FS2004 Slow Loading of Aircraft Textures??

[HenryKane]

Does anyone else have a problem with third-party aircraft textures loading a little slow when switching to spot-view? For about three seconds, All I can see is a grey plane while the polygons are being drawn. It doesn't affect my frame rates though, just more of a cosmetic thing. Does anyone else have this problem?

System specs:

P4 3.2GHZ
512 SDRAM
120 GIG Western Digital HD
ATI Radeon 300XE PCI Express Card with latest Omega Drivers

I find the 3D clouds take the biggest frame rate hit. Other than that, I have no complaints, other than a few minor glitches here and there...

[moth01]

HI,
For me, In a heavily detailed scenery area, the plane takes a second to load the textures, but ony somtimes. I think it's a normal issue.
But once they had been loaded, subsequent spot plane views are already loaded, so no blank plane. This used to be an issue with me in FS8, but I'd load the planes skin, then load the inside views. When I switched views, they were already laoded up and I seen no blank textures.
Gary

[HenryKane]

Interesting... I seem to have solved the problem by turning down my "Global Scenery Quality" slider. *shrug* Anyway, it doesn't seem to be an issue now. Thanks!

[kingnorris]

Exact same thing happens to me. I thought it was my video card at first, an older Nvidea,but since the textures came in "eventually",I didn't worry about it.Thanks for the tip about the Global Scenery Quality slider. I may try that,since a new vid card is almost out of the question at the moment,finances are running low...

[cianpars]

Henry,

Look at your fs9.cfg file, open it with wordpad and change the texture bandwidth mult setting. By default, this is 60 I think. I use 100 but try higher (up to a max of about 400). If the higher settings lead to stutters, you will have to drop this down a bit but this will usually cure the slow loading textures problem.

IAN

[kingnorris]

Where is this .cfg file found? I checked the main FS9 folder: My computer>c:drive>programs>Microsoft games>FS9. Couldn't find this file???

[Bobsk8]

See if you can either convert the aircraft texture file to DXT3 or if it is available in that form as a repaint. The DXT3 file is about 1/5 the size of the normal texture file, looks just about the same, and will load instantly. All my payware aircraft have that type of file.

[alastairmonk]

>Where is this .cfg file found? I checked the main FS9 folder:
>My computer>c:drive>programs>Microsoft games>FS9. Couldn't
>find this file???

Chances are, your PC is still set to hide files:

1. Open Windows Explorer
2. Select Tools, Folder Options, View
3. Under the entry "Hidden Files and Folders" tick the "Show hidden files and folders" box

The fs9.cfg file should then show up in C:\Documents & Settings\(Username)\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\(Flight Simulator)

(I'm not at my simming PC at present, but the above should be close enough for you to locate the folder !)

Alastair

[andrewclaridge]

It could be something a little simpler... I had this problem too.

I found if I disable my virus scanner (temporarily) while in FS I no longer have this problem. It would appear the the virus scanner was scanning all the textures every time I switched views.

Don't know if this will help but hope you get sorted.

Regards
Andy

[LOT_Pilot]

I have the same problem with the iFDG aircraft, but it dosen't bother me since their pure quality, and it's only FS that's lagging like that.

[kingnorris]

>Henry,
>
>Look at your fs9.cfg file, open it with wordpad and change the
>texture bandwidth mult setting. By default, this is 60 I
>think. I use 100 but try higher (up to a max of about 400).
>If the higher settings lead to stutters, you will have to drop
>this down a bit but this will usually cure the slow loading
>textures problem.
>
>IAN
Finally found the file and did what you suggested. Turned it up to 200,but textures are still slow,albeit not as slow as before. Thanks for the help,but I think I'm gonna have to live with it the way it is.

[pipersam]

I was running 512mb of ddr ram and had this problem. put another stick of 512 in and it cured it. Might wanna check out upgrading to a gig of ram, its pretty cheap.

[N069NT]

As somebody else stated, upgrade your RAM from 512MB... that's the minimum for decent frames with some sliders turned up. I did it on my three-year old rig, and it got rid of all kinds of stutters and slow texture load times (using RDRAM), although I'm sure going to 1GB would make big differences in your system. That's an old trick dating back to the FS2000 resource-hog days when an upgrade was going from 128MB to 256MB RAM. No frame increase, but definitely faster load times, especially in Flight1's Pilatus which slowed me down some.

Ned

P4 3.0GHz-> to 3.4
1GB RDRAM
ASUS P4T533-C
XFX GeForce 6800GT

[HenryKane]

Yeah, I think I'm going to upgrade to 768MB of memory. It's pretty cheap. Curiously enough, FS2002 runs like a DREAM, but I think FS9 has better graphics, and at least you can see the taxiways now too. Thanks!