This is not a bug but more a question. I am using nvme hard drive for the sim. My community folder is large (~140 GB) but I beleive it is not unusual here. Since SU6 the loading time until I get to the home screen is around 7 minutes. When I moved to nvme the time shortened from 4 minutes to 2. Gradually along with the community folder size increase, the time got longer. However there was a big jump after SU6. I wonder what are the times other people get here.
Important note! Even with an empty community folder the loading time is more than 6 minutes. So the 140GB folder makes only 40-50 seconds difference.
No matter the size of the commynity,use ALWAYS the addon linker to only choose the ones you need for a specific flight.
Even liveries have a cost on loading times
The issue is likely a bit different than what you believe. I learned it the hard way.
The size of the addons in your community folder has only a limited effect on your initial loading time, even more so with a fast SSD.
What really grinds initial loading to a halt is the number of files. An extremely high number of small files can bog down the loading of the sim massively.
This is especially true of you’re using google-sourced photogrammetry from modders. Those are most of the time extremely unoptimized and small-sized city can have around 20,000 small files, which your SSD has to chew through, and an SSD isn’t that much faster at chewing through small files than an HDD.
That’s why I stopped using that kind of photogrammetry. It’s usually not worth spending 20 minutes waiting for the sim to load.
Indeed I’ve noticed the community size has a very limited effect. However I wonder what changed lately. Is it a hardware or software issue in my desktop or a change in MSFS.
I always test with an empty community folder. I’m on a normal SSD.
My best load times were a few updates ago, can’t remember exactly but it was around SU4 or SU5 and start to main menu was about 1:50. Since then it has been getting steadily worse with a fairly large jump after SU6. It now sits at just under 3 minutes.
I’m too lazy to fire up my system to get the Community folder size. That said I’ve got about 6 mods in it. PMDG DC-6, FBW A320, WT CJ4, Aerosoft CRJ, WT G3000, maybe a couple others. I’ve got MSFS installed on a Samsung 980 Pro nvme. Load time from shortcut click to menu is about 2 min 45 seconds.
Loading Time from Click on Icon to MSFS Menu 3 minutesd 40 seconds.
My System:
Asus ROG Strix Z490-H
Intel I5-10600K
Corsair 64GB
MSI GTX 1060 - 6GB (couldn’t afford a new one yet)
2x Samsung SSD 970 EVO Plus 1TB (Windows and MSFS main files on one drive, comunity and official on the other)
SATA SSD, 2’45" from clicking the icon to main menu. This is with an empty community folder. I also deleted a few liveries, planes and scenery I would never use.
Standard version of MSFS.
Some timings posted here look outrageous, waiting 7 minutes to load to the menu? I would put a foot through the screen
The loading time has bugged me for a while now. I run, what I consider a fast system, i9900k @5Ghz, RTX3090, 64Gb 3600 ram and 3 x 1Tb Samsung 970 EVO Plus drives
With a community folder size of 500Mb it takes 6-7 minutes from start to main menu and then another minute or so to load into an airport.
Seeing other loading times of 2-3 minutes on systems which clearly have lower performance specs is quite frustrating to say the least!
When I finally get to fly I’m flying in 4k ultra and frame locked to 30fps and visually it’s close to perfect, ignoring all the SU7 errors that were released
For reference my system start up time is around 10 seconds to the password login, and loading programs like Photoshop or 3DS Max are also around 10 seconds
I spent some time updating the bios etc so they are all bang up to date and the m.2 drives are on the motherboard. I’ve speed tested the drives and they are up around 3.3Gb/s
I find it odd that programmes like Photoshop/3DS load very quickly and generally the system feels very responsive but throw the sim at it and the loading times are dire
