My transmitter has a pot knob on the top right corner -- pretty small knob (maybe 3.8" in dia). Is this the knob you are speaking about?
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My transmitter has a pot knob on the top right corner -- pretty small knob (maybe 3.8" in dia). Is this the knob you are speaking about?
technoid
Well-known member
You can install RealFlight 8 on a different drive if you want and it will work fine, but all the downloadable content will be placed in your Documents folder so lots of planes means some storage place there. I haven't done it recently but you used to be able to tell Windows to store your Documents folder on a different drive too and I imagine RealFlight would work fine with that too. But these days I have a 512 GB M2 SSD so I keep everything on the C drive.
Sorry, not sure I understood your space allocation on your various drives. My hope is to use as little space as possible on Drive C: since it is a medium sized SSD. For any files/folders which are okay to park elsewhere, I'd rather create a folder on drive D:, a rather large HDD, and populate that drive as much as possible.
Any idea how many planes you have and how much space they take up in your drive C: documents folder? And what about scenery, etc.? I assume the program has many files for that -- does that need to be on drive C:?
flexible2g
New member
technoid
Well-known member
I'm one of the modelers so I really don't keep that many planes other than mine on my system because I create the planes I want to fly. But the downloadable stuff isn't terribly large so I really don't think you have a problem unless your download thousands of planes. Like flexible said all the downloadable stuff is in the megabyte area so you can have lots of them and not that that much space even with a 256 GB SSD. So I think you're fine. And yes anything you download and install (import) in RealFlight will be stored in your documents folder.
Bill Stuntz
Well-known member
All my RF stuff is on drive C:. Including both RF7.5 & 8, it's about 5G in Documents & 14G in Program Files (x86). FYI, RF loads much more quickly from an SSD than from a rotating HD. I've moved all my photos, non-rf downloads, videos, etc. to HD from my SSD.
I can see the space used is around 7GB, but I don't know a thing about the details of the folders of Real Flight. IOW, I don't know what data is kept where. I was told that downloaded info is kept in the documents folder on drive C:. I know I can move that whole documents & settings folder structure to another drive, but I would really rather keep it where it is and just move only the Real Flight content to another drive. I wonder if there are editable settings, maybe an INI file, etc., where the user can change pointer settings to another drive letter and folder name.
If anyone has done the above, can you give me the details? I'd like to know how to do this, and what the eventual size allocations turned out to be. My goal is have the least used on drive C:, and whatever can be moved, placed on another drive.
Another member here just posted a screenshot of his Real Flight folder structure and it was quite large -- close to 7 GB. As far as I could see, this was all on drive C:. Is that mandatory? Bar In mind that I only have a foggy idea about the Real Flight installation, where things go, and for that matter, how many individual pieces there are to save. With other software, I have seen separate folders for aircraft, scenery, and then the main program itself. The program bits needed to be on C:, but those other folders could be moved. If the planes take up very little space, then okay, they aren't a worry. But I assume the scenery could be huge -- or is that not so?
BrokeDad
Well-known member
My older RF7.5 folder is 54.5GB as it has a lot of custom and downloaded stuff in it. My RF8 folder is already 23.4GB. Those are the ones in the documents folder. 
I'm not really worried as I have tons of terabytes of storage on my server rack/system that I share among all the PC's in my house. I don't really use the C: drive on PC's for much. The main drive on the simulator PC is 1 terabyte so it's still pretty empty.
I'm not really worried as I have tons of terabytes of storage on my server rack/system that I share among all the PC's in my house. I don't really use the C: drive on PC's for much. The main drive on the simulator PC is 1 terabyte so it's still pretty empty.
Bear in mind that I don't know how many parts there are to RF, so I do ~not~ have an overview of its structure. I was told that planes must go into the Documents & Settings folder, but that planes don't take up much space. However you just said you have 5GB there. So either you much have many, many aircraft, or else a lot more of other sorts of RF files are saved there. Sorry, these may seem like very basic questions, but it has been many years since I had a chance to look at the drive usage of RF, and even then, this was a much older version (and, I assume, a much simpler one). This means that I have idea about what you mean by "photos, non-rf downloads, videos, etc. ". So let me ask directly (to whoever might be able to answer this): What is the least amount of space I must have on drive C: with the latest RF, and what pieces can I move elsewhere?
technoid
Well-known member
Okay once more.
You can install RF8 on a different drive but it installs some files in two other places.
MAIN INSTALL (Can Be Drive C or another Drive)
7.55 GB
MY DOCUMENTS FOLDER
C:\Users\YOURNAME\Documents\RealFlight 8
15 to 20 MB
C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\KnifeEdge
153 MB
All your downloadable content will be stored in your Drive C My Documents folder and the size depends on how many planes you put there which can be in the GB(s) range if you store a lot of planes there. The Drive C Common Files area stays the same and is used for RealFlight operation and isn't affected by the planes you download.
If you're computer smart there used to be a way to MOVE your MY DOCUMENTS folder to another drive but I don't have Windows 10 and don't know if that still works, but it probably does.
