too many addons is it possible???

[seahawk09 0]

Hey all,

I was wondering is it possible to overload fs9 with too many aircraft addon's lately I have had flickering in the startup screen just before it load's to the menu for using is that an indication that i might be over loading it with alot of addon's just curious thank's.

Richard.

[João Pinto 23]

If you have a Nvidia card, then the flickering is normal...

I've heard of this guy with 100 gigs of addons and counting, I have 35 and also counting... no overload here although it takes me 5 minutes to reach the main menu...

[ChrisB 11]

My FS9 has reached 60 gigs no problems - well, not quite... With all that file movement I sometimes SNAFU and end up fouling some textures somewhere. If it goes wrong and I have to re-install, it's not generally the software fault, but most likely my fault for not RTFMing. That's the risk when you load a lot of addons - not the amount of addons.

[Shaun Fletcher 570]

Hello Folks,

I remember in FS2002 I had far to many add-ons and it took forever to load . Have'nt really experienced that problem yet.

[6297J 11]

I took off about 20 add-on aircraft and at least the same amount of scenery add-ons a few months ago and the difference in load time is amazing.

After a few years of buying everything you suddenly realise that you have lots of aircraft that you should never have bought and will never fly and you just have to bite the bullet and get rid of them.

My FS9 folder is now a measly 22.7GB.

I also hate to have too many repaints and usually only choose one repaint to keep per model for add-on payware aircraft.

FS9 loads in about twenty seconds now.

[Chaders 97]

My old PC had an unfeasably large install. My current is sat at 16Gig and I'm trying real hard not to excede that. I find if I have too many aircraft it takes way too long to open the aircraft menu and it also freeze whenever someone in a MP session changes their plane.

[ChrisB 11]

Yes - I should remove a few planes as well - but the big sinners are normally the sceneries - get them wrong - even by one missing "tile" and you'll have problems with CTDs. Photosceneries are often a big cause for "Bloat", but I don't think I'd get rid of the FSGenesis meshes though - and they come on 40+ CDs. "My Traffic" was a bad buy too - too many poorly aligned and positioned AI planes. And yes - too many planes can be a bugbear. During one of my last checks, I think I had over half a million files in FS9 - crazy!

But this isn't supposed to be a critique on individual addons - the best cure for slow loading once FS9 suffers "Bloat" is a defrag first and wherever possible load addon sceneries outside FS9. Also, as 6297J says, thinking before you buy is also sound advice - buying planes just for the hell of it is a risk. You have a temporary favourite, but you can't fly 'em all regularly.

[João Pinto 23]

Just wait until they come up with Virtual rust and dust and you'll see people emptying their hangars....

[George W 3]

I know of at least one payware program that helps you manage the number of aircraft you load up each time you start FS9 - it certainly saves a lot of time.

[ogeva 0]

I used to have more the 70Gigs of addons, it took FS a few minutes to load.

Hitting the change aircraft menu while FS was running sometimes took more than a minute!

Luckily my HD died and now it's a new install with only what I need. Change aircraft takes less the 10 seconds.

I won't crank it up because FSX will be out soon, so it's not worthwile start collecting again, even though I will get a suitable machine for FSX only on January.

[ceemosp2003 0]

I use FS AddOnManager to counter that problem. I install the add-ons (mostly planes but also some sceneries) and then move them with the help of AOM to it's hangar. They sit nicely compressed (zipped) in a folder outside of FS9 and only get loaded when needed. The integration into FS9.cfg and scenery.cfg is seamless and loading times get slashed dramatically.

Carsten

[Snave 466]

As a short-term measure, to see what effect it has, you can create a new folder within the main FS9 folder, call it `BACKUP AIRCRAFT` and just move anything you want over to it. You can then see what difference it makes to loading times. As long as it not in the Airrcaft folder it's not loaded.

The advantage of the utilities is not only do they back up the aircfraft, they also search the gauges folder and remove (and back up) the gauges for that aircraft that aren't used by anything else. A good gauge purge every so often can make substantial savings!

Ultimately though, the best time savings at loading are from removing or unchecking, scenery you're not using. You can either use the FS scenery menu at first startup and just disable all the areas you're not currently flying in, or again you can use a utiltiy to do that for you, saving the close and restart you have to do for FS. I use FS Navigator Database Compiler to do that, but FS Addon Manager and Flight Sim Manager can do it as well.

From there it's a small step to creating separate scenery .cfg for different areas of the world:- say with all the Georender stuff activated if you' re flying in the Northern parts of the USA, but FreeFlow Florida UNchecked as you ain't going dahn sarf today, that kind of thing. until I cleaned the hard drive recwent'y I had a hatfull of different scenry .cfg preset with all the checkboxes for my most common flying areas - no point in havnig Scandinavian mesh active if you're flying in the South of France, or VFR France active if you tootling around Emma Field.

It's all quite adjustable!