Been reading all about this program, Addon linker, think I know the answer, however 
I have over a dozen presets for various places I fly to. Once in the sim, lets say Jax, which has the scenery for Jacksonville FL, KJAC, bridges, things appear as they should.
However, if I do not close down the sim and decided to take a tour of NYC, I would load up the preset New York, and the various sceneries etc, would show loaded in Addon linker, however, would not show up in the sim. If I shutdown the sim, then enabled the preset, then loaded the sim, it would load up my NYC items.
I do not like having to wait 3-4 minutes to shut down and reload the sim, so my question is-I got about 50 gigs worth of scenery, aircraft etc, in my add on’s folder. If I create a preset to have ALL OF THEM appear in the Community folder, is there any harm in that???
Or, is there a way to get Addon linker to load up ONLY the preset I want (once in the sim)??
No. This is out of the control of addon linker or any tool like it.
The sim itself loads items from community only once, and only on initial boot. You can’t change anything after the fact.
I had thought so, never seen the answer
So, is it safe to load 50 gigs (or larger) at once??
Maybe. There’s nothing inherently wrong doing that, other than some increased initial load times.
The thing that would give me pause is potential conflicts. With that much content loaded, there are so many possible combinations and permutations it’s impossible to know if everything plays nicely together.
Of course if something does conflict … using Addon Linker makes it much easier to nail down what is conflicting.
I have Addon Linker and love it.
I have a folder called MSFS Addons that has subfolders for aircraft, sceneries, airports, liveries, etc. And its linked to Addon Linker. So, if taking a PMDG 737 from Chicago to NY I just click on the 2 airpot addons and the 737 and the sim only loads those.
There is a separate post in the Wish Lists that asks for a way to add or delete sceneries mid-flight and I suppose that would be a similar processto what you are asking of Addon Linker.
Well, I ran several flights with a preset set to all my sceneries, airports, and much to my surprise, did not have a negative effect on my VRAM usage. Thought it would eat it up. In fact, I could not tell a difference (except for the scenery looking better, lol)
The biggest reason why I use Addon linker is that I can easily choose where my LARGE files go, and I do like having them organized, visually, much better
I occasionally load all my add-ons, via MSFS Add-ons Linker, to enable Little Navmap to re-sync. With (only!) 2GB it only seems to take a minute more to load the sim and thereafter I don’t see any effect on performance.
Couple of weeks ago I downloaded a HUGE file of local scenery and when I tried it out I got a lot of stuttering and freezing as I approached. I was expecting it although I didn’t think it was all that better than stock so probably won’t use it again.
I treat Addon Linker mostly as a pre-start tool rather than something I expect to change the sim while it is already running. For me the bigger risk with loading a very large set is not the number of GB by itself, it is duplicated airports, old scenery, or two packages touching the same area.
What has worked best for me is a small always-on group for utilities/libraries, then presets by region or by trip. If I want Little Navmap to rebuild its scenery database I may enable a wider set for that purpose, but for normal flying I still prefer keeping the active set fairly boring and specific.
You can create ‘Regions’ or ‘Areas’ in MSFS AddonsLinker so that you only need to hit one click to load for example all ‘Western US’ sceneries and airports. You can compartmentalize your airports and scenery under one folder and it just takes one click so that ONLY those you want are loaded. Easy to play around with and works quite well.
Hmm, that is a thought, but I would still need to reload the sim. However, the initial overheard would be redcued…
This is what I do with over 1TB of add ons. East coast check! I have the native aircraft mods and skins and sim mods in folders always checked then just check the areas I’m flying in. They’re pretty wide swaths of add-ons doesn’t really chug it. Also the more organized you can be with add ons the easier it is to deal with updates or finding problem addons. Any other certain scenery general mods, seasonal stuff, or skin packs I don’t use all the time I also leave in sub folders. Don’t need hundreds of airliner skins all the time.
If it’s not in the rendered area it doesn’t tax the sim, but also if I have EVERYTHING loaded and the sim crashes or falters or textures drop out I don’t know where to start. It’s good to start with a memorable file structure early as these can multiply into hundreds of files easily.
If it’s debatable that it may be ■■■■■■ or cause issues I’ll dump it in a test folder first.
Hi there,
How do I make a bunch of selections to add to MSFS Addons Linker, so that I can make MSFS 2024 and MSFS 2020 load faster? It usually takes about 6-7 minutes to load for MSFS 2024.
Any help is greatly appreciated. TIA
Do you mean presets that can be used to select a specific group of add-ons? There’s a drop down list for presets you can configure and save if that’s what you’re looking for.
But you should know, that making groups, is not making the sim loading faster !
Only if you deactivate some of the groups, the sim will load faster.
I have 3521 addons in my sim, it also takes 6 minutes to load.
Scott
I have presets according to aircraft registration so that all I usually have to change is scenery, which I restrict to the next flight I’m planning. This keeps the number of files that the sim has to load to a minimum although I wouldn’t really notice a few extras as we’re talking milliseconds per file. But with 2TB of add-ons I’ve waited over 15 mins when I’ve accidentally forgotten to set a preset.
I also have a couple of “maintenance” presets, for example to load all the airport files when I update Little Navmap. Incidentally I also run both versions of MSFS Addons Linker so I can select which version of sim I’m using (there’s still a couple of things I prefer MSFS2020 for).
Addons linker is great stuff but you know what it cannot do…it absolutely cannot spur your memory to change your presets prior to loading MSFS. My senior brain spaces out all the time and I find myself into MSFS with an area I have set up not loaded with an intention to fly in it. What is a pain then is the only way to fix that is to close MSFS, reset addons linker and restart the sim. The loading times are long enough that, if I do that, it is wrist slitting time. lol
Been there, done that, got the T-shirt! I now have a routine from the moment I sit down with an intention to fly, right up until I switch the battery master on.
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But I still occasionally forget !!!