Performance and un-used gauges and other files.

[Gary R.]

My recent trouble with Drive F and all the data swapping I had to do has made me aware of some details.  Like the fact that my Fs guages folder is fast approaching 1 gigabyte.  Same with my FS sounds folder.  And I know there are planes I have removed that all I removed was the aircraft folder.  I am sure there are guages and sounds they used that are remaining.  I am asking. can un-used files like gauges and sounds slow down FS's performance?  I think it could because my FS always performs best as a clean install prior to having all the aircraft, scenery, gauges etc. loaded into it that I've been collecting for years.  I know there are gauge cleaner programs.  Would it be wise for me to remove any files that are not associated with an installed aircraft?

[Apex]

Yes, although I don't think it will improve performance, but it can't hurt.

[Gary R.]

Well, it could all be imaginary but I do seem to recall that FS performs best for me after newly installed and before a lot of add-on aircraft are installed.  It seems to me that the smaller the FS folders are the better the sim moves along.  When I installed FS first on my new hard drive, which I am reformatting this weekend I was getting 10-15 FPS higher with the same aircraft than I was getting on FS installation on drive C which was at that time much heavier.  Lately I've noticed that the performance became more the same between the two drives.  I thought at first the performance increase was due to the fact that my new hard drive is a 7200 RPM with 8 meg cache versus 5200 RPM, 2 meg cashe on my old drive which is still C drive here.  It could be that the drive speeds and caching wern't the performance edge because those figures don't deteriorate with use but the clutter on the other hand increases and as my "F" drive FS installation got heavier and became as cluttered as the "C" drive installation the performance deteriorated to match.  I will certainly start benchmarking after my re-format and re-installation.

[caveman16]

Hey Gary - - -  After reading your responce to my questions,  I should have just done some reading.   It seems we were both on the same thoughts.    Any "caveman" in you ?  Again  - - thanks for your help.       caveman

[Gary R.]

Well, any caveman in me???  Lets see, my wife considers me rather crude and barbaric so I guess the civilization on me is a rather thin veneer but under given circumstances which vary from person to person I'd say it's pretty thin on us all and if it wern't for a POWER watching everything we'd have destroyed ourselves long long ago. Or so it seems to me.  As soon as I re-install FS on "F" drive I will begin my studies of the relation between clutter and performance which means adding one aircraft or scenery at a time.  Also noteworthy is the fact that multiple add-on panels often use the exact same gauges but they have different file extension names.    That can also lead to un-necessary folder clutter. I'm sure if one had the time to go over panel.cfg's and gauge properties one would discover a way to consolidate the identlical gauges that have different names and edit the panel.cfg's accordingly but that would take a lot of time.

[BFMF]

This is why I never put gauges in the gauges folder, but rather put them in the individual panels. That way, I can remove both the aircraft and gauges easily if I want to

[Hagar]

[quote]Also noteworthy is the fact that multiple add-on panels often use the exact same gauges but they have different file extension names.

[Gary R.]

That's an interresting idea to store 3rd party gauges in the panel folder.  Now, what's the way to do that?  Would it be to have a "gauges" folder in the panel?  Are any panel.cfg changes necessary?  What would the panel folder structure look like that way?

[BFMF]

Instead of copying the gauges into the main gauges folder, just move them to the panel folder for the aircraft, and the Flightsim will automatically use them from there instead. You don't have to edit one line of code. This way, you can test an aircraft and delete the entire thing would having to worry about a buildup of gauges.

Here's a screenshot of what it looks like. As you can see, it's simple, and easy to remove if you don't like the aircraft