I bought a new 500GB SSD for MSFS and that is all that is on the drive. Currently MSFS occupies 223.5 GB broken down into:
WpSystem 109GB
Packages Official 100 GB
Packages Community 14.5 GB
Program Files 0 B
WindowsApps 0 B
When initially installed (Premium Deluxe) it occupied 109 GB. It appears that each update does not replace/modify existing files but seems to add more files into Packages Official. The program as a whole has now nearly doubled in size.
I would like to know what the maximum size will be as I am sure anyone looking at there system prior to purchasing would also like to know.
Priority wise I would like to see efforts put into making the existing sim work properly, for example water heights, underwater bridges, general mesh anomalies, roads at weird angles (45 degrees)
or more) on hillsides and many more, before making specific country improvements (Japan).
I’ve noticed this too. At some point soon, there will need to be a rationalisation of the files - a cumulative update that rolls all the individual patches up into a new version and removes the old ones. It cannot just keep stacking multi-gigabyle patch files for the life of the sim.
Presumably at some point the core files will be much more stable and the frequency of updates to each component will drop. After that any growth in disk usage should come from the world updates or community add-ons.
I found the main problem. Update 1 did a complete install and I ended up with 2 Packages/Official, hence an extra 100GB. I changed the Packages Path thinking that the original files would first be uninstalled so this probably caused the duplication.
To resolve the problem I uninstalled MSFS but then noticed that the uninstall program does not remove all the folders and files. As some of the files are protected and not accessible I had to format the SSD (fortunately MSFS was all that was on it).
I then did a reinstall to the SSD making sure that I pointed the Packages Path to the Packages folder in WPSystem. After reinstalling I now have version 1.9.3 occupying 90 GB although this will increase once the caches start to fill. Just have to re-configure all the controls now.
That’s great for your situation. I thought you were referring to the stacking versions of any file that gets patched. For example 4 generations of many base-cgl files at 2Gb a time.
Sorry for any misunderstanding. I thought that was what was happening until I found the duplicate folder and the only solution, as I didn’t know which files were being accessed, was to reinstall I didn’t look any further.