How Does Fsx Handle Scenerys/airplanes?

[JJJackson 0]

Hi

First of all, congratulations for the number ONE sim-producer company of the world!!!. I'm a great fan of Aerosoft and having bougt a lot of your scenerys/aircrafts I now find the list of installed products beeing longer and longer.

I know that when I install a scenery it installs a reference in my scenery.cfg and also installs on top of my list of installed scenerys in FSX "Settings/Scenery" menu and the new scenery is hooked. Now my questions are:,

1.

Does FSX allways load ALL hooked scenerys into RAM or virtual memory when I start a flight OR is there a system loading scenerys when I fly over a specific geographical area?

2.

Does unhooking scenerys that I don't pass during my flight enhance the fps rate?

3.

If I install ALL my scenerys and unhook the ones I don't need, does that have any effect on my fps rate? What I basically want to know is, can I install ALL my scenerys (over 100 including REX, GEX, UTX, MyTraffic and lots of others) and then hook/unhook what I don't need during my flight, without any loss of performance?

4.

As for airplanes I guess that FSX only loads data for the specific plane I use for the flight, or........? Does that mean I can install ALL my airplanes without loosing other than time when FSX produces the list of available airplanes? That is, is the amout of installed airplanes affecting my fps?

Hope you understand what I mean, I am 60+, Swede, newbie and living in Spain so don't expect too much from me.

Jack J Jackson

The Swede in Spain

[M2769 2]

I think FS only loads scenery that is within X number of miles of your aircraft. If you quickly slew any great distance, you'll notice that all you see at first is a very blurry ground texture on a lower-quality mesh with no autogen or buildings, etc.

For both addon scenery and aircraft, I think it only adds to your initial load time - when you're loading up FS or starting a flight - but it shouldn't affect your FPS unless the scenery or aircraft are actual active. In other words, if you can't see it, it's not being loaded.

It's a good idea to remove addons that you don't use for a long time from the FSX directory though. Just loading up FSX to the menu is considerably faster with less aircraft installed, but I don't think that's the type of performance you're looking for here.

Hope it helps,

The Swede in the US

[JJJackson 0]

Hi

Thanks for the answer, I thought it would be like that.

That gives me one problem less, just install all the fantastic scenerys from Aereosoft and unhook them when you don't use them.

Jack J Jackson

[Snave 466]

Just to add what the `other` Swede suggests, it is a really, really good idea to move sceneries and aircraft you are not currently flying to a standby repository away from the main FS folder, then create a shortcut to that folder and leave that in the main FS file structure so you can access it as necessary.

I have an `addon aircraft` folder where I deposit all the aircraft I'm not currently using - but only after installing them first. In other words, the gauges and any other files needed are left in place, with just the aircraft and its sub-folders removed to a remote location. You can very quickly find the shortcut an access the folder and just cut'n'paste any new selections to the FSX\SimObjects\Airplanes folder for instant use. The more you have in the Airplanes folder, the slower the start-up of FS, and the slower the access to the aircraft selection menu. With this method you very quickly become adept at removing the massive folders of aircraft you aren't currently flying, and reap the benefit in loading times and defrag capability (a defragger cannot tell the difference between an active and inactive folder so will just follow the file structure blindly. There's no point having some aircraft files punted to the back of the defrag table because they sit behind a few hundred meg of planes you're not flying!)

However, most of the time with scenery, as it doesn't matter so much if its left in the FS Addon Scenery folder or not, I just leave it alone and simply switch it off in the scenery menu in the sim. UNchecking the box means it is not loaded, so its a good way of preserving performance without losing the scenery.

Finally, as good `housekeeping` you should keep an eye on those folders and if you find aircraft or sceneries that you persistently never use, uninstall them! I've got a long, long list of `can't be without` aircraft that haven't been flown since I got them - and they now reside on a DVD in a drawer!