Autogen objects are defined by default.xml under FSX’s Autogen folder. Many third-party sceneries during installation will add new objects to the file, making it bigger and bigger.
Here’s a quick and easy way to reduce the size of it and bring some improvements, especially to low- to mid-end computers.
1) Locate default.xml in the Autogen folder of the Microsoft Flight Simulator X directory (x:\Microsoft Flight Simulator X\Autogen)
2) Backup the file first for safety sake
3) Open the file with Notepad
4) Change encoding=”utf-16″ to encoding=”utf-8″ on the first line
5) Click Safe As… from the file menu
6) Choose UTF-8 from the Encoding option next to the Save button
7) Click Save and confirm to overwrite the original file, then Exit Notepad
By converting the encoding of default.xml from UTF-16 to UTF-8, file size of it can be reduced significantly (in my case up to 65%) and bring some improvements to overall performance.
FS Times 
Would love to try this, but my default file is a backup file (default.bak) in my autogen folder of fsx. Can this be changed?
Rob
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Hi Rob, you can rename your autogen backup to whatever you like. My TrackIR profile is sent to your mailbox.
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Thanks – where is article source?
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personal experiments.
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You know, I have to tell you, I really enjoy this blog and the insight from everyone who participates. I find it to be refreshing and very informative. I wish there were more blogs like it. Anyway, I felt it was about time I posted, I�ve spent most of my time here just lurking and reading, but today for some reason I just felt compelled to say this.
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