Hi folks,

TL:DR:     

Are there any downsides to having a huge Community folder, with over a thousand sub-folders?

 

The full context:

I tend to organise my Community content by having a folder on my desktop, called "Content".  In it are sub-folders for regional groups of scenery (by country or region) and aircraft type.

The scenery sub-folders have names like "UK", "USA", SCANDINAVIA", "NEW ZEALAND" etc, and each has up to 250 sub-folders in them, mostly individual payware and freeware airports.  Similarly for aircraft I have 3 folders;  "GA", "AIRLINERS" and "OTHER".    
 

I prefix each individual scenery item in those subfolders with a region tag, for example;

I change "Orbx_Santa_Barbara" to "US_Orbx_Santa_Barbara"   or   "RD_Presets_EGNT" to "UK_RD_Profiles_EGNT". 

(I found that changing the names of Community item directories doesn't affect them, although I don't change the names of library directories).

I prefix the content like this, so that they're easy to locate and remove from the main Community folder, when I've finished flying in that area.

 

When I'm about to fly, I decide where I'm headed, the type of aircrafts I want to fly, then drag (cut and paste) the relevent scenery and aircraft type folders, from my Content folder, into the main Community folder.

You may have noticed that what I am doing here, is a manual version of what Addon Linker does 😊  I can't explain to you why I prefer this over addon linker.   I tried it once with MSFS 2020 and just didn't get along with it.  Let's call it an irrational idiosyncrasy. 😄  Anyway, that aspect isn't what I'm going to ask about here;

So, today I decided to do an experiment - I put all of my scenery area folders and all of my aircraft type folders into the main Community folder.

There were then 1,267 sub-folders in my Community folder.

I started MSFS 2024 and expected a huge load time!   To my surprise, MSFS loaded in the same timeframe as it always does!!

So finally!.... my question for those that understand MSFS 2024's file architecture better than I do :-

Assuming all items in the main Community folder are compatible with MSFS 2024 and there are no technical issues, are there any downsides to having a huge Community folder, with over a thousand sub-folders?   👍😊

 

Edited January 1Jan 1 by JYW

Happy it works, but why put the SIM to the test? I am all for keeping things simple...

No there’s no downside unless you get to truly absurd levels of directories. Probably tens of thousands. 
 

Today’s computers are extremely fast especially if you have an NVME drive. Reading a thousand directories is not different from reading 100 - maybe 1-2 seconds more. 

3 hours ago, Bert Pieke said:

Happy it works, but why put the SIM to the test? I am all for keeping things simple...

Bert, do you mean, why bother keeping the Community addons in the various directories that I do, or do you mean why bother changing from this approach, if it works for me?

I'm keen to know your view 👍

Edited January 1Jan 1 by JYW

Personally I have never used addon linker or even thought about organising my addons in any way. Just chuck them in Community and forget about it.

According to My Library I have around 450 sceneries loaded up all around the world. Mixture of marketplace and all world updates, a handful of externally purchased ones, and a whole bunch of free ones from FS.to. On top of that pretty much every notable release of aircraft addons as well. All up it says here 1116 addons.

Just never had any issues with my sim, or loading times. Certainly not in 2024.

I think part of the big architecture change in the new sim is precisely to address this problem. The amount of addons you could have loaded was stretching 2020 to its limits, which is why the new system is a lot more robust and efficient in how it loads stuff.

43 minutes ago, JYW said:

Bert, do you mean, why bother keeping the Community addons in the various directories that I do, or do you mean why bother changing from this approach, if it works for me?

I'm keen you know your view 👍

Organizing your addons makes sense to me.. but why dump the whole file structure into the Community folder?

You have tested it and proven that it does work... but I like your earlier approach of only loading those addons that you are going to need better.   And personally, I appreciate the Addon Linker to do that job for me, rather than moving folders around..

Keeping complexity out of the sim can only help with stability and performance, I would think.. and there is always the possibility of screwing something up when cutting and pasting folders.. 😉

Good points @Bert Pieke 

I think I'll keep this activity within the realms of an experiment 😊   To be honest, I found there was no real benefit to putting them all in there, because I always relaunch MSFS2024 between flying sessions any way.   (Seems to help with VRAM).

 

I've got about 100 folders in there. Never been one to go totally all-out. If I end up lobbing 100 more in there I don't mind. As someone said, I don't think the size/number matters to performance as much as it used to.