I see the benefits of the new LOD system, but on my VR system (RTX 4090 and pimax crystal OG) the performance penalties are very significant, especially on the ground at a large airport.
Performance is far worse now compared with previous beta 2 and 3 versions and all without any benefices on visual quality (Playing on Ultra and “Godlike resolution” in VD). Basically back to unplayable.
Since i have frames locked at 36. All i have to go by is ram usage and my headroom. Cpu and gpu hasnt changed from SU2, AND still have 30% left. In small aircraft with it overcast. And stays pretty constant. No issues with ground textures, theyve been good for a long while. Ram usage still spikes and get that warning. But that goes away after i start rolling. Its everything else thats mucked up.
Xbox series x
300mbps wired connection
Nothing downloaded
Empty cache
Live weather
A321lr
Started flight from Vabb in India. Ultra smooth take off and climb, very heavy fog at Vabb so couldn’t make out LOD. Ultra smooth for eight hours to EFKK in Finland. Approaching Finland and there was heavy storm clouds that were mesmerising to look at, I’ve never seen anything like it and it was quite humbling. Began descent into the clouds and was hit with battering rain, never seen anything like that either. Began configuring the plane, then on approach it started falling out the sky. But I don’t think any fault of the sim. I figured I’d configured the plane incorrectly as I didn’t read the vfe strips correctly, my fault as I wasn’t wearing my glasses and they are very faint so I didn’t realise they were there, I thought they were missing. So I more or less guessed flap settings. And because of the extreme battering rain I couldn’t see a thing and crashed. So I restarted the sim and took off on a clear day from Liverpool, climbed 10000 feet and tested the flaps, lowering speed and wearing my glasses, there they were, the VFE amber strips. I lowered and lowered speed, watched the VFE strips, lowered flaps accordingly and the plane flew perfectly. Raised and raised speed, raised flaps accordingly and the plane again flew perfectly. I’ve got another flight in the morning from Canada to Florida so looking forward to that. If anyone fancies an interesting flight right now I’d recommend one into EFKK as I’m guessing it’s still hammering it down over there. Sorry, I’ve just realised I’ve posted this in the wrong section
Extremely poor performance around any handcrafted airport. 5090 moves from 45 fps to 15 just looking at or near a detailed airport (example FlyTampa KBOS). in SU2, there is still a drop but it’s more like 45 to 25. SU3 is unusable even on the July 2 version. Asobo this must be an easy fix. FS2020 doesn’t do it.
Everything went perfectly in my flight tonight in VR in the Cessna 172. I can see the LOD changing at times but it’s smooth and you have to be looking for it. I’m impressed.
This is by far the worst beta release yet for VR. It has literally halved my frame rate at custom airports to render it completely unplayable.
I have rolled back to SU2 because at least it’s useable in VR despite it’s problems.
I’m afraid that if this is the release candidate for SU3 that I will have no choice but to go back (yet again) to 2020.
Horrible
Performance is dreadful in su3 beta, 50% less at major airports which makes VR unusable for me with a Pimax crystal and 5080. VRAM not an issue with sensible settings however overall performance is very bad. Will likely return to 2020 if not significantly improved prior to release
I found that performance somehow alleviates with “PLANTS” turned off or at least reduced. There is a problem with their LODs I think. I found a place (parked at Cipiéres Altisurface - LF0652 in MSFS is named differently but… a bit North of Cannes France - NO MODS) where looking southwards I have 32 FPS in VR although I see grass and my plane… turning 180° immediately and repeatedly makes FPS to tank to half!! 15FPS. There is nothing there than a valley and further away nothing but rolling hills.
So I started to turn off options that used to work “just fine” for me. and when I turned the Plants from Ultra to Lower or Off the FPS recovered back to 32. No other setting could do that. Rocks, Clouds. Trees… Nothing had that dramatic effect. Repeatedly!
I don’t even understand what are the plants? Cactuses? In that case there is nothing visually changing with plants Ultra or plants Off. But the Lods must be a problem in the distance if there are some 1000 plants further away that are not physically rendered but are calculated.
I also think there are some really bad optimisations in the game engine so far:
There seems to be a bad rounding up in precision on rendering grass which makes grass look shimmery and bad further away even with huge super sampling resolution (Godlike in VD 3120x3120 per eye) . Could be something from DLSS. My opinion is that looks like a imprecision in placing grass for the two eyes thus the result is something like “each blade of grass is seen in a different place by each eye further away it gets from subject.” It seems like this because recording video (2D) of a VR session has no problems experienced in game. The video has information just for one eye.
The terrain resolution is really low now. In some places it looks awful. Try to fly around Devoluy (South of Notre-Dame de la Salette… and North of Gap city in South of France) there is an area ov confluence between newly 3D photogrammetry terrain that has also good aerialsand along side from some altitude you have basically super low resolution terrain… Ultra settings and Godlike resolution in VD)
I think a solution would be to add more options for PC to give us the possibility to control these things that fluctuates from patch to patch.
Another poster “DanyLavoie” found the cause for the 50% loss of frames over in the “Extreme low FPS at handcrafted airports in VR” thread.
It’s the MSFS Foveated Rendering. Disable it and us the OpenXR Toolkit Foveated Rendering instead and it fixes it (well for me anyway). It’s still pretty naff but only as naff as it used to be prior to 1.5.13.0.
I’m running a BSB with Steam VR and frame rates away from airports are super smooth. I do see slight stutters at airports and KSAN was a slide show one visit for some reason and not as bad other times. I suspect it was scenery streaming but not certain.
But in the air I generally get completely smooth frames. i9 13900, 64GB DDR5 at 5.4 GHz, Win11, DX12. 1.5.13.0 wasn’t much change for me I think. I didn’t notice much performance difference from 12 but I’ve never had frames this smooth in FS since 12 and maybe 13.
I’m currently on the latest SU3 beta and I’ve noticed that now by default the New LOD Curve is enabled. I only fly in VR so I can’t speak for 2D but what I have noticed is that my FPS drops to the teens when sitting at KJFK with ULTRA settings. The moment I disable the New LOD Curve, my FPS goes back to around 30. I know I can easily disable the new curve in the developers mode but every time I start FS2024, the new lod curve is once again enabled. Is there a way I can permanently disable the new lod curve without having to do it every time I start FS2024.
Maybe it’s a good idea to lower the LOD settings a bit until a On/Off setting is made for VR mode.
The new LOD system obviously shows more details now and besides lowering Traffic settings (which are still not based on real numbers but a percentage) it can show from 10-50 planes on low setting, which is a huge difference. Medium and High are even worse. 75-180 planes in a big circle around the player. And that’s only airtraffic, same percentages can happen for Animals, Ground traffic etc.
You dont want 1000 animated cows in short distance, or maybe you do (cows are nice). ^^
A good example was the release version of KOS from GAYA (MSFS2020), I wouldn’t normaly name them but in this example it’s needed.
They had about 1400+/- (I forgot) birds flying near KOS airport, you couldn’t even see them most of the time but FPS dropped from 60-70 to less then 10 . Just for “some” animated birds. They fixed that problem rapidly though, so all is good.
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