At the moment i have Installed more than 1600 addons in my Community folder ( Actually 1607) !
Everything is Working perfect !
I had several issues in the past , being unable to load my Content Manager .
The issues were caused by , many freeware Repaints and Freeware Airport’s that they were in direct conflict with my Payware Addons !
Today i have only 5 freeware Aiport’s left in my Community folder , the rest are Payware and i can assure you , no more issues !!
Following my last post above, since 4 days ago, I’m able to load Content Manager despite my addons in fact have increased to 1066 folders now. This means that the issue is not related with Community folder and addons.
In fact, as I said now, I don’t have any issue since 4 days ago.
Also by this reason I have now remmoved my vote from this post.
I’m not at all surprised at the low number of votes as I would guess not many simmers want or need hundreds of GB of addons so haven’t come up against this limitation - yes I accept that there are real addon-enthusiasts out there of course.
Personally I’ve got around 800GB of addons which I’ve accumulated since the sim started but I’d never dream of trying to load them all at once - I did make that mistake once and wondered why it was taking so long to load. My rig is pretty well mid-range so simply cannot cope with it, as I’d guess is the case with many, many average simmers, probably unlike you enthusiasts.
I use the excellent MSFS Addons Linker to look after my addons library and keep the C/F as small as I can usefully get it.
This is, of course, a performance issue and given the efforts of MS/Asobo to improve performance I can’t see them being too enthusiastic about introducing something that threatens those improvements.
After some community folder cleanup of some old sceneries (pre SU7), I don’t have an issue with the content manager anymore. MSFS is running in AAU1 with 1114 add-ons again.
I have the same problem. I have had this problem for many, many months. In addition to the content manager infinite loading I have a problem in returning to the main menu from a flight. I get infinite loading here as well. The sim works fine except for these two things. As soon as I reduce the number of items in the community folder these two items go away - it does not matter what items are excluded from the community folder.
A poster above said ‘this is, of course, a performance issue’. I would whole heartedly disagree. The content manager just needs to check a list of installed/owned marketplace or official sim items and then crosscheck against an update list. At no point should it be looking at anything other than items installed from the marketplace (or official sim content). The performance should be the same for somebody with 2000 addons installed with 25 of them from the marketplace and somebody with 30 addons with 25 from the market place. Even if it is designed so badly that it checks every addon why does it never end? That is not a performance problem. If it was the content manager would complete successfully even if after an inordinately long time. It is broken.
With regard to my problem with the infinite loading back to the main menu I would question what the sim is doing. It loaded successfully to the menu when the program was started. Going back to the menu from a flight should just mean clearing up and going back to an already stable menu state. Why does it find a problem now but not when loading the flight or loading the sim in the first place? What is the sim trying to do that causes the problem?
4 Likes
I fully agree with your points.
1 Like
I have 1141 elements in the community folder and the content manager wont stop loading.
How can I debug which addon is causing this issue?
It’s not any particular one, just a total limit. Try removing 50 or 100 and see how it goes.
I removed all flightsim.to scenery addons (airport addons kept) and reduced the number of addons to 1031. Content manager is working now. So no airport is causing that.
Either it’s because the number is less now or any addon is not yet ready for SU12. But I guess nobody will be able to tell me that.
^^^ correct 
1 Like
As already been discussed here, the problem is not the number of add-ons but the contents of those add-ons. I’m running 1347 add-ons at the moment without any issues. It did take lots of time to filter those who make the content manager to hang…
My suggestion to all is to start using MSFS Addons Linker and using subfolders for each category. Lots of work but at the end you’ll be able to nail down those corrupt add-ons.
There is an issue here unrelated to an addon not being compatible.
I have tested some addons independently, yet when they’re added to the community folder with many other confirmed addons the sim hangs at “Checking For Updates”.
If I remove a few addons the sim will again load.
1 Like
Exactly this. There are two issues being confused and mixed together here @ageva
I’ve also tested using Linker with half and half deduction and the problem surfaces when a total number is reached. Separately the same mods are fine. It’s not a specific number either. Depends on the system. A better PC could potentially handle more but there will be a limit where the software, for whatever reason, just can’t handle it being such a large list of content.
1 Like
So are we saying it is a combination of an out dated scenery and the total number of addons installed?
Or - is it just the total amount of addons installed (per system)
Or - is it just down to a particular addon
1 Like
I was able to solve my “checking for updates” issue reducing the overall number of addons (onestore + community) by 75. I deleted via content manager a lot of bush trips and discovery flights. This way all my sceneries are now loading without issues. Before that, the same sceneries made the sim hang at checking for updates. So it does not seem to be related to specific scenery/ies in my case but on the overall number of addons active at same time.
Many thanks for the useful thread!
3 Likes
I am certain this issue isn’t always caused by outdated addons, and in my experience when an addon is outdated the result will be a CTD, not a hang at this screen.
As others have now mentioned it seems to instead be an issue with the sim not being able to handle X number of addons with some dependency being tied to your individual system performance versus a specific sim limitation.
There’s a tipping point for most users where your system will hang at “Checking For Updates” and the remedy is to remove a certain number of addons, not specific addons which rules out an incompatibility issue.
It’s not the end of the world as all of us can usually find a handful of addons we have installed that we really don’t need.
I hope it is something that Asobo can address, I try and support most other devs and I buy a ton of aircraft and scenery - but running into this issue is making me have to reconsider how loosely I do this since I’m running up against this limit and can’t justify throwing money at addons I can’t use.
Yes I know of addons linker, but the way I fly is not consistent across a session and I don’t want to have to restart just to fly in a different region, etc.
4 Likes
not only the community folder makes problems, i have the same problem with the official OneStore Folder, after SU12 its only possible to load 1025 Items, if i have more Items in this Folder i stuck in the searching for update Screen, never have this issue before SU12.
3 Likes
Official Steam folder the same problem.
1 Like
as a work around -
As soon as the sim starts to “check for updates” - disconnect your pc from the internet (use the disable Ethernet adapter) or just unplug it. Wait about 5 seconds and reconnect. The sim will immediately load with ALL addons working!
If the sim hangs again when leaving a flight - repeat the process. This is a network bug - the sim is trying to call or listen to a something before loading.
Try it and let me know how you get on. Shout out to @OMGEDSON for figuring out this one!
2 Likes
Do you have to do this on every load? Very strange this issue is.