When I started using MSFS in August last year I took note of my loading times. Recently I noticed those post about increased loading times when starting MSFS either due to updates or due to large community folder.
My own experience does not confirm this. I would even state that the loading times are less than back in August 2020.
Today I measured my current loading times again. I did several measurement runs for comparison
- Sim loading times directly after a PC boot
- Sim loading times after a closed session (repeatedly)
I also did some measurements of flight loading times (from flight planner to cold and dark), again
- Flight loading times directly after sim startup
- Flight loading times after a closed flight (repeatedly)
I also measured the all those same times
- with an empty community folder
- with community folder content approx. 18 GB
My community folder is a mix of
- aircrafts (1.2 GB)
- airports (7.7 GB)
- sceneries (3. 1 GB including some libraries)
- 20 DEM meshes (5.9 GB)
- plus some other stuff
My sim content (SPACE USED: in content manager) 142 GB.
All times measured are accurate to plus/minus 1 or 2 seconds. Measured using a stopwatch.
With an empty community folder (CF) my sim loading times are
- 1st session after a fresh PC boot: 3 minutes 20 seconds (3:20)
- all following sessions loaded after 2:42
With the full CF content my sim loading times are
- 1st session after a fresh PC boot took 3 minutes 22 seconds (3:22)
- all following sessions loaded after 2:49
I did not believe those result myself and repeated the measurements. But I got the same times again .
During the measurement sessions I also measured the flight loading times. All flights were the same scenario with a Cessna 172 classic departing from LSZB cold and dark.
With an empty community folder (CF) my flight loading times are
- 1st flight after sim startup was 2:03
- all following repeated flights were 1:52
With the full CF content my sim loading times are
- 1st flight after sim startup was 2:15
- all following repeated flights were 1:51
My theory is
- On the first session after a PC boot, or mainly after some changes to the community folder there is some additional loading time to get an inventory of the stuff installed. This may also occure after an sim or world update as new stuff is installed. On repeated session no such inventory is made.
- On the first flight after sim startup all additional required stuff (scenery, mesh etc.) is loaded. On repeated flights only the aircraft needs to be reloaded as much of the required scenery is in the rolling cache.
After all those activities I grabbed those measurements from August (out of a pile of some notes taken during the last 10 monnth.)
To my surprise the times measured in August were approximately the same as today. A couple of seconds less. But still in the same range.
Taking into account the 4 world updates (Japan, USA, UK and France+) as well as the stuff bought through marketplace (Premium upgrade, free content, 5 aircrafts, 1 airport and VFR Academy). Asobo must have done a good job to keep the loading times almost the same over the time.
I must note that I have a decent internet connection (100 MBit/s) and my PC is still the same hardware as back in August. I just added some additional peripherals (Trim Wheel and MCP) and software like MobiFlight, AxisAndOohs, Air Manager, FSUIPC7 and Little NavMap.
I still wonder why some people have such extended loading times as they report in their posts.
What are your loading times?