It freezes for about 5 seconds and yes, that’s another reason why if you don’t need GSX in a session, is best to Unlink it, not just prevent the couatl engine from starting in the exe.xml.
This because, the lag on the main menu, which happened only after a certain MSFS 2024 update, it’s not caused by GSX doing anything. It’s caused by the simulator loading more things in the background, so it starts faster than before but, obviously, it must wait for all background tasks it started on the first start to complete, so it blocks you from using the menu until they are all completed, otherwise you might be able to start a flight with packages still not completed loading.
So, the “lag” on start is mostly subjective, even if it’s preventing you from using the menu for 5 seconds, it has arrived at the main menu earlier than before, so the overall startup time hasn’t changed compared to before the MSFS update which introduced this change in the loading.
So, the real issue here is, why it’s taking 30 second for you, when it normally is about 5 ? Some possible reasons:
- The MSFS Content folder is installed on a slower drive (USB) instead of a fast NVME
- The MSFS Content folder is not added to the antivirus Exclusions. This would slow down every disk operation performed on it.
In addition to that, the normal 5 seconds lag that having GSX enabled adds to the main menu, which is due to the large amount of operator variations, can be further reduced by using the Livery Manager, which allows you to create a subset of operators for the areas you are flying the most.