56: Remove Standard AI Traffic

My system has Just Flight’s Traffic X and a few other AI traffic addons installed.   They together brought a lot of AI aircrafts and traffics, which makes the default ones redundant.

Naughty Fleet of Airplanes

To reduce overlapping and enhance system performance, the TrafficAircraft.bgl under X:\Microsoft Flight Simulator X\Scenery\World\Scenery was moved to a backup folder so that no standard AI traffic is loaded.

To restore, just putting back the file to the original folder will do.

53: Configuration Fits for ALL #6 – The Missing Part

Once FSX is divided into flying zones, Missions can be categorized and automatically loaded as well.  There are two options available:

Option 1:

Add a prefix to all missions using the method of Renaming Missions posted earlier, so as to differentiate which flying zones where missions are belonging to.

For example, add the prefix of “EU-” to all missions taken place in Europe, “AS-” for Asia, “CS-” for Central and South America, etc.

Option 2: Continue reading

49: Rename Missions

In addition to prioritizing missions as described in last post, names of missions can also be changed easily.  For example, the three Mountain Flying in Switzerland missions from vertical studios were originally shown in small captial letters. Through following steps explained below, they are now capitalized.

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48: Prioritize Missions

Mission Categories are seldom displayed in proper order, especially after new Missions have been added.

Here’s how to prioritize Mission Categories as one desires.

Inside the Categories folder of FSX system, there should be XML files similar to what is shown below.

Each of these XML files contains one or more Mission Categories that were created by FSX or when addons were installed. The alphabetical order of these files also determines how Mission Categories will ultimately displayed in FSX.

Folder Location: X:\Microsoft Flight Simulator X\Categories

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45: Configuration Fits for ALL #5 – Back to BASIC

With all the files prepared from previous steps, here’s the BASIC programming part to load corresponding files automatically when a flying zone is selected.

C:\Users\Tom\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\FSX

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44: Configuration Fits for ALL #4 – fsx.CFG

The concept of this approach is to divide FSX into a number of flying zones so as to minimize the impact from too many addons installed onto the system.  Therefore, a number of corresponding fsx.CFG are created.  This not only allows customzing fsx.CFG for each flying zone but also makes subtle fine-tuning possible according to actual performance resulted from each scenery.

So, instead of having only ONE My Best FSX Setup, I am actually having EIGHT as shown in the table below.   The matching fsx.CFG will be loaded via the BASIC command when a zone is selected.

fsx.CFG for different flying zones

Next post regarding the BASIC program will be the last of the series.

43: Configuration Fits for ALL #3 – scenery.CFG

The more addons we install, the longer time FSX takes to load up a sim flight.  Deactivating sceneries from the Scenery Library won’t shorten load-up time as long as they remain in the Library.  The only solution is to remove them from the library completely.

Followings are scenery.CFG files modified for flying zones mentioned in Configuration Fits for ALL #2.  The matching scenery will be loaded via the BASIC program when a flying zone is selected. Continue reading

42: Configuration Fits for ALL #2 – The Files

The more addons we install, the longer time FSX is needed to load up, no matter if SSDs or 1,000rpm HDDs are used.   My system has nearly 400GB of third-party sceneries, not to mention additional aircrafts.   FSX load-up time, imaginable, is intolerably long.  Deactivating sceneries through Scenery Library under Setting will not help.

The main purpose of this flying zone approach is to trim down FSX system size and speed up loading and execution performance, without deleting any addons.  At present, I splitted my system into 8 Flying zones according to specific Landclass and Scenery installed.  They are: Continue reading

41: Configuration Fits for ALL #1 – The Concept

I usually flightsim only in areas with third-party sceneries installed.  FSX, however, performs vastly different due to scenery’s complexity and technology used.

Like many others, I’ve been searching for and experimenting tweaks and suggestions, aiming to get the best FSX result.

Unfortunately, One Setting that Fits for All simply doesn’t exist.    My Best FSX Setup may not apply to others at all, for example.

Inspired by Orbx’s FTX scenery approach, I started reconfiguring my FSX system into different flying zones about a year ago.  Tweaks and settings, therefore, are specifically customized to target the best result for a particular scenery or flying zone under the same hardware setup.

Nevertheless, the concept is pretty simple: Continue reading