P3Dv4 load times (killing my enthusiasm)

[jpreou]

As many will know, I've been at a low point in my simming recently. Sheer lack of enthusiasm. There are several reasons, but the primary two are 1) NZ scenery situation in P3D4 and 2) how long it takes to get into an actual flight.
I fired it up again yesterday and while I am running on a 'fast' spinner and not an SSD the load time from scenario screen to cockpit is in the region of 6½ minutes. *This* is a large part of why often times I simply cannot be arsed and end up in theHunter or Elite Dangerous instead.
I only have ORBX base (but not vector), NZSI, NZNI, Queenstown, Milford and Rob's Nelson & Dunedin. I don't want anything else globally as I don't intend to fly anywhere else globally.
I went into the scenery library and unticked anything obviously 'not-NZ' through there is still a large amount left enabled.
Is there much else I can do?

[toprob]

This is Orbx doing that. I've just done a couple of tests, albeit non-scientific, running both Prepar3d v3 and v4 from a 'clean' boot. v3 uses Orbx, and v4 doesn't.
I almost always begin with a saved fight, this is because 99% of my flightsim use is testing scenery! So here I've just dragged the saved flight onto the appropriate sim icon on my desktop. In v3, I bypass the scenario screen, so I've tested both from the very start to fully loaded.
v4 took 3:55, v3 took 7:20.

Some observations:
V4 has always been faster even before I hobbled updated v3 with FTX.
Exiting and reloading is quicker -- 1:40 for v4, 2:25 for v3. However for normal flying, I'd certainly recommend restarting the PC first for a nice clean experience.
This is why I use v4 to test stuff, I can make changes to scenery, and reloading doesn't take forever. I definitely noticed the difference when I installed FTX NZ in v3.
The only development stuff I do in v3 is using Whisplacer to place scenery models directly into the sim, so I try and keep this part to a minimum -- if I had to do it too often, I'd go balmy waiting, so I'd switch Whisplacer to use v4.

[jpreou]

Hmmm. I could be stuck with it I guess.
I just did a flight from QN to CH and had to in-flight file an IFR flight plan to land at CH ... I noticed terrible performance there, down to 12fps. I seem to recall commentary that ORBX CH was poor, so I need to go find info on that too.
For now, off to see if REX TD is P3Dv4 compatible; about time I added that back in 'cos some textures, especially water & runways, are not that flash.

[toprob]

Yes, although I moan a lot, I do think that P3dv4 plus FTX NZ adds more than they take away:)
I was hoping to do a version of NZCH without the photoscenery, just for FTX users who didn't like photoscenery, but their Christchurch saps so much performance it wouldn't make sense.
Waiting 6 minutes would give you a good chance to reread the aircraft manual, it would certainly benefit me!

[Adamski]

Hmmm. I could be stuck with it I guess.
I just did a flight from QN to CH and had to in-flight file an IFR flight plan to land at CH ... I noticed terrible performance there, down to 12fps. I seem to recall commentary that ORBX CH was poor, so I need to go find info on that too.
For now, off to see if REX TD is P3Dv4 compatible; about time I added that back in 'cos some textures, especially water & runways, are not that flash.

Are you on P3Dv4.2? I'm surprised your loading times are *that* long!

I converted my P3D HD to SSD a while back, but even before then, it wasn't as slow as that - and I have almost the full set of ORBX sceneries loaded/active plus a gazillion aircraft. What's your default aircraft (and location) set to? Mine is always a default P3D aircraft of some kind, then usually a small NZ airport (typically NZAR).

ORBX NZCH is a disaster - and there've been a few kludges/workarounds posted in their forums that seem to help a little. Hopefully Rob's NZCH will get us out of that mess!

My other thought is that maybe there are some legacy NZ sceneries still kicking around. Maybe some old freeware AFCADS or object libraries that didn't get removed cleanly.

You shouldn't be having problems with REX TD either. It's always behaved itself fine with all my P3D versions. You could always uninstall then reinstall the P3D *client*. You won't lose anything, but will have to re-apply any ground or sky textures (from REX or whatever). That may tidy things up.

Yet another thought. If you're using some Sim-Starter type of thing - or starting P3D in some slightly unorthodox way, it could be that P3D is clearing/rebuilding its shader cache every time you start. This can slow things down quite a bit. This happens to me every time I tweak my PTA settings and re-apply PTA.

Adam.

[cowpatz]

ORBX might slow things down but so does lots of AI models.

[Adamski]

ORBX might slow things down but so does lots of AI models.

Agreed. I used to run Ultimate Traffic (in FSX). I had loads of custom/local NZ traffic set up (with some military stuff around NZWP and NZOH) but it certainly came at a cost.

These days, all I run is the freeware NZ AI package from ORBX, which doesn't seem to affect my system too much.

Adam.

[cowpatz]

I am running that AI package as well as the Boston VATSIM AI model package BVAI (which is very good for world wide and use on VATSIM).
I guess it would be possible to set up different configurations for loading AI via something like Simstarter NG. It can load specific sceneries so perhaps it can do AI as well. Ie. Load a NZ scenery with only NZ AI.

[jpreou]

Thanks All. I completely removed P3D and *everything* associated including a full pass across the entire file system (all volumes, all possible locations) and registry prior to heading for P3Dv4[.1, not .2 yet]. Pretty confident nothing legacy in there. Then a clean install of P3Dv4, Active Sky + ASCA, ORBX FTX Global textures, HD Trees, NZNI, NZSI, Queenstown, Milford, Whangarei, NZ traffic and Rob's Dunedin and Nelson with whatever they contain (not necessarily in that order). I think PrecipitX may also be on there.
Last night I added REX TD and Plan-G.

I also run the Baytower RV7 which I *think* (need to check) is the only 3rd-party a/c in there. As mentioned, I have de-selected everything not-NZ that I personally felt I could (there's a heap of 'base ####' entries (something like that); not sure what they are.

My default scenario does tend to change, but it is usually NZ airport (Queenstown or Milford most recently, before that West Melton) and in the RV7 cold and dark.
The disk holding all this stuff is a spinner but regularly defragged and I usually (not always) disable any apps and services not required, though frankly I haven't noticed any difference to load times doing that, only in-flight performance and even then it is not much; I run a pretty lean system.

I don't run any kind of flight sim startup software, or PTA or anything like that. Nil manual tweaks to config files (yet, I have a couple camera views / tweaks and bits to add).

So who knows?

[Adamski]

Hmmm ... not sure what else to suggest (!) - other than checking the state of your C: drive, as I think P3D reads/writes a raft of temporary files there. There may also be some conflict between Rob's sceneries and ORBX, but I doubt it as Rob will have chimed in by now.

Any reason why you're holding off going to 4.2? There may be some performance gain there (not sure).

Adam.

[jpreou]

Was waiting for some bits to get 4.2 support (which they probably now have actually) but also when reading the release notes didn't see a whole lot that made a significant difference .. to be fair, it was a very quick scan.
I'll check the C: situation, but that one *is* an SSD so won't be getting much faster....!

[jpreou]

NZFG and the RV7 loaded in around 3 mins this evening; followed by an IFR direct GPS to NZNV, missed visual approach (ATC instruction to go around due to some lazy-ass Cessna that couldn't vacate in a timely fashion and just cost me another $40 in avgas, to a second good visual landing.