I used to see an improvement in flight loading times with the rolling cache on for an airport I had visited recently. However I did a quick check now and it took the same 34 seconds to load the flight with the cache on and then again with it off. So I think the rolling cache may not be working as intended.
Used to have tiny Data - 4-8 MBPS and Rolling Cache helped - Used to try all sizes. Not much difference between 4 Gig and 100 Gig.
Since having fairly decent Broadband speed now (100 MBPS) - doesn’tt really make any difference on my medium spec machine.
Turned it off altogether months ago. Have never looked back.
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Following this with interest as I have a 5 year old i7 xeon etc. So I’ve experimented.
With cache on (size varies), I got scenery pop-in and slight stutter with VR. With it off, it’s noticeably smoother. I only use VR by the way, and only GA.
I have a NVME WD black SSD (external on USB 3.1) and a 150MB fibre pipeline in.
And no CTDs.
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Doesn’t turning it off then rely a lot more on streaming from the internet, guess its ok if your on an unlimited plan?
It does yes, and I’m on an unlimited plan. So I’m one of the lucky ones, I guess.
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I’m using 6GB Rolling Cache on a separate partition of an SSD, seems to have helped since my connection to MS servers rarely exceeds 10-15Mbps, even with 200Mb internet. To be honest, I don’t even know if Rolling Cache only affects photogrammetry, or all map types. In cities where I fly frequently, I download via Manual Cache, which completely changes the experience for the better.
Deleted & disabled mine, I noticed no difference so will not bother with it anymore.
I’m on unlimited internet also so MSFS data coming down the pipe during a session is not a factor.
Lots of contradictory info here (especially concerning CTD) – a general sense that maybe rolling cache has minimal impact, but nobody seems to have really tried to confirm it.
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I guess that is the point, that we have no idea what it’s used for.
Ram is the quickest way to access storage but that is always limited, especially on Xbox. Grabbing data from an SSD drive should be quicker than most internet speeds as you typically get 200-500 MB/s read/write speeds, internet speeds can be all over the map even if you have a 1GB connection as I do it can be low depending on server and traffic.
So where is the bottle neck? The internet would be for most users. So what exactly is the cache holding? That is an answer I think we all need.
Certainly live traffic, weather would need to be downloaded but I would think loading certain graphics for familiar areas would be held in you HDD. Especially Airports or larger cities that have higher graphic requirements.
But at this point it’s all,just conjecture until MS/Asobo tell us what it actually does. 
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Have the cache turned of for months and don’t see any change to better or worse.
When I fly airliners I rarely fly the same route twice. So it doesn’t make much sense
That’s a good point. Do you ever have any stuttering issues?
But if
If the cache stored airports , you would occasionally fly into those airports again and that data would be saved and not needing to download data again, you would only need live traffic and weather. There can be a lot going on at airports between AI, live traffic, weather, ATC, vehicles and workers, plane models, add ons… not to mention the graphics needed on approach in some areas.
I have been experimenting with turning off live traffic and weather and find that all flights are smooth. I want to test more but It seems like the stuttering is caused with live traffic and weather either one or a combination. At least for myself but I need to test in more areas outside of cities.
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No, i don’t have stutters. Except when Pushback starts, the game freezes for about 1 sek, that’s all.
Also if you buy addons and have cache turnend on, it can be a problem. Because in the cache is still the old scenery.
I haven’t used a rolling cache for months - can’t see any difference in sim performance. I am on 500mbit unlimited connection, but it was also fine on my previous 100mbit connection.
The biggest difference is I no longer have to remember to kill and remake the rolling cache after every update.
The other difference may be that I’m not continuously writing gigabytes to SSD unnecessarily, so it may lengthen the life of my disks - this suggestion is completely untested - it could still be getting written somewhere to a temp disk cache. I’m just hoping that with 64GB ram, it’s all held there, and not on disk.
After reading your thoughts and suggestions I for the first time flew without any roling cache present and I can confirm it made absolutely no difference. I suppose it even gave a few less stutters around the KSLC area I’m frequently visiting lately. Might work for others better too just leaving it off. I’m convinced. 
This made me laugh. Thank you 
I think the game constantly reading and writing to the cache causes a bottleneck in our SSD’s. I’ve also disabled HDR and decreased all traffic by half.
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I would want to see some data to back that up, but that got me to thinking - on my new system I’ll have a m.2 SSD (4TB) for my main drive, and then an older 2.5" SSD (lol also 4TB) as my backup. I’m wondering if I could kick the cache(s) to that 2nd drive? 
I have given it 20 GB space. However, in my experience, it still renders afresh everything on already visited areas. I don’t know what’s hogging that 20 GB on my disk at the moment.
If your SSD is slower than your internet connection then
- you either have a blazingly fast internet connection or…
- … a terrible SSD (buy a new one!)
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I think there is some general misconception here about what a „cache“ does (and doesn‘t): some folks here seem to expect that the rolling cache is MSFS is to improve performance (some even claim that it lowers performance).
A cache however does not improve performance in general, at least not in the context of flight simulators respectively the most important performance measure: „frames per seconds“.
The rolling cache merely saves you „a roundtrip to the internet“ (IF the data is already in the cache). So while the scenery builds up faster (as „all data is already on your disk respectively read much much faster from an SSD than from the internet) that does not necessarily improve FPS. It should however reduce „pop-in effects“, as opposed to an internet connection where „data (only) becomes visible as it becomes downloaded“.
But yes, theoretically managing a cache may (slightly) increase CPU usage, and the additional cache reads may interfere with other reads from the SSD (such as reading add-on data, e.g. for some airport). But SSD speeds should cope with that no problem.
Also, the amount of data which is „all available at once“ (from the cache) may „overhelm“ (simply put) the 3D renderer which then has to „parse and process“ all that data „in one go“.
But a cache does not improve FPS.
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