Mesh gobbling memory??

[Bluescaster 21]

Hi All, Although not new to flight Simming, I am new to playing around with the original program. I've recently found out what a great time can be had from "Addons". Before I go too mad, can anyone please tell me if adding "Mesh" areas to the default set up, will gobble up memory which I could better use for "graphics" and "flight" functions of the program. I was recently told that having too many aircraft loaded in the aircraft folder used memory unnecessarily and wondered if "Mesh" or other scenery might do the same.Thanks for listening and apologies if my question is not the usual type for this forum.Regards Blue.

[Justin Toposim 16]

HI Blue,If you have a fairly recent system, you won't see too many performance issues with mesh. And the more "cutting-edge" your rig is, the less you will notice any performance degradation.This assumes of course you are not frame-rate-fixated. If 20 FPS is enough for you, and you have a 2.5 Gh with a 512 Mb or gig of RAM, you'll be fine.Just be careful of where you put landclass files and make sure you don't put them in a scenery folder that has a companion texture subfolder. THAT will gobble up memory and evenutally shut you down.Hope this helps-------Justinhttp://www.fsgenesis.netHigh Quality Scenery for FS200x

[Bluescaster 21]

Thanks Justin. I think I understood most of that. I have a 2.7+ gig processor (AMD motherboard ) with 1 gig Ram. nVidia FX5600 128meg graphics card. (Again I think all the terms are correct.) I therefore assume from what you say that I should be OK to download new mesh. If I were to do all of Canada would that be too much - I like flying in British Columbia etc. - I'd like to add Alaska also but don't want to over do it.Sorry to be a bother but are "Landclass" files the same as the terrain mesh one sees posted on the site? If not, do I need these also?Also, I was intending putting the extra mesh in the "ADDON Scenery" folder. Does this have the "companion texture folder you speak off.Thanks and apologies for being rather vague concerning this - I'm afraid it is all pretty complicated as yet.Regards Blue

[Justin Toposim 16]

HI Blue,Yes, you appear to have enough horsepower there to enjoy the highest resolutin terrain mesh without much of a performance problem.Terrain is the shape of the ground while landclass is the arrangement of textures on that shape. They are two separate components of the terrain engine that sort of "get married" in the final display output.You can pretty much put the terrain mesh anywhere you want as long as you tell the Scenery Library about it. A texture folder is irrelevant with terrain mesh.Landclass, on the other hand, requires a scenery folder without a companion texture folder, else you will experience memory issues. I've always found it best to put the landclass in sceneryBASEscenery, with the default landclass. But, if you put the landclass file(s) in their own separate folder, make sure not to mix other types of scenery with it, and make sure there is no texture subfolder with it.Hope this helps-------Justinhttp://www.fsgenesis.netHigh Quality Scenery for FS200x

[Bluescaster 21]

Justin, My sincere thanks for explaning it all - even to the extent that I can understand it. I think I'll have a bash now and see how it goes. Hopefully I won't blow the stsyem :-) Regards Blue