Compressing FS9 Folder seems to increase smoothness

[lmponte]

Hi all,

This tip came from our friends over at AVSIM. They state that if you compress your FS9 folder you will get a better game performance. I thought this was worth mentioning here.

If I compress it, can I uncompress if I don't like what I see?

Anyone here tried? what are the opinions?

[ajmitch]

I seriously doubt that compressing a folder would give a performance boost. Probably the opposite, as Windows would have to uncompress scenery files 'on the fly' in order to use them, using up processor time and memory that otherwise could be dedicated to just reading and running.

Tony.

[Bruce]

personally i can't see how it works, but i am giving it a go as there is nothing to lose but a few hours compressing the files. if it does not work it is simple enough to uncompress them, the saved disc space will certainly be welcome and if it works great :)

[Pirate]

It's a joke.

[lmponte]

I also do not believe, but I'm gonna try it and post back the results.

[Captain_Slarty]

why ??.. it is not rocket science... it WILL NOT WORK...

[ZKLGD]

>why ??.. it is not rocket science... it WILL NOT WORK...

Before pontificating too loudly, check out the reasoning at http://pcaviator.com.au

Regards,
zklgd

[Captain_Slarty]

Hmm. ok, I'll bite :-)

I cant find the reference amongst the advertising and sponsership.. :-roll... but I am sure you can post a link......

the 'reasoning' is the problem... the 'proof' is the way forward...

another dubious 'magazine' (as far as 'tech' support goes....) :-lol

every hobby, in every aspect of life, has a 'magazine' or 5..... :-)

when you REALLY get to know the hobby, you suddenly realise that the authors were slightly ahead of confused in the main.....

but, back to the point in question.. you were going to PROVE to me, and others here, that a cpu intensive uncompress operation can offer performance gains in a sim/game that is almost TOTALLY cpu dependent... ?????? hee hee :-)

lets hear the jist of the 'reasoning' Sir....

[Danowat]

LOL, this is getting mental now, the lengths people will go to to get 0.001 FPS more is crazy.

So according to this "article", todays modern processors are faster, therefore they have spare cycles in which to compress/uncompress files, OK, so what happens when you CPU is flat out running FS?, where are the spare cycles gonna come from, fresh air?.

LOL.

Dan.

[ZKLGD]

Howdy,

http://pcaviator.com.au/article_hd_opt.htm

or for those who don't wish to be bombarded with advertising ...

"File compression reduces hard disk access

NTFS supports file compression. That is “on-the-fly” file compression. Files are compressed and decompressed as they are written or read respectively. In the day of the slower processor this came at the price of more load on your processor in compressing and decompressing the files. Today with the GHz speed of computers it is no longer an issue. The beauty of file compression is that you computer is doing less work accessing the hard disk since it has to read less [compressed] data off the hard disk. With the modern fast processor the trade-off between decompression time and hard disk access results in overall faster file/data access from the hard disk into memory provided your system is fast enough. Our tests showed that FS2002 loaded slower after file compression on an 800Mhz Celeron system but on a 2.2 GHz Pentium the time to load FS2002 was reduced by 10%. The entire contents of a Microsoft Flight Simulator 2002 installation, compresses at a ratio of 1:1.18 so that your hard disk access is just 85% of what it would be on an uncompressed version. So if your system is faster than around 1.6 GHz, compress your FS2002 folder. You’ll have your hard disk working on average 15% less. This amount will be much less for some files and no change for others but your overall average will be 15% less hard disk access and faster performance."

YMMV, of course.

Regards,
zklgd