Prepar3D Preheater

lionheart · Post by **lionheart** » Thu Apr 26, 2012 3:03 pm

Hello Team P3D,

I have a little idea. Now, this might sound nuts, but for people that work with P3D all the time, it might be a big time thing.

What if you could 'tick' on a setting that was a Prepar3D system preheater or 'system standby' that had the FLT loaded in RAM. The idea is that one could start up in a flight from a computer just booted up and it would start almost immediately.

I see countless programs on my computer that run in the background (like Skype and things) that arent used at all most days. If I used P3D alot (like at a school, a training simulator at a flight school at a college or airport, or an USAF or RAF Air Base), I would want something like this.

I was thinking it would be a neat little addon, but as I thought about it, I think it deserves to be a core feature. One of the bad things I hate about FSX is startup times. One of things I loved about P3D is its start times. What if this could be improved and done in such a way as that it could nearly be 'almost' instantly started....?

Just an idea. I get alot of ideas, so if you cant use it, no worries...

Bill

LHC

lionheart · Post by **lionheart** » Thu Apr 26, 2012 3:06 pm

One of the ways I think I 'know' that this could work is that when I boot up P3D, it takes a while. When I boot it up again 5 min's later, its VERY FAST, which means the scenery and plane were being held in RAM and didnt need to be unpacked.

Cool, eh?

Canuck · Post by **Canuck** » Thu Apr 26, 2012 5:44 pm

Same happens with FSX, subsequent boots are very quick as long as the PC hasn't been employed too much in other things.

I wonder if the FSX parameter DisablePreload=1 under [Startup] in the *.cfg fiel can be used in P3D? Stand by will give it a try.

Canuck · Post by **Canuck** » Thu Apr 26, 2012 5:50 pm

No, no diff with that parameter. Clearly something is differnet in respect to that command which relates to FSX front page interface which P3D doesn't have. pity.

lionheart · Post by **lionheart** » Thu Apr 26, 2012 7:50 pm

But.....

If it comes down to the aircraft (quantity of planes), then maybe it could be brought way down.

Im going to experiment with that later tonight (after work) and see what happens, rebooting the computer with each test.

speedbird1 · Post by **speedbird1** » Thu Apr 26, 2012 8:22 pm

Don't forget the Windows (XP, Vista and 7) built-in Superfetch feature.

It does actually pre-load stuff you use often to memory.

Pre-loading "Prepar3d.exe" is one thing. Prefetching 2 GB of data might not be a good idea though. But who knows.

FSMP · Post by **FSMP** » Fri Apr 27, 2012 11:16 am

Even it takes a long as 5 minutes for P3D to load on your PC, before you can start simulating your flying, thats really insignificant compared with the Flight time (assuming the sim does not crash).

It's also very insignificant with the preperation time before a real world flight.

Even in a Flight School environment, 5 minutes at the start of the day, to start the Sim, would not be an issue.

What is far more of an issue is instability in the sim, resulting in a crash during a training session, and the need to restart the computer and P3D.

That being said, what you seem to be suggesting is some way to load and set up P3D, and then so a similar process like putting your PC into Hibernation, saving the state to the drive... Then later, when the PC is running, being able to RESTORE that Hibernated state.

Some sort of application that can save and load the PC's state ?

Canuck · Post by **Canuck** » Fri Apr 27, 2012 5:10 pm

I agree with Geoff, the boot time is not too much of an issue for me. I use the time in P3D and FSX (and for that matter FS9) to setup other programs remotely on a n/w laptop like Wx, Nav and flight planning. It's only an issue when I want to quickly try out some a/c or scenery or cfg parameter. Otherwise I leave the sim(s) running in paused mode on the taskbar. I have found that there is no issue in getting them restarted just so long as I haven't allowed the PC to go into sleep mode. Then they (all of them) tend to lockup or crash.

lionheart · Post by **lionheart** » Sat Apr 28, 2012 1:03 pm

Quote:
Quote from FSMP on April 27, 2012, 11:16

Even it takes a long as 5 minutes for P3D to load on your PC, before you can start simulating your flying, thats really insignificant compared with the Flight time.

I beg to differ.

5 Min's is a massive amount of time. If you do this 20 times in one day, that 100 min's.

If Bootup could be taken to 12 to 20 seconds, this would be pretty dang good, both for management of time and minimizing your set aside time for the flight.

With FSX, I could turn it on, and grab my iPhone, go out in the garage and let the dog walk around as I played a game on the iPhone, come back in, grab a cup of coffee, sit down, and the sim was still booting up....

If one is doing a simple test and needs to wait 5 min's for 10 seconds worth of viewing, that is not good.

Thats my humble two cents of logic on it.

I am presently testing the theory on aircraft being the culprit (number of birds in the Airplanes folder). I have created a saving vault, two folders deep in the Airplanes folder. I cut/paste the planes into that folder. Still testing it though.

Bill

lionheart · Post by **lionheart** » Sat Apr 28, 2012 1:04 pm

And I would like to add, P3D still boots up far faster then FSX.

lionheart · Post by **lionheart** » Sat Apr 28, 2012 1:57 pm

Ok... I carried out some tests..

First; I experimented with taking out planes. This had almost no bearing at all. Startups were the same.

With each startup, I rebooted the computer so RAM was refreshed or empty/clear. I waited till the computer OS was stable after the restart before starting P3D. I then clicked on the P3 icon and started the timer.

Differences were only 10 seconds, if that. I believe it makes no difference on how many planes you have in your Airplanes folder. Maybe if one had 200 planes, but in this case, I only have about 60 aircraft.

Start times were always 3:30 to 3:40, with one at 4:00 mins, from click to tarmac.

I was also booting up into an ORBX rich area' a payware airport scenery, Diamond Point, with some animations turned off and scenery settings (general) around standard half way points on the sliders, water at 25% setting, normal clouds, mostly stock settings, but scenery effects and scenery detail set to full. (Not terrain textures). Autogen also at 50%.

Now, to change things, I booted up into stock Montgomery airfield in San Diego and startup was almost 1 min quicker, boot up time; 2:50. So I believe scenery has everything to do with it. I back this up with having watched the loading screen scripts; 'loading terrain data' lasted to the 70% mark. Plane and autogen and others were loaded in seconds. Most of the loadup is the terrain data.

So that is that. Good to know. My hunger for ORBX rich realism was the culprit, not the amount of planes in the airplanes folder. Good to know.

Bill