Increasing Performance with Glacier Bay v2

[ardypilot]

As I was having some troubles with the FSADDON forum, Holger Sandmann very kindly took the time to personally e-mail me himself and tell me how to get improved performance with his amazing freeware Glacier Bay v2 (see screenshot forum):

I'd start with a Filemon scan, checking for unsuccessful file read
attempts, to see whether there's an outside influence that causes a memory
leak or performance degradation.

Also, eliminate any other possible outside influences, that is third-party
add-ons you may have installed for the area; those should be disabled for
your tests.

Does temporarily deactivating the Glacier Bay scenery entry make a big
difference on fps?

If yes, re-activate it and then start hunting for
specific files. However, if the issue really is with the GB elements then it's likely a cumulative impact and you may have to remove some of the more detailed additions to gain much.

Files you could try deactivating (all in \FSAddon\Glacier Bay\Alaska
Glacier Bay scenery\scenery):

* any or all of the GBv2_Juneau_*.bgl files. These are the Juneau city area
docks, buildings, bridges, as well as the Era Aviation heliport

* GBv2_objects_auke_*.bgl files. Auke Bay harbor objects (west of PAJN)

* GBv2_objects_lighthouse_*.bgl files. The four lighthouses we added, three
of which are between Juneau and Haines.

* GBv2_objects_Taku_lodge_*.bgl files. Taku Lodge SE of Juneau, which is
fairly detailed

* GBv2_SCN_IceBergs*.bgl files. The small icebergs in front of the main
glaciers. Shouldn't have much of an impact but there are a couple hundred
of these icebergs

* GBv2_library_LS_birds_dynamic.bgl and GBv2_library_LS_birds_static.bgl.
Disabling these would prevent any of the dynamic and static birds to show
(unless you have the same library file in another add-on, like Tongass
Fjords or Vancouver+).

Let me know if any of these files make a big difference.

Like I said, though, I suspect the main impact comes from the more detailed
objects, like the airport buildings at PAJN (GBv2_library_MH_PAJN.bgl) or
Dennis' generic hangars we use throughout the area
(GBv2_library_DW_ezhangers.bgl).

This made a big difference for me on my low spec machine- this was of course after doing everything listed in their FAQ forum here (turning scenery sliders down/ turning down AI traffic etc)

Thanks Holger

[Jimmy]

I'd start with a Filemon scan, checking for unsuccessful file read
attempts, to see whether there's an outside influence that causes a memory
leak or performance degradation.

Whats this trolly? sounds interesting..

James

[Bandit]

Ditto what Jimmy said.

Also as an aside. I see the two GB download files are huge. How long did it take to download them? If I supply the disks anybody want to offer to copy them over for me? I think my 56k connection would have a cow if I try.

[ZK-LGD]

Howdy,

Simply put: FS scans your FS folders for textures; if it cannot locate them, it performs a thorough scan of your hard drive(s). This constant scanning inevitably leads to a memory drain/decreased performance. FileMon runs a diagnostic scan during an FS session and writes a report listing what was found and, more importantly, what was not found.

As for downloading, it's only 138Mb and that's split into 2 files.

During Beta testing there were 3 Release Candidates of GBv2 ; so yeah, allow yourself approximately 5-8 hours on a 56k dialup.

[Jimmy]

that sounds interesting, why such a big file size for jsust a program like that?

So were can we get filemon? if its an avsim file is there any other servers that host it as avsim is filterd out at school (school-110kbps, home-5 )

James

[ZK-LGD]

Howdy Jimmy,

LoL! No, it's Glacier Bay that's 138 Mb. Filemon can be downloaded directly from here (and it's only 280 Kb.).