX NA sceneries and kept the ORBX True Earth versions in place.

After 1 week I can confidently say those long pauses are now GONE.    I still get shorter pauses (5-10 sec) up close to both JFK and BOS but that's a whole new scenery soup up there to figure out.

YMMV.

Overlapping sceneries will causes issues with lookups/indexing … but 10-30 seconds seems excessive … what hardware?

Try limiting your frame rates to 30fps when using TE scenery.  I also recommend lowering your graphics/scenery related settings in P3D settings menus.  Orbx TE scenery is very demanding so lowering those settings will help a lot with performance.

I also recommend that you do not use study level airliners like PMDG aircraft when flying over Orbx TE scenery because they are much more demanding on your system.

Lastly, I recommend upgrading to P3Dv5.4 because you will see improved performance.

It is possible to have smooth flights using Orbx TE scenery but it does take some tweaking and testing to see what works for you.

Edited November 8, 2025Nov 8 by Zylx

Hardware:   
Processor    Intel(R) Core(TM) i9-10900K CPU @ 3.70GHz   3.70 GHz
Installed RAM    32.0 GB (31.9 GB usable)
Storage    1.82 TB SSD WDS200T3XHC-00SJG0, 1.82 TB SSD MKNSSDPE2TB-D8
Graphics Card    NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 (10 GB)

 

For me, using ORBX TE without the PNW sceneries works well with any aircraft and P3D settings in the high range.  

Flying the PMDG 747-400ER for instance, I see constant 30-60fps using unlimited frame settings.

IMHO Flight simulation without study level systems is simply not worth doing apart from light aircraft VFR flight (still, using Carenado and other payware.)

I am also using RC4, APL,Passenger2X, FS Captain, WWV ACARS, REX Skyforce and AIG AI traffic on all of my flights.  I finally got fed up with AH2 crashes and quit using that one.

 

 

This is why you should have a test flight in an area and airport approach that`s most demanding. Then adjust your settings for the best performance and smooth flight.