As many of us have experienced, the size and condition of the Rolling Cache is very influential to the performance we get out of MSFS 2024. Notably when it’s full.
The sim is supposed to take care of it automatically, however it’s simply not handling things properly.
That leads many simmers to manually erase the data on the RC, which requires:
-on PC: leaving the sim and manually deleting the RollingCache.ccc file on Windows;
-on Xbox: deleting the Reserved Space file, which also wipes other settings and My Library;
I propose that an option to clean up the Rolling Cache is added to the Settings, which would mean simmers could perform this bit of “maintenance” inside the sim, and no doubt eliminate a lot of frustration for simmers!
The cache is supposed to be full…otherwise it is just a waste of space. Since upgrading to 2024, I have never cleared or deleted the cache and have not had a problem. There was a long / detailed post that I thought was very good on the topic that suggested some tweaks Asobo could do to improve the cache logic but stopped short of recommending user maintenance. It was a long and detailed read but will see if I can find it again.
Your logic is sound. But in practice leaving the sim and wiping the RC can be quite helpful with performance. Which is why folks do it even with all the faff (and needing to set up the sim all over again on Xbox,l
We had the option to clear the RC in FS2020. I would like to see it added to 2024 as it could get corrupted.
In the last dev stream they mentioned the RC was not properly clearing old data to make room for new data and that a fix would be coming with SU2. If the fix is implemented, it should no longer be necessary to manually clear it, or at least not as often.
I’ve never cleared my Rolling Cache (well, maybe once) and never felt the need to. Generally speaking, if one is experiencing issues, it’s something else causing it. The thread @mjchernis linked to explained that the cache is being properly overwritten (although not in the optimal manner.)
Asobo should help folks out a bit more with this. Reading the posts in that other thread one person is clearing the cache EVERY time they start FS. I could be wrong but doubt this is advised practice.
In the same way they are explicit about clearing out the community folder during FS updates, they should provide more guidance about when / if users should clear the rollingcache, scenery indexes, and content.xml.
I just discovered that on Xbox you no longer have to delete the cache from the Manage Game menu in the dashboard to reload it. You can decrease the cache size in the Online settings menu in the sim. It will warn you that your new cache size is too small, but if you continue it will flush and reload with the new size.
I went from 128 GB to 64 GB and it did this, but I suspect as long as you decrease it by even 1 GB it will probably still do it. This was in the SU2 beta.
Added option to reduce rolling cache size inside the game, at the cost of clearing current cache.
So, whilst not a specific option under Rolling Cache Settings, nor a perfect solution for your wish, one can now clear the cache by reducing the cache size. I have not tried this, but I suspect that it may also require restarting the sim to take effect. One could then increase the cache size again if one wanted to.
Manually reducing the Rolling Cache size did not restore any drive space on the PC. It does take several minutes and displays a percentage complete during the process which prevents any use of the menu. The menu does not prompt the user to restart MSFS for the changes to take effect.
