How to use fast start

I’m working to program my old GoFlight controllers with the Polypot software. A lot of trial and error often creates a need to restart the sim so I spend a lot of time watching the sim restart. How can I speed up starting the sim without causing other problems.

For MS Store version, installed in the default location:
C:\Windows\System32\cmd.exe /C start shell:AppsFolder\Microsoft.FlightSimulator_8wekyb3d8bbwe!App -FastLaunch

The above will bypass the preroll videos.

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I use this but today after I saw your comment, I decided to test how much time -FastLaunch was saving. It’s not much. It does prevent the startup videos but it only saved 5 seconds, which could be in the margin of error considering the sim checks things over the internet.

NOTE: I use the steam version of the sim.

Under a normal launch it took me 124 seconds. Using -FastLaunch took 119 seconds. So although it might have saved more time in the past, with the lastest MSFS release it’s virtually nothing.

I use @Hester40MT method.
It does speed things up, but only insofar as stopping the banner videos. I’ll take any improvement in load times I can get.

Other than that, there’s not much you can do.

I do start MSFS with a batch file. It runs the FastStart commend, waits 10 seconds for the .exe to load, then sets the app’s priority to ‘High’ (from the default ‘Normal.’)

Maybe I’ll run a test to see difference in Normal and High. Personally, I don’t think it will, since it’s probably more dependent on disk speed and RAM speed.

Here’s the batch file I made in Notepad++, in case you want to try it.
I put the pause at the end because I want it to prompt me to press a key to continue. If you remove ‘Pause’ the command window will close once it’s finished.

ECHO

cmd /C start shell:AppsFolder\Microsoft.FlightSimulator_8wekyb3d8bbwe!App -FastLaunch

Timeout /t 10

wmic process where name=“FlightSimulator.exe” CALL setpriority “High Priority”

PAUSE

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Hi… a note … its also not a recommendation to increase the process prio, because it can have negative side-effects. With a Steam-Install, the folders are also different.

@Mayhem6633 yes, the only thing this parameter do is to skip the Ads-videos ( I’am happy about such a parameter, not only because of the ‘5sec’ ). The startup time depends also on the installed amount of mods , and here some users use the AddOn-Linker to load only the necessary stuff. Other ways to speed up , I don’t know… Startup-Time in my case is ~70-80sec ( Deluxe Edt.) , but beside of some market-place airplane/helis I have currently only one mod in community folder installed.

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Remove any unnecessary addons from community folder, only way to speed things up.

I’ve heard some well-respected simmers say not to, and others say it’s a good idea.
To me it makes sense to give MSFS a higher priority, but I admit I’m not an expert on this subject.

I consider it a test. If I see better performance, I’ll continue setting priority to ‘High.’ If I have problems, I’ll stop doing it… So far it looks like I’m getting better performance. Thankfully, I’ve never had any stability issues, and still don’t. YMMV…

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Thanks for the replies. For now, I think I’ll leave things as they are and just put up with it.

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you can use the goflight config software with msfs.
all panels except efis work with that.
i found pollypot awkward to program.
youjust have to fool goflight config into thinking its connected to fsx. details in other forum posts. works fine if you only need the goflight default options for each module.
pollypot is useful if you want to program bespoke events.

I have tried this and not happy with it and now my original batch file as stopped working, how do I remove this fast boot?