Can we improve X-plane start up time?

It has an amazingly long start up time. It sometimes stops the start up. The bar across the top shows (Not responding) whether it is or isn't. If I try the full screen or minimize it does nothing except stop again. It is really unstable so can these issues be fixed. I have the latest version but still have these issues. Some times all is well but then!!!! problems out of the blue. Thanks.

Putting everything on a SSD will cut the boot time by around a third.

Once it is loaded for the first time that day, all subsequent loads are much faster.

 

I fly only in NA, Alaska and Canada and my game files are over 160GB so long load times are to be expected.

Load time is dictated by the amount of data and the speed that the data ca be retrieved and to some extent the processing that takes place during the load.

The amount of data can be controlled by the user by using low resolution scenery, the least that I know of is the default XP scenery. A Tile can be 500 MB or less or 30GB and XP loads typically around 4 tiles so that amount of time difference can be significant.

The speed of the load can be controlled by the user, by using a high speed storage device like an Optane which is the fastest read that I know of at this time, or Solid state drive and a high throughput / fast processor and a fast bus system.

The processing is controlled by the developer and there are ways that it can be improved, and in the latest versions XP has done some of it by loading compressed data and having the processor do the work and decompressing on your first load, from a fresh boot, you will see that it takes longer to get started than consecutive loads, if you restart the same version without shutting down.

XP does a lot of file verification but that amount of time is not very significant compared to other bottle necks like your storage retrieval speed is in most systems.

There are procedures that can be used to accelerate the process, processing wise, but it does not land itself well to small size files, you need large chunks / blocks to take advantage of that. Can that be improved in the XP, not likely but they may be able to improve to some extent?

"Not responding" is a normal behavior of XP during load which is trying to prioritize the processing to save time and the only thing you can do is wait for it, it may take 5-6 minutes to load in some cases, or press Esc, Ctrl C, go in Task Manager and stop it. With an Optane drive typically you can load ZL18 (28GB) tile scenery in about 3 minutes, with decent mechanical dive 6-7 minutes.

If you know what area and what resolution you want you can limit that start up time significantly by reducing the amount of scenery / data that you load but most users would not be happy with the way it looks and likely not very useful.

You can view the amount of time different items take to load by analyzing the Log.txt file found in the XP's main directory.