I’ve seen several members of this community saying they have their rolling cache turned off.
Do NOT turn off the rolling cache. If anything it will slow down the game.
This advice was given with the crashing patch 2 versions ago (v1.8) to fix the numerous CTD people were experiencing at the time and even then it was a bad advice, as all what was needed to fix these random crashes was to clear the rolling cache ONCE.
Why is turning off the rolling cache bad ?
Because now all the data have to be streamed from the Microsoft servers all the time in real time instead of being read from your SSD. This slows down your game, as your connexion will most likely never be as fast as your SSD drive (or even a good hard drive), and it puts unnecessary strain on the Microsoft servers if many people do that. In the end, overloading their servers impacts everyone.
So please do not turn off your rolling cache.
As for the size of the rolling cache, Asobo recommends about 32 Gb (I tend to think it’s a bit much, I’d recommend 8-16Gb myself).
In my case, turning cache off I got rid of the crazy stutters and freezes, so it was very valid advice. But I haven’t tried it on in few updates so I have no data how it works now.
Edit: Since I haven’t put in on since, no idea if clearing it once would’ve done it.
Having it active puts stress on your hard drive as well, as you have to read the stored data and save new one when you change the area. The cache is intended to avoid overcosts to user due to traffic bandwidth. It does not improve performance unless you have a very very slow connection. Also I have seen that is worse for performance to use it rather than to turn it off (in my case at least).
MS decided that this game was going to work via data download. It´s their responsibility to provide servers able to handle the data flow. So far this is working very well. I just found an issue once, and was cause I had manually selected one server to stay connected to. Leaving it in auto always selects for you the lowest latency connection available.
I’ve not had Rolling Cache enable since playing with it for about 2 days after launch. It adds nothing for me, since I don’t tend to fly around the same area, and it increases loading times.
I recently turned off the rolling (and manual) cache. Was much more stable fps (not so much up and down) and got rid of a huge amount of bad looking buildings and terrain to the point where it now looks pretty good in photogrammetry places. Haven’t had any of the CTD’s lately either now that I think about it (might be coincidence). Will try with it on again after this update #5 and see what happens.
So my experience is certainly contradictory to what’s being said
The rolling cache is basically useless if you fly randomly from A to B and never return to that location.
I’ve let mine to be at 8GB as the default is and don’t fiddle around. Form what I’ve read in several threads, people saying changing it magically solved their issue, I’d rather consider this a placebo effect
LOL your hard drive is fine. And yes indeed the cache is designed to avoid unnecessary traffic bandwidth. Your connection is never going to be as fast as your hard drive (there is an order of magnitude between the two if not more), so yes it CAN slow down the game. Plus it’s bad for the planet, as you consume more electricity overall between the Microsoft servers, the network hardware of your service provider, etc.
Basically, it’s a waste of bandidth and energy. Perhaps it’s not much but if you multiply this waste by tens of thousands of people, it’s megawatts that are being wasted.
Many people think the sim runs better after changing one switch. But that’s not scientific. There are hundreds of reasons why it could happen:
the flight path has changed, so the areas visited are different
the traffic has changed
the meteo has changed: both winds and clouds affect the performance greatly
These are all factors that affect the overall performance just as much if not more as changing the visual options. So unless you do the exact same flight path, turn off all traffic and play in the same exact meteo conditions, you cannot really conclude.
Not really. There have been people who for some reason got low quality models in their cache, and since it was cached it was never reloaded, so they kept the low quality scenery.
Also issues with updates. If you have the bandwidth, it’s the easier choice to run without it.
Also, for my personal use case; I don’t often fly in the same area. Why would I want a couple of GB of data on my SSD that I will never access again, and gets automatically overwritten by new data on every flight I do?
also you’re wrong; I ran with a 100GB rolling cache file for a few days on launch, and my load times were significantly improved after getting rid of it.
100 GB is way too much. You need something like 20Gb. If you don’t fly often in the same area, you can even lower that to 8-12 Gb, sometimes you fly a couple of times at the same place so it makes sense to still have it.
, but yes you are right.