Cache regeneration question

[tonyc]

I have read the various threads on elongated cache regeneration and I think I understand the reasons.

However I have a question.

I recently installed and am using the Scenery Config Editor tool which enables me to switch off all my add on airports except my departure and destination. So before loading FSX I switch on the two relevant airports. Every time I switch them on I get the cache regeneration notice on screen usually staring around 31% it then takes time for them to load before I can use GSX.

I have updated GSX to the latest update and made sure there is room on my C drive.

Am I right in assuming that this happening because I am switching the airports off and on?

[virtuali]

Am I right in assuming that this happening because I am switching the airports off and on?

Yes. By doing this, you are forcing a cache regeneration on FSX and, since GSX does known when FSX regenerates its cache, this will trigger a GSX cache regeneration too.

Note that, as already discussed on the forum, there's no benefit turning off FSDT airports, even if you are not flying over them, because about 90% of the scenery is not handled by FSX, but it's loaded/unloaded under our control, which means it's guaranteed that if you are outside the loading range of the airport (this changes depending on the scenery between 8.0 and 16.0 NM), nothing is ever loaded, and you pass through it, everything is unloaded when you exit.

So, you might save a bit of trouble and maybe a bit of time in cache regeneration, if you leave all FSDT (and Flightbeam) airports constantly Enabled.

[tonyc]

Thanks for the confirmation Umberto.

Unfortunately all of my virtual flights are in UK and Europe so with only 2 FSDT airports available anyway 90% of my add on airports are not FSDT.

I have just loaded the FTX EGHI Southampton scenery which is a very big, detailed add on and unfortunately the cache regeneration hasn't moved off 30% for about 10 minutes now.

I have a very bad feling that using the Scenery Config Editor to minimise OOMs will mean I virtually lose the ability to use GSX.

That is a great shame.

[virtuali]

I have just loaded the FTX EGHI Southampton scenery which is a very big, detailed add on and unfortunately the cache regeneration hasn't moved off 30% for about 10 minutes now.

That doesn't have anything to do with the complexity of the scenery, since GSX reads only the AFCAD. It's relates to the number of scenery areas you have, which results in folders being scanned looking for AFCADs.

However, 10 minutes is NOT normal, and it's unheard of. It's possible you have ANOTHER problem, like a corrupted .BGL somewhere.

I tried a complete cache regeneration on my system (both FSX and GSX), and it took about 4-5 seconds for FSX to create its own, and exactly 2 seconds for the GSX cache. I have 237 areas active, which is not "hard-core" standards, but it's still 117 more than a default FSX install.

Do you have a much high number of areas ? But still, even if you had like 2000 areas, so about 20 times more than I have, I would expect something like 40-60 seconds, not 10 minutes.

Enabling logging in the GSX Setting page might give additional information in the Couatl.log of problems like corrupted files.

[tonyc]

Like you Umberto I have 200 plus areas so that, as you say, isn't "hard core".

I will try the Coutl log as you suggest later once I work out how to do this and let you know how I get on.

Thanks for the help.

Tony

[tonyc]

Ok Umberto

Here is the end of the log. The rest seems normal. I am afraid my knowledge of these things wouldn't allow me to go looking through .bgl files.

