PSA for Long-Haulers: Disable your MSFS 2024 Rolling Cache immediately (Especially if you have fast internet & 32GB RAM)
Hey everyone, I wanted to share a massive architectural fix I stumbled across after fighting brutal day-to-day stuttering during back-to-back
4 to 8-hour cross-continental flights.
I know some of you may know this but i wanted to share this with everyone to be clear.
So If you are flying long-hauls to a different countries / continent every few days, have a fast internet connection ( like 80 or 100 + Mbps ), and lots of RAM 32gb and above, the MSFS 2024 Rolling Cache is actively killing your performance.
Here is the technical reality of why the standard "leave cache on" advice is completely wrong for long-haulers, and the data to prove it.
## 1. My 59 GB RAM Cache Bloat (Windows Standby Memory Trap)
The rolling cache uses a basic "First-In, First-Out" file (rollingcache.ccc).
On a 4 to 8-hour flight across oceans and borders, you cover thousands of miles of brand-new terrain. The data streamed during the first few hours of cruise is completely useless to your PC by the time you are executing your arrival.
Because the simulator aggressively writes gigabytes of shifting data to that local file.
the Windows 11 memory manager (SysMain) tries to be clever. It mirrors that entire massive cache file directly into your system's Standby Cached RAM.
Before I disabled it, my 64 GB system was being completely choked because 59 GB of it was being cached by Windows just to track a cache file I didn't even need!
On a 64GB system, this completely suffocates your hardware's breathing room.
* On 16GB/32GB systems, this causes Windows to forcefully purge memory or dump active data into the slow virtual pagefile mid-flight, triggering those sudden, massive stutters or direct Crashes to Desktop (CTDs) on final approach.
2. The World Map Frame Drop (Locked 72 FPS vs. 46 FPS)
With the cache on, zooming in and out on the World Map forces the simulator to rapidly download, read, write, and index hundreds of tiny satellite tiles onto your drive. Even on fast internet, making your SSD act as a middleman creates a massive disk I/O bottleneck.
My frames used to plummet from a locked 72 FPS down to 46 FPS just by zooming around the map.
After setting the cache to 0.0 GB via the folder deletion workaround, the simulator shifted into a pure network pass-through mode. The map now instantly streams textures straight to my RAM/VRAM, keeping my frames rock-solid at 69–71 FPS.
## 3. The "One Day Smooth, One Day Terrible" Cycle
The rolling cache was designed for VFR pilots flying short, repetitive loops around their hometown. If you fly to different continents every day, once that cache fills up, your next flight becomes a stuttering nightmare. For every single new scenery tile downloaded, your CPU has to pause, search the full cache database, delete a file from yesterday's continent, update the index, and write the new tile to the disk. This non-stop background write loop completely saturates your SSD controller and causes massive CPU temperature spikes at startup.
if you're using FSLTL
## 4. How It Saves Your FSLTL Ground Performance
FSLTL traffic data injector lives strictly in your active RAM it isn't saved in the rolling cache. However, the cache degrades FSLTL anyway through resource starvation. When arriving at a massive international hub airport, your hardware has to do two heavy tasks simultaneously: calculate/render 50+ FSLTL planes spawning at the gates, while the cache aggressively hammers your SSD to delete old textures and write new airport scenery. By killing the rolling cache, you completely remove the hard drive writing layer. Your CPU handles the photogrammetry streams over your network effortlessly, leaving it 100% free to process FSLTL traffic with zero ground stutters.
## 5. The Endless Maintenance Loop & SSD Hammering (Why Hassle?)
Veteran long-haulers already recommend manually deleting the rolling cache every 2 or 3 long trips just to claw back degraded performance. On top of that, Asobo officially recommends deleting it after every single Sim Update to prevent file corruption, mismatched runway objects, and sudden Crashes to Desktop (CTDs). Even if you set a massive 65 GB cache, after just 3 or 4 long flights it fills up, forcing the engine into an aggressive loop that completely hammers your SSD with constant writes and deletes. You are forced to constantly wipe it and start over from scratch anyway so why hassle with keeping it on?
## The Fix: Because MSFS 2024 doesn't have a simple turn-off toggle like 2020 did, you have to bypass the system:
- Go to Options > General > Data and change your Rolling Cache path to a new, dummy folder on your desktop. Save and exit the sim.
- Delete that dummy folder from your Windows File Explorer completely.
- Relaunch the sim. The engine will fail to find the path at startup and will automatically flag the cache allocation state to Disabled (0.0 GB) for the session, cleanly bypassing the file-writing code mid-flight. (Also, if you like
make sure you ( download & install ) your base contents and the world updates locally from the Marketplace to save your CPU from network decoding overhead!)
If you do long-hauls on a Mid/high-end rig, give this a shot. It turns MSFS 2024 back into a purified, local simulator and lets your internet do what it's actually good at.