GSX is surely NOT the culprit of your sim running slow and, before you can say that, it would be best if you provided some evidence and some information.
Is the sim *generally* running slowly, even during flight ? If yes, this CANNOT possibly caused by GSX, since GSX isn't doing anything if you don't call it and, if you fly over 10K feet, it doesn't even check which airports are around you so, it really has ZERO impact on performance.
If, instead, GSX is slowing your sim *after* it creates its objects, that might be possible, since everything you create graphically in the sim has some cost so, depending on how much other stuff you installed, you might noticed (or not) a slowdown when calling GSX, but calling it will always be your choice.
All our sceneries that requires GSX will requires it for mainly two things:
- SODE Jetways.
- Visual Docking System.
Many other sceneries out there use SODE jetways and Visual Docking systems but, since we already have lots of them in GSX, it's clearly more efficient to install them *once* with GSX, instead to have each installer containing their own set of jetways and dockign systems over and over.
It's not as if, just because "they come with GSX" that they would be any slower. They would work exactly the same (slower or not, depending on your system) even if they were separated from GSX and included with the scenery installer.
So, if your point is that, by using the new SODE jetways, we raised a bit the system requirement of those sceneries, this is certainly true, but of course it's entirely unrelated to GSX, so your fear of installing it is entirely irrational, especially considering that, apart from GSX jetways and docking systems, the sceneries requires and will install exactly the SAME software modules used by GSX, that is the Addon Manager and the Couatl engine so, if there was an issue with the *software* itself "slowing down" your system, it would appear even without installing GSX proper.
So, just like many other sceneries out there, we switched to the much better SODE jetways and, since we have GSX, we simply require to install it too. This isn't any different than any other developer basic pre-requisite. OrbX also has a fairly large download which is required, FlyTampa has its separate libraries which are also required, we have GSX.
Also, the scenery are used assuming you'll use GSX, all parking position has been fixed to position the airplane more precisely (with the door aligned to the jetway), which is only possible if you use GSX to park and position, the jetways are tested and guaranteed to work correctly when you park *there*, according to GSX indications, everything will break down if you don't install GSX.
Not that you have any other choice, since all sceneries that have SODE jetways, doesn't have the old default jetways anymore so, unless you install GSX, you won't have *any* jetways and, again, this is done to obtain the maximum efficiency, since it's better to NOT include jetways in the first pace, rather than forcing the sim to load them first and have them Excluded with an exclude file.
Also, we don't want to have our sceneries being hampered by the bugs and limitation of the old default jetway system, which prevents usage of more then one jetway on a gate (which is particularly aggravating in our case, since we mostly do big airports that have *many* double and sometimes triple jetways, see KLAX), are bugged, resultes in wheels sinking, jetways breaking apart, and all the sort of issues we all knew very well, which lead to the need to create something like SODE and the GSX integration with it. Now we finally have a system that works, for the airports we do, it doesn't make any sense wanting to go back to the old system.
