Overview Modern MSFS add-ons often ship with 4K textures by default, which can significantly impact performance - especially with AI traffic and large airports. This guide highlights a simple, effective tool that allows you to downsize texture resolutions for AI traffic liveries (such as FSLTL) and airport textures, improving performance with minimal visual loss. Who This Guide Is ForUsers with heavy AI traffic setups People experiencing stutters at large airports Anyone running MSFS with extensive add-ons Users looking to improve smoothness without lowering in-sim graphics settings What This Tool Does The tool allows you to: Batch-resize texture files Convert 4K textures to lower resolutions (e.g. 2048×1152) Reduce VRAM usage Improve CPU/GPU frame pacing Reduce stutters at busy airportsIt is particularly effective for: AI traffic liveries (FSLTL, AIG, etc.) Large scenery packages Airports with excessive texture resolution Why This Helps Performance In Microsoft Flight Simulator, AI traffic and scenery textures: are loaded simultaneously compete for VRAM increase draw-call pressure Reducing AI livery resolution from 4K to 2048: preserves acceptable visual quality (AI aircraft are rarely viewed close-up) significantly reduces memory bandwidth usage improves smoothness at busy hubs The Tool MSFS Texture Optimiser[izn-flightsim.s3.amazonaws.com] I found this tool via a flight sim forum, created by a very talented fellow simmer. It is: lightweight straightforward and does exactly what it claims How I Use It (Example) I used this tool to downsize FSLTL AI traffic liveries. Original resolution: 4K New resolution: 2048 × 1152 Why 2048?: 2048 maintains near-identical visual fidelity at typical viewing distances while significantly reducing VRAM usage and stutter risk. 4096 textures are often unnecessary unless inspecting aircraft at very close range. Result: noticeable performance improvement no meaningful visual downgrade for AI traffic smoother camera movement at large airports The same approach can be applied to: airport texture folders scenery packages with excessive texture resolution Tutorial Do not be put off by the developer's comment that non-fluency with the cmd prompt should exclude you from using this tool. It is very easy to use once you get your head around it. Please be mindful of the different spellings (British and American) of optimiser/optimizer. Unzipping the texture optimising program and installing it First, place your unzipped texture optimizer folder on your desktop for ease of access. I renamed it "textureoptimiser." Now, run the executable located in the folder. When prompted, select the installation directory of the folder on the desktop, in my case "textureoptimiser" and install into that. Download and install the ‘Compressonator.’ Second, download and install the two programs you are directed to in the guide. The guide is located in the installation folder. Install “Compressonator” to C: (recommended for simplicity). Place/install "texconv.exe" in the "bin CLI" folder inside the root folder for the compressonator e.g. C: Compressonator bin CLI Copy textures root folder (e.g. fsltl-traffic-base) to your desktop Next, copy the root folder of your traffic addon to your desktop for ease of access. E.g. fsltl-traffic-base Run CMD (command prompt) Now click search on the Windows lower taskbar, and enter "cmd" without quotations and hit enter. Next, direct the cmd program to the installation folder of the "Texture Optimizer" so it can run the executable. As it's on the desktop, I wrote the following into the prompt: cd C: Users <YourName> Desktop textureoptimiser Keep the cmd window open. Now, run the texture optimiser to downgrade the textures to either: 2048 1024 512 256 For example, to do this, in the cmd prompt write textureoptimizer -source "C:/Users/<YourName>/Desktop/fsltl-traffic-base" -resolution 2048 Note: The executable uses the American spelling “optimizer.” When typing commands, use the exact spelling shown by the program. If you are unsure of your Windows username, open File Explorer and click “This PC / Local Disk (C:) / Users” to see your folder name. The texture optimiser should run. It can take a while, depending on CPU and drive speeds. Leave the cmd window open as it downgrades the textures. You should see a percentage rate increasing up to 100% until all textures are optimised. You will see something like "TOTAL SIZE OF INPUT FILES PROCESSED: 48.3 GB TOTAL SIZE OF OUTPUT FILES PROCESSED: 20.3 GB" at the end of the optimisation process. That is when you can safely close the cmd prompt. Once it's done, it will create a new folder in the same directory as the source folder is located in (e.g. my desktop), denoted "-OPTIMIZED". This means you will have a backup folder in case anything has gone wrong. Final steps Finally, delete the traffic root folder from your Community folder and place the "-OPTIMIZED" folder into the Community folder, and rename it so it is named the same as the original folder e.g. "fsltl-traffic-base". That should be you done. Remember that every time the traffic addon receives models updates, you will have to repeat the entire process after updating from the addon installer. If you have any issues, please feel free to comment below. Troubleshooting assistance is provided in the guide that comes with the texture optimiser tool. Important Notes Always back up textures before modifying them as a precaution - although the optimiser should create a separate folder denoted "-OPTIMIZED" anyway AI liveries are ideal candidates for downscaling Avoid aggressive downsizing for cockpit textures or aircraft you fly manually This is a performance optimisation, not a visual overhaul Note: These optimisation principles are also likely to apply to MSFS 2024 due to shared engine heritage, but this guide is written and tested for MSFS 2020.