How do I make MSFS 2020 Load faster? It take about 4 minutes to load from start, seems like forever

Hi there, What can I delete that would make MSFS 2020 load faster? How would I go about it? Also what resources should I disable? I have an HP Envy 15 -ep0098nr Laptop with 16GB Ram RTX 2060 i7 @2.60GHZ- 5GHZ Samsung 970 EVO Plus 512GB SSD. Any help is greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance. Oh It take about 4 minutes to load from clicking on the MSFS 2020 to the Welcome Screen.

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Remove all the addons from your Community Folder. Delete (via ContentManager) any addons from the Marketplace that you don’t use.

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To @mdapol point, he’s correct – or just get used to it, as I have. :slight_smile:

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My advice is…don’t believe the salesman when he tells you about “gaming laptops”. There’s no such thing.

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I gotta second that…“gaming laptops” will thermal throttle no matter what fancy cooling fan tray monstrosity they sit on.

If you’re not already using it, try launching MSFS with the -FastLaunch flag to skip the loading screens. That will shave off a few seconds at load time.

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You mean, the guy telling me that getting a MacBook Air is the best gaming laptop was lying?

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Where do I put the -FastLaunch, Do I insert it in the shortcut? I have the MS Store Version…

flight simming is not laptop friendly - doesn’t matter what laptop you have. You can get by - but you can do far better…night and day better with a desktop

Technically, yes. But since you have the store version, the app will be packaged and you cannot directly provide flags to the executable in the shortcut target.

Create a new shortcut (on the desktop, lets say) by right-click > new > shortcut. In the location use this as the target:
cmd.exe /C start shell:AppsFolder\Microsoft.FlightSimulator_8wekyb3d8bbwe!App -FastLaunch

Hit next, give it a name (MSFS) and save.

This will create a shortcut to the windows command prompt that runs a command to launch the MSFS app along with the fastlaunch flag.

Hope that helps.

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The Epyx Fastload cartridge cut down the load time on FS2 for the C64 from 8minutes to 4 minutes. Maybe I’ll plug that in on my PC….

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That seems odd. How many GB of add-ons do you have. I have 75GB worth of add-ons and my game loads up in 1 minute. Also on an M.2 SSD.

Maybe you have a specific addon that’s messing with your game

-Fastlaunch on average for me shaved only 30 seconds off. My installation runs about 3:00-3:15 seconds with about 13GB of Community Mods.

Not always true. I use a MSI GS75, which at 19mm high, is very thin, a trait that normally hinders thermal performance significantly.

However, I had my laptop spec’d with liquid metal thermal paste on the CPU/GPU, and high quality, after market thermal pads on other components. Combined with a 100mV under volt, I can run it all day long at 100% (including turbo boost on all cores) with no throttling, and my temps peak at about 80°C. Also, I don’t use a cooling tray of any kind.

It’s not that laptops can’t handle the heat produced, rather that most off the shelf laptops are very poorly optimised when it comes to managing temps.

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My P3D takes 17 minutes :rofl::rofl::rofl:

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It takes me about 7 minutes from clicking play on Steam to getting in the air. The CPU is the bottleneck, mine sits at 2.2 ghz. From the world map to the runway takes less than a minute, but it takes over 4 minutes to get to the welcome screen.

Timing it (fastlaunch)
42 seconds before anything happens (before any window appears)
30 seconds checking for updates
4 minutes and 5 seconds total to the welcome screen

Nothing in the community folder, nvme drive, 2.2 ghz cpu, 32GB ram 2667mhz

8.8GB ram in use for the welcome screen!

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We are on 2021, no 2010… there are a lot of gaming laptops, you must update yourself and get rid of old prejudices.

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Have you tried MSFS on a 2021 reasonably powerful laptop?. I use MSFS on a new laptop and on a desktop, similar specs, and there is nothing like “night and day” difference. MSFS is absolutely laptop fiendly on a contemporary and good specs machine.

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Not true. There are a lot of laptops with discrete graphics cards marketed as “gaming laptops” but they are not anything of the sort, they just have a 3D capable graphics card and are marketed by unscrupulous sales people as “gaming” to unsuspecting 15 year olds with rich parents. These are what most people refer to when they say “gaming laptops”. Yes there are also a few genuine “gaming laptops” with high end components and advanced cooling and a big price tag but they are rare and not what most people usually mean by a “gaming laptop”.

back on topic …

To minimise load times, use addon linker to only enable the mods and addons you actually need for your next flight session (click on the flag to get an English version of the page):

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sorry for OT, but do you have a link for what you put as thermal paste & pads?

tried putting Artic Silver thermal paste on my MSI GP75 but it didnt really make any difference and still sits in the high 90s Celcius if I dont underclock it