What does manual cache actually do?

There’s no explanation that I can find of what actually happens or how to use it.

There are three levels of detail… low, medium, high. If you cache an airport at low quality, does that mean msfs won’t download the high quality imagery when I get close and I will be stuck at low quality, or does low quality mean long range scenery, and high quality means nearby and highest quality available? Does high quality mean higher than what I would get if I were flying around with normally downloaded scenery? Does the low quality cache get replaced by downloaded high-quality imagery when I fly close?

Does anyone know how it works? I would like to cache the area that I fly often to save on data (in case the rolling cache is too small), but not if it decreases the imagery quality…

“MSFS has implemented a useful manual scenery caching capability that enables users to predownload custom scenery regions to their hard drives. Once these cached areas are stored locally, scenery data will no longer be streamed when flying over these regions. This provides a noticeable performance improvement since MSFS no longer needs to share CPU/GPU resources to stream data while flying over your custom regions. This capability is very flexible and offers nearly infinite solutions for every user.”…

ETC, Etc.

Very good guide!

*One note - seems you can increase the size of the Manual Cache after its created, but supposedly can not decrease the size.

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If you have a slow Internet connection, you can record any area of your choice in a cache on your HDD.

My understanding is that manual cache is not going to get deleted automatically when limit is reached. It also allows players with limited internet connection to pre-download certain areas before flying. It also works for flying offline with better quality

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Hey @WTFAWASTE1234 - That’s news to me… never tested that. I’ll check it out, then add a short blurb to the guide. Thanks!

How many GB would take, for example London and around 20 km ???

Once these cached areas are stored locally, scenery data will no longer be streamed when flying over these regions.

According to that, it seems that if I cache an area in low quality, it will remain low quality even if higher quality data is available. That is counter-productive to what I need. So if I want to cache, I should do it all in high quality. Thanks!

And does it recheck at some point to see if Bing maps has been updated?

It tells you before you download, when you make selection

P.S. No, it doesn’t…

Thank you, I’ll try it

It would take you 2 to 3 hours because the interface requires you zoom in to select higher detail tiles, which is a pain when having to manually select rectangles, then pan the map a few, then select rectangle, then pan the map etc…

to Asobo: please let us paint rectangles for specific detail level at any zoom level, don’t tie zoom level and detail level together when selecting rectangles. Let us select a rectangle at any zoom level and then decide which detail level we want.

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I tried but I find it to complicated
Not sure if I did it right, but I couldn’t see the GB size, for the selected location
And one more thing : i wasn’t able to select HIGH or MEDIUM
Only LOW

Yeah, it doesn’t say until you start download, and then it tells you estimate while downloading. To select high level you need to zoom in until HIGH box on the right is highlighted.

You have to zoom in - the detail level changes automatically, and the selection boxes/grid get smaller.

Just do not zoom while you have a selection clicked on & held - you will lock it up.

Ok, thank you, guys
I’m not sure how much GB I should put, for the cache
I still have available 3 TB, on the same SSD
I’d like to put 1 TB but I have no idea if it’s okay for 2-3 regions, with each about 60 square miles ( high level )

Well, it depends what you plan to download. NYC (Manhattan mostly with some surrounding areas) ended up to be nearly 6GB. 1TB can store a lot of photogrammetric cities, but you might consider that it is a manual process and unless they add ability to select large areas and set HIGH level without zooming in, ticking those boxes to fill 1TB will take a long while.

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I spent many hours caching the entire East Coast of Australia. The whole area in low res, certain parts in medium, and Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane, and Cairns in high quality.

It was a torturous process that took many hours. Then another couple of hours of waiting. The total was about 100MB. Just can’t be correct.

Not sure whether areas are not being cached or whether the reported size is off.

Seemed to make no difference to my flying so I deleted it.

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This was my experience too.

Apparently, the only areas that get cached are areas with photogrammetry. If I cache my entire county, it comes up to about 7MB(!), whereas the closest major city comes up a few gigs.

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Stupid question but how do I do this