I don't know what else to tell you, like you said it's not that hard. YES you will build up storage space in your My Documents folder unless you do something special to change where WINDOWS, not RealFlight, stores the My Documents folder
This is not the problem you seem to be making it. Grab RF8 and install it, that's the right thing to do if you have an older version of RealFlight.
Bill Stuntz
Well-known member
Unless you're actually running out of space on your SSD, I wouldn't worry about moving ANY of the RF stuff off it. Having it on the SSD makes it run better. But I WOULD recommend moving big infrequently accessed things off it - photos, videos, downloads, etc.
I left the default Documents, Pictures, Videos, Downloads, etc. directories in their default locations. Then I created "More Documents" "More Pictures" "More Downloads" etc. on my 3TB RAID array, and created shortcuts to the "more" directories in their corresponding "parent" directories so they're only 1 click away when I want to access the overflow. I moved all the photos I've accumulated over the years into the "More Photos" directory since I rarely access them any more. Same for the other classes of important/personal but infrequently accessed files. There's no sense in wasting fast but limited/expensive storage on files like that.
When I download an aircraft from the swaps, the un-imported original file is automatically saved in my "Downloads" directory. I run RF & import the aircraft, & then move the original file to "More Downloads\RealFlight" directory so I can re-import it into a new version of RF without having to re-download it. My "Downloads" directory stays relatively clean and small because I move pretty much everything out of it once I've used/installed/imported (or whatever) the downloaded file.
I do the same sort of thing with photos, etc... transfer from camera to "Pictures", crop/rename/sort etc. & then move them into the "More Pictures" directory on my RAID array to save the space on my SSD. I'm currently using about 100G on my 480G SSD, with the OS & all my programs installed on the SSD. I keep the stuff that needs to be fast on the SSD, & less speed-sensitive stuff goes onto my RAID array. RF needs the speed.
I left the default Documents, Pictures, Videos, Downloads, etc. directories in their default locations. Then I created "More Documents" "More Pictures" "More Downloads" etc. on my 3TB RAID array, and created shortcuts to the "more" directories in their corresponding "parent" directories so they're only 1 click away when I want to access the overflow. I moved all the photos I've accumulated over the years into the "More Photos" directory since I rarely access them any more. Same for the other classes of important/personal but infrequently accessed files. There's no sense in wasting fast but limited/expensive storage on files like that.
When I download an aircraft from the swaps, the un-imported original file is automatically saved in my "Downloads" directory. I run RF & import the aircraft, & then move the original file to "More Downloads\RealFlight" directory so I can re-import it into a new version of RF without having to re-download it. My "Downloads" directory stays relatively clean and small because I move pretty much everything out of it once I've used/installed/imported (or whatever) the downloaded file.
I do the same sort of thing with photos, etc... transfer from camera to "Pictures", crop/rename/sort etc. & then move them into the "More Pictures" directory on my RAID array to save the space on my SSD. I'm currently using about 100G on my 480G SSD, with the OS & all my programs installed on the SSD. I keep the stuff that needs to be fast on the SSD, & less speed-sensitive stuff goes onto my RAID array. RF needs the speed.
technoid
Well-known member
Yep that's what I do too I have everything related to RealFlight on my 512 GB M2 SSD so it's as fast as possible. Why buy an SSD if you're not going to take advantage of the speed it offers. But my post to the OP is because of his question, not my usage.
Thanks for the summary of size allocations. Your assumption that I'm assuming that there's a problem here is way off -- I don't know enough about RF to assume ~anything~ <g>.
With other flight sim software I used a long time ago, by far the largest amount of space was taken up by scenery, an aspect I have not heard mentioned about RF so far. For all I know folks run RF along with a DVD disk running in a reader/burner at the same time. This is how other such programs were used back in the day. So users would often do a hack, change an INI setting, etc. to avoid this -- and migrating that DVD content made a huge difference in apparent speed. So the habit then was to put the main executable files on drive C;, scenery on some other drive, and aircraft wherever they chose. This is the world I recall, and why I've been asking questions here. Nothing more to it than that.....\
Just to be clear, let me mention once more that I have no knowledge, none, nada, about the various main sorts of data used by RF. The last time I looked around at the folder structure aspects of RF was many years ago in an old version. I do know about several other programs, but not RF. So any answers here to be given as if to almost a newby <g>.
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I think the info coming before this was all correct (I confess to skimming it). Thanks, knowledgeable users!
To say it in some other words, in case it helps: There are really only two categories of RealFlight files you need to consider here.
As others have pointed out, installing the software to another drive will save your precious SSD space, but in so doing you forgo the benefits of installing the software on the faster drive. You get to weigh the tradeoffs and make that call.
2) Custom content always goes in your Windows Documents folder. You cannot change this. RealFlight simply asks Windows where the Documents folder is and uses it. Others have pointed out that technically speaking you can tell Windows to put your Documents directory somewhere else if you really, really want. If you do that, RealFlight will find and use it in that other location because, again, it simply asks Windows where to find it. So it'll work. But I can't imagine more than .001% of users ever do this. I doubt you'd find it necessary or worthwhile.