Airport cache not valid: scenery.cfg has changed since last time
Regenerating airport cache, looking for scenery files under E:/Program Files (x86)/Microsoft Games/Microsoft Flight Simulator X/
Worker thread started
Addon GSX loaded
Loading addon HAWAII1
Addon HAWAII1 not installed or missing one or more files, skipping
Loading addon HAWAII2
Addon HAWAII2 not installed or missing one or more files, skipping
Loading addon PHNL
Addon PHNL loaded
Loading addon JFK
Addon JFK loaded
Loading addon JFK2
Addon JFK2 not installed or missing one or more files, skipping
Loading addon KFLL
Addon KFLL not installed or missing one or more files, skipping
Loading addon KIAH
Addon KIAH not installed or missing one or more files, skipping
Loading addon KLAS
Addon KLAS not installed or missing one or more files, skipping
Loading addon KLAX
Addon KLAX loaded
Loading addon ParkMe
Addon ParkMe loaded
Loading addon CYVR
Addon CYVR not installed or missing one or more files, skipping
Loading addon XPOI
Addon XPOI not installed or missing one or more files, skipping
Loading addon ZurichX
Addon ZurichX not installed or missing one or more files, skipping
Loading addon KSFO
Addon KSFO not installed or missing one or more files, skipping
Loading addon KPHX
Addon KPHX not installed or missing one or more files, skipping
Loading addon KIAD
Addon KIAD not installed or missing one or more files, skipping
Loading addon KDEN
Addon KDEN not installed or missing one or more files, skipping
Starting system monitors
Current locale is English_United Kingdom.1252
SharedMemInterface connected
Loading aircraft data from Airplanes\Aircreation_582SL
Using aircraft data from SimConnect
Airport cache regeneration warnings:
Warning: airport LJLJ described in multiple BGL files without proper DeleteAirport record
Warning: airport LOWI described in multiple BGL files without proper DeleteAirport record
Warning: airport LOWS described in multiple BGL files without proper DeleteAirport record
Warning: airport LIPB described in multiple BGL files without proper DeleteAirport record
Warning: airport LOWK described in multiple BGL files without proper DeleteAirport record
Warning: airport LIPU described in multiple BGL files without proper DeleteAirport record
Warning: airport LIPV described in multiple BGL files without proper DeleteAirport record
Warning: airport LIPQ described in multiple BGL files without proper DeleteAirport record
Warning: airport LJPZ described in multiple BGL files without proper DeleteAirport record
Warning: airport LDRI described in multiple BGL files without proper DeleteAirport record
Warning: airport LOWI described in multiple BGL files without proper DeleteAirport record
Warning: airport LOWS described in multiple BGL files without proper DeleteAirport record
Warning: airport LIPB described in multiple BGL files without proper DeleteAirport record
Warning: airport LOWK described in multiple BGL files without proper DeleteAirport record
Warning: airport LIPU described in multiple BGL files without proper DeleteAirport record
Warning: airport LIPV described in multiple BGL files without proper DeleteAirport record
Warning: airport LIPQ described in multiple BGL files without proper DeleteAirport record
Warning: airport LJPZ described in multiple BGL files without proper DeleteAirport record
Warning: airport LDRI described in multiple BGL files without proper DeleteAirport record
Airport cache regeneration completed with success in 551 seconds
Loading airport EGCC from E:/Program Files (x86)/Microsoft Games/Microsoft Flight Simulator X/UK2000 scenery/UK2000 Manchester Xtreme/scenery/EGCC_afx_UK2xTRM.BGL
Customization file E:/Program Files (x86)/Microsoft Games/Microsoft Flight Simulator X/UK2000 scenery/UK2000 Manchester Xtreme/scenery\egcc_ini_gen\egcc-gen.ini ignored: AFCAD file doesn't match afcad_path entry
Loading user customizations from E:/Program Files (x86)/Microsoft Games/Microsoft Flight Simulator X/UK2000 scenery/UK2000 Manchester Xtreme/scenery\egcc_ini_trm\egcc-trm.ini (file is designer-provided and won't be modified in-place)
Loading airport EGFF from E:/Program Files (x86)/Microsoft Games/Microsoft Flight Simulator X/UK2000 scenery/UK2000 Cardiff Xtreme/scenery/EGFF_AFX_UK2xGEN.BGL
Loading user customizations from C:\Users\Tony\AppData\Roaming\Virtuali\GSX\egff-8z82ju.ini

[tonyc]

I just checked and I don't even have any of these airports installed as addons!

