Rolling cache -- current opinion?

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What’s the current opinion on the ideal size for rolling cache? As big as possible? Anyone done any informal testing?

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I’ve tried small caches, large caches and no caches. I really cannot discern any appreciable difference as to whether I have it on or off.

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i just deleted a 500GB one and i am never trying again.I see no difference whatsoever,no matter the size.
I have 100mb connection and all seems to be fine with also unlimited bandwidth.
I was flying in a same spot,and no matter what i did,GFX Option changes,cache changes etc etc,the micro stutter was there always in the same spot,above the airports runway and next to some photogrammetry buildings.
So…it is useless

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I’ve gone back and forth on sizing but since update 5 I have seen no difference so I have none.

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I’ve deleted my cache as it had been causing problems with entire missing textures on airports that I might have visited months ago (and should have rolled out of my cache by the time of the subsequent visit). Now running with no cache at all.

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Deleted mine a while back, not had any real issues since.

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I stopped using a rolling cache as I did not want to cane my nvme drive and also because I switch fairly regularly between ms and google servers. It was also a nuisance to me having to delete it every time msfs received an update.

Previously, I tried caches of varying sizes but found a smallish cache of around 8 to 10 GB worked best for me. Others mileages may vary.

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This is a million dollar question that even Asobo doesn’t seem to have an answer for. I don’t think you’ll get an accurate response from anyone since none of us really know the effect rolling cache has or doesn’t have.

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9

Do you notice any significant performance loss not enabling rolling cache?

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That is a touchy subject here.
I run with mine off.
Here is a link to a large thread with a lot of discussion in it.

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I deleted / switched off rolling cache on xbox x as the scenery ln the LAX area especially was stuttering more and more severely to the point it was becoming completely unuseable .It completely cured it immediately and all is now super smooth and the problem has never returned,worked superbly for me.

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Not really. I’ve been flying in a lot of different regions as of late, jumping between one journey series to another, or just wandering. I can honestly say the biggest performance hit by far is how much I want to crank Offline AI so I have departing traffic but not On-Topic. :sunglasses:

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So FWIW I’ve been running a 16.9 GB rolling cache on a 17 GB RAM drive (64 GB total installed) and as far as I can tell I’m doing relatively well as far as performance and CTD’s go. Haven’t done a ton of experimenting since I’m pretty squarely in “don’t fix what isn’t broken” land.

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Would the data stored in the rolling cache be useful if one has a several day internet outage and has to play offline ? ha, no one has outages lasting that long these days anyway… It has to have some usefulness ? or does it…

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15

My two cents on this.

Since the beginning I’ve always used a 10GB rolling cache and I hardly ever experience CTD’s. To my best of understanding it mostly just stores terrain mesh data and where to load trees etc. You really don’t need a very large memory reserve for that and I once read the recommendation of about 10GB.

I’m flying a lot using the Pilot’s Life addon and thus fly a lot in and out of the same airports as you often have a home hub for it. It seems to work good. I do however regularly clear/renew the cache and made it a routine whenever updating the FWB development version as I twiced notice how it can take very long on loading the flight after a big update (I suppose new WASM coding or something?) and twice I had an inflight CTD right after that. So nowadays I update, load her up in the sim, go back to the main menu, renew the cache and find myself happy flying.

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16

I have 100GB Rolling Cache enabled. From my findings to make best use of it is:

  1. It is best to clear the cache after major Sim or World updates as I had issues, mainly on runways, of things not being aligned correctly when there is an update.

  2. Once I flew in a certain area I find that I have less stutters in it when flying fast planes (jets) once things are cached.

  3. I have a fast internet connection but it is always faster to load items from your (SSD) drive than downloading, process, load in into game.

  4. Unfortunately the only broadband here is Comcast and they have universal Data limits (regardless of plan). So I find using the cache does help with reducing data usage unnecessarily.

  5. For those on solid state drives, it also helps from unnecessary write operations on the drive (each drive has a set limit to do write operations).

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I had it set to 50gb.When I had it on Burbank area was a stutter fest. Off completely eliminated the stutters.

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18

Currently on the latest Beta and I have turned off my cache. Flights have been completely smooth so far. Previous to the Beta I was using a 8GB cache and only occasionally had stutters around very large, congested cities (Ex NY).

I’m not convinced that the cache is really working as intended. Many times I would revisit the same place on different flights, only to see the details reload. So, what is the cache storing?

I also think that the stuttering occurs with cache enabled while the game tries to save cache data at the same time it’s trying to render a densely populated area at the same time. The CPU/RAM and HDD just can’t compute quick enough.

I believe they need to limit how much data is saved at one time, instead with multiple passes more data could be saved to build upon previous flybys.
But I really don’t think any of that is working as intended and is creating issues.

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19

I was getting occasional CTDS, especially on long flights, when I was using a rolling cache. I recently turned it off and have not had a CTD since. Better still, flight load times and scenery smoothness seem the same to me and are better if anything, even on only a 50Mbps internet connection, so I’m not so sure the rolling cache is necessary at all.

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We really do not know what is stored in the cache. We can only speculate. I don’t think graphic files are stored in the cache. If certain graphic files are needed for rendering, there would be less overhead to read the file on the disk instead of reading it from the cache. It is faster for Windows to read a 2k graphics file from a disk compared to reading a 32 GB or greater cache file from a disk and locating the graphics file in the cache and then reading it. And if graphics files are downloaded from the servers, MSFS would have to stuff the file into the cache without doing multiple writes.

MSFS has to have a process to efficiently write, locate, and read graphics info to and from the cache, a process that is faster than just using Windows files. And a repository of information like the rolling cache would be subject to data fragmentation as info is added and removed.

There definitely is overhead using a rolling cache but it should be faster than alternatives…

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