If you're this cautious about cluttering up your SSD, I have to assume you've kept it very, very clean, meaning there is plenty of room to install RealFlight on it. My personal recommendation is that you allow yourself to do that. But it'll work fine either way.
To say it in some other words, in case it helps: There are really only two categories of RealFlight files you need to consider here.
- The software itself, which includes all stock content.
- Custom content, which includes both things that you yourself create and things that someone else has created which you have imported (e.g., all the stuff on the swap pages).
As others have pointed out, installing the software to another drive will save your precious SSD space, but in so doing you forgo the benefits of installing the software on the faster drive. You get to weigh the tradeoffs and make that call.
2) Custom content always goes in your Windows Documents folder. You cannot change this. RealFlight simply asks Windows where the Documents folder is and uses it. Others have pointed out that technically speaking you can tell Windows to put your Documents directory somewhere else if you really, really want. If you do that, RealFlight will find and use it in that other location because, again, it simply asks Windows where to find it. So it'll work. But I can't imagine more than .001% of users ever do this. I doubt you'd find it necessary or worthwhile.
If you're this cautious about cluttering up your SSD, I have to assume you've kept it very, very clean, meaning there is plenty of room to install RealFlight on it. My personal recommendation is that you allow yourself to do that. But it'll work fine either way.
JDH,
My newbie recommendations for you are;
Buy the RF8 Dvd disk from Tower. That way you will save yourself a lot of downloading and you will have this in case you need to reinstall it on your current pc or move it over to another pc.
Uninstall previous rf versions. Sounds like you already did this.
Do a bit of google research (realflight 8 requirements) and you will see it requires 10Gb of hard disk space. When you install rf8 it will ask you which drive you want to install it to. It will initially suggest your c drive (and folders). Just change the c to d if you want everything installed to your d drive. Don’t worry if this isn’t a high speed ssd drive. Rf8 will start up a bit faster with a ssd drive but because it’s pretty old school code it does not make any significant diff so don’t worry about it. If you go to more complex sims like Rfx it does make a big diff.
Once you get rf8 up and running you should check for updates (option on the rf8 launcher) and download/install this. The rf8 wizard walks ya all through this.
If you are using your old interlink controller rf8 will probably sense this and ask you if you want to calibrate it. Just select yes and it should take you through the calibration process.
Run rf8 in widowed mode (default). It works fine windowed and you don’t need to remember to switch it back from full screen mode before you shutdown rf8.
Follow these newbie instructions and I don’t think you will have any problems. Good luck and cheers,
My newbie recommendations for you are;
Buy the RF8 Dvd disk from Tower. That way you will save yourself a lot of downloading and you will have this in case you need to reinstall it on your current pc or move it over to another pc.
Uninstall previous rf versions. Sounds like you already did this.
Do a bit of google research (realflight 8 requirements) and you will see it requires 10Gb of hard disk space. When you install rf8 it will ask you which drive you want to install it to. It will initially suggest your c drive (and folders). Just change the c to d if you want everything installed to your d drive. Don’t worry if this isn’t a high speed ssd drive. Rf8 will start up a bit faster with a ssd drive but because it’s pretty old school code it does not make any significant diff so don’t worry about it. If you go to more complex sims like Rfx it does make a big diff.
Once you get rf8 up and running you should check for updates (option on the rf8 launcher) and download/install this. The rf8 wizard walks ya all through this.
If you are using your old interlink controller rf8 will probably sense this and ask you if you want to calibrate it. Just select yes and it should take you through the calibration process.
Run rf8 in widowed mode (default). It works fine windowed and you don’t need to remember to switch it back from full screen mode before you shutdown rf8.
Follow these newbie instructions and I don’t think you will have any problems. Good luck and cheers,
Thanks to you (and others) for your good suggestions.
Apparently I began all this with some very wrong impressions. I thought that RF8 was ~huge~ when fully configured. 5 to 10GB doesn't bother me and having that amount on Drive C is no problem here. However I read someplace that with all the scenery (bear in mind that I'm not clear on what scenery the program comes with by default -- the whole planet?), that 3-4 DVD's worth of space would be needed. Then there are the Expansion Packs (I also have some of what they used to call "Add-Ons" -- I have no idea how "Add-Ons" differ from "Expansion Packs"). So I just went through all my old boxes and found: RF 4.0, RF 4.5 Upgrade, Exp Pack 6 (12 planes, 5 copters, 3 flying sites, etc.), and also many earlier Exp packs from RF ver 3 (1, 1 v2, 2, 3, 4), and 4 more disks labeled "Add-Ons". All this adds up to ~many~ DVDs, thus my thought that a much later version would be even bigger. Sorry about even more verbage here... just trying to explain my initial viewpoint to those who may have become irritated <g>.
Not trying to drag this out, but.... Someone mentioned that the latest RF has much more detail than my older version by a large margin. However, someone else said that I could use my old Exp Packs with RF8 -- no need to buy more. But isn't my old material low-res by today's standards?
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flexible2g
New member
How it looks is because the environment in RF8 is a higher quality.
Bill Stuntz
Well-known member
I'm 99% sure that the expansion & add-on packs are CD's, not DVDs. So they probably aren't anywhere near as big as you think they are.
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