Speed up the FSX Opening Screen

[rob16584 42]

Taken from an email i've just got from PC Aviator

FSX is not as slow as people are lead to believe or as people perceive. Unfortunately there is a default setting in FSX that creates the perception of "This program is slow and a drag on PC resources" right from the time you click on the icon to run the product.

Notice from the very time you get the opening screen up in FSX that the hard drive is chugging away resulting in very slow response to your clicking of any options such as loading a different plane or different airport at the startup screen?

That slowness is caused by the hard drive chugging away. Why is that hard drive chugging away? What data is it loading? How do you eliminate this for an immediately responsive FSX?

When you run FSX and you get to the opening screen, FSX proceeds to immediately prefetch data that it thinks you will need for faster loading of your flight when you hit the "Fly Now" button. It is prefetching data such as scenery and if you are running photoscenery you will find that this prefetch process causes an even greater drag. It can take several minutes before your FSX launch will settle down enough so you can even select options at that opening screen. This can take even longer on older slower systems with slower IDE drives.

We're of the opinion that Microsoft made a very bad call when they decided to cause this prefetching as the default option when you launch FSX. It made a lot of people think that FSX is a lot slower than it actually is - especially when it prefetched data it only thought you were going to use.

So can this prefetching be eliminated for a totally still opening screen with immediate response when you select options, load different aircraft, different airports etc..... and once and for all not hear that hard disk chugging away prefetching unneeded data.

Yes it can..... with the DisablePreload=1 option - a line that you can add to your FSX.CFG file and once you add it to your FSX.CFG file, the next time you run FSX, your perceptions of slowness will change forever.

To make this change to FSX....

Note: If you are not computer savvy, you can have a technician or friend who is perform the procedure for you. Please do not call our office for assistance to avoid the potential of our phones being jammed and preventing us from servicing our buying customers.

1. The FSX.CFG file is a hard file to find on your system since it is saved specifically for each user. In Windows XP you will find it in your Documents and Settings folder and in Vista in your Users folder. It is then several folders deep within these main folders. The easiest way to find it is to use the "Search" feature of XP and Vista. Do a search for FSX.CFG (ensure that you have selected "hidden files".)

2. When FSX.CFG is found - Right Click on the File and Select Open With - then open it up with Notepad.

3. Scroll down to the section that says [sTARTUP]

4. Under Startup enter the line: DisablePreload=1 so this section should then look something like this:

[sTARTUP]

DisablePreload=1

DEMO=0

SHOW_OPENING_SCREEN=1

5. Save the file.

6. Then run FSX and you will see the world of difference in the performance of FSX at the opening screen. No more hard drive chugging away and instant response to selecting options at the opening screen. Your flights "could" take a little longer to load when you hit the "fly now" button but its a very worthwhile tradeoff for a responsive opening screen when the background process was loading data you didn't even need.

[allardjd 1,853]

I got that too and am planning to re-print it in the next issue of our club newsletter. Can any of the FSX users confirm that it works as advertised? I hear a lot of griping at the JF/AH forum about FSX load times.

 

John

[ddavid 149]

I think I saw this tip over on Horizon, some time last year, and, yes, it works for me, John. :smile:

Loading times in FSX are long, due to the volume and complexity of both AC and scenery. However, if you've time to do some research, then there are benefits in putting your scenery on a different drive to your main FSX stuff - well, something along those lines.....

And, if you have deep-deep pockets, you can reduce loading delays by using a solid state drive (SSD) - Joe's mates over at Alpine Systems have experimented with SSD's with some very encouraging results ..... see here for more info....

Cheers - Dai.

[mutley 4,487]

Ah yes!

I think this does work, as Dai says, any Generation X user should know about this and is more relevant when you have gigs of photo scenery installed.

Cheers

[allardjd 1,853]

But what about this tip from PC Aviator? They make it sound like a silver bullet. Is it?

 

EDIT: Mut, I should have refreshed my screen before posting - I didn't see yours.

 

I've wondered for some time why solid state drives haven't emerged. We can buy memory sticks and USB thumb drives up to 16GB that weigh an ounce or less and don't cost too much. Why isn't the market flooded with larger hard disks that are not disks at all and have no moving parts?

 

John

[Helaro 0]

John;

[rob16584 42]

At least it looks like it has worked for some of us!

I just loaded up but didn't notice that much difference. Maybe i'm expecting too much from it

[SlimNasty 0]

Hi Guys,

I tried that and couldn't tell the difference myself, but I think mine is so slow loading because I am still on an AGP system and have over 770 aircraft installed, not to mention added scenery.

It was interesting to see that installing Scenery on another drive can help, have to try this next time I re-install which maybe soon.

A friend of mine down Portsmouth runs a program called HyperOS which enables him to have multiple operating systems for testing and he swears on his system having a separate partition with Windows XP Pro and Flight Sim X with nothing else almost doubles his frame rate. I will probably re-install mine in a month or two so may adopt this and try it for myself. Has anyone else tried this?

Speak Soon

Phil

[mutley 4,487]

Hi Phil,

I presently run Vista64 and FSX on one disk (WD Velociraptor) and most of my other apps including most of my scenery on another disk. I can't say I have seen any difference on my machine but maybe some will benefit.

I have ordered Windows as I have seen it running and hear it is a big improvement on XP and Vista, we shall see!

Cheers