Warning: airport LJLJ described in multiple BGL files without proper DeleteAirport record
Warning: airport LOWI described in multiple BGL files without proper DeleteAirport record
Warning: airport LOWS described in multiple BGL files without proper DeleteAirport record
Warning: airport LIPB described in multiple BGL files without proper DeleteAirport record
Warning: airport LOWK described in multiple BGL files without proper DeleteAirport record
Warning: airport LIPU described in multiple BGL files without proper DeleteAirport record
Warning: airport LIPV described in multiple BGL files without proper DeleteAirport record
Warning: airport LIPQ described in multiple BGL files without proper DeleteAirport record
Warning: airport LJPZ described in multiple BGL files without proper DeleteAirport record
Warning: airport LDRI described in multiple BGL files without proper DeleteAirport record
Warning: airport LOWI described in multiple BGL files without proper DeleteAirport record
Warning: airport LOWS described in multiple BGL files without proper DeleteAirport record
Warning: airport LIPB described in multiple BGL files without proper DeleteAirport record
Warning: airport LOWK described in multiple BGL files without proper DeleteAirport record
Warning: airport LIPU described in multiple BGL files without proper DeleteAirport record
Warning: airport LIPV described in multiple BGL files without proper DeleteAirport record
Warning: airport LIPQ described in multiple BGL files without proper DeleteAirport record
Warning: airport LJPZ described in multiple BGL files without proper DeleteAirport record
Warning: airport LDRI described in multiple BGL files without proper DeleteAirport record

[virtuali]

Those warning might be or not a problem, but shouldn't be the cause of such slow cache rebuild.

The warning means that there's an airport that is described in more than one .BGL, but some of them didn't had the DeleteAirport. This might be a mistake, or might be intentional, because that .BGL only describes PART of an airport, such as an enhancement file that only adds a couple of parking, but it relies on another file for the airport to work.

While this is possible in FSX, GSX only supports a file which is entirely self-contained, so the warning is telling you that you GSX won't use such "partial" files, so you might miss some parkings or taxiways, because only the self-contained file was used.

But I can't see how this warning could cause such a slow time.

Question: does it take the same time if you, instead of touching the scenery.cfg file, remove those folders ?

%PROGRAMDATA%\Microsoft\FSX\SceneryIndexes
%PROGRAMDATA%\Virtuali\Couatl

[tonyc]

Ok Umberto, this is interesting! I removed both these files. I switched on every scenery I have and the GSX cache regenerates in a few seconds!

When I closed down FSX I checked and these files had reappeared in my C drive! I assume they are self generating? So what in the old files was causing the problem do you think?

[virtuali]

Ok Umberto, this is interesting! I removed both these files. I switched on every scenery I have and the GSX cache regenerates in a few seconds!

They ARE the caches, the FSX and the GSX one.

When I closed down FSX I checked and these files had reappeared in my C drive! I assume they are self generating? So what in the old files was causing the problem do you think?

No idea, but now you should try if the regeneration is still fast when you modify your scenery.cfg instead.

[tonyc]

Uggh!

I turned off all the scenery then just turned on just LFBH and EGHI and the problem is back! 

I watched it carefully and it came up initially as 30% complete and stayed there for 17 minutes then took a further 5 minutes to complete at LFBH.

[tonyc]

I still have the problem Umberto do you have any ideas where I can look to solve it?

[virtuali]

I still have the problem Umberto do you have any ideas where I can look to solve it?

Not possible to have any idea to even *begin* to troubleshoot it, because I cannot reproduce it. You can only try to test by enabling SINGLE Scenery Areas, one by one, and find if there's a specific .BGL that causes this.

[tonyc]

Ok Umberto

Thank you anyway.

Just one question then I will try to solve the mystery.

You say "by enabling single sceneries". By this do you mean switching every area off using the tick option in the Scenery Library then switching each on to see if the problem occurs. In other words the scenery cache only tries to regenerate those sceneries that are switched on in the Scenery Library even though they may be installed still within FSX?

Many thanks again for your time.

Tony

[Martyjr]

I would like to know what there is in an afcad that causes the regeneration cache problem (to take so long to finish) or other problems with GSX?

Can the afcad be fixed?

What do we tell the afcad developer to fix?

If the afcad is bad why can the airport be loaded after cache regeration is done without a problem?