A Note for those on the fence on FlightSimulator

I have been playing since FS2000 and have logged over 5600HRS of flying, mostly IFR using real world charts. Like most dedicated FS folks I have spend $$$$ in scenery primarily with ORBX and other third party devs. After 5 hours of flying FlightSimulator; I am SOLD!!! The 3 flights that I did left me in awe…yes…there is a lot of refinement that needs to be done in rearguards to handling the jets…the props seem to have pretty consistent and reliable/realistic performance. But what MS and Asobo are bringing to the table far out strips any flight sim on the market right now in ALL areas! The 3rd party support is going to rival if not surpass FSX/P3D in short order. Having spent and invested so much time and money I was very cautious on making the move…I am NOT going back! The sim is that good. The experience from cold and dark on the ramp, to departure, to cruise, to the glorious approaches, and mind blowing landings CANNOT be rivaled or beat by ANY flight sim on the market! And we are talking default scenery in FlightSimulator. It’s only going to get better with time and 3rd party devs making this sim more detailed than anything on offer.

To run the sim on High settings with smooth frame rates you ARE going to need a beast of a PC: Latest CPU/GPU and M.2 NVME storage and fast RAM to get a great and consistent experience. I’m playing on a i9-10900k, 2080 Super, 32GB RAM, 1TB M.2 for OS, 1TB M.2 for Flight SIM, and 1TB M.2 for the Rolling Cache, and have everything on High at 1920x1080, with some options on Ultra, and I get smooth frames in MOST situations. Don’t expect to run this at 4K getting a solid 60FPS ALL the time, it won’t happen. It’s THE most impressive experience I’ve had simming! Nothing except a Leve-D sim or flying for real can beat it! If you have invested thousands of $$ in flight sim and are on the fence…in disbelief of the positive reviews, or not buying into the hype; I can assure you that you will NOT be disappointed if you bring the right hardware to the table to run this beast! Even if you have a mid-tired PC, I have seen very favorable performance on those systems for those willing to find out what settings have the most visual impact while not hampering your overall performance in the SIM.

Once this platform is refined, there will be no going back to FSX/P3D. I cannot say the same for x-plane as I did not take that route in my flight sim planning. RIP FSX/P3D…you served me well, but can no longer stand on their own against the beast that is FlightSimulator. No need to worry about 3rd devs such as Active Sky/Navigraph/GSX/ORBX etc…it’s clear where they can contribute to the sim and help improve the experience…there is PLENTY room for all those devs to make a contribution just as impactful as they did with the older platforms. I have not been this excited about flight sim since the days of FSX, and PMDG/ORBX. This folks is “As Real as it Gets!” Nothing comes close as the beast that is FlightSimulator!

Thank you so much for taking the time to read this post. Have a great day/ evening or night!

-Mark

6 Likes

Thanks, but this long text needs paragraphs.

1 Like

I have the same hardware as you besides the SSD. I only have (1) 1TB ssd .
But I’m still struggling with stutters on high settings. I’m playing on 1440p. I tried lowering some other settings but still have the stutters. Did you make any optimizations?

1 Like

Yes. I will look tonight and post what my settings are. Also make sure to set the FlightSimulator.exe file to High Priority in windows. I will find the video that lists some steps to take to gain around 10-20fps. I am using custom settings in the graphics settings and will post those tonight to help ya out. Your system should be able to get smooth performance, but you will need to do custom settings to get it all right for your rig. If you can also bump down to 1920x1080, that’s going to make a big difference in getting the sim to run smooth. Also pop out the VFR Map in flight sim and minimize it or move it to another monitor, I got 10FPS boost just by doing that.

Well said.
FS2020 is not as polished as we all want it to be. There are plenty of things that need to be fixed/improved/added. But the bottom line is - assuming things will be polished, fixed and so on - there is no going back to other sims. And I hate saying this, but even at the current state of FS2020, I’m just unable to use any other sim. It’s an entirely different experience, light years ahead of what we were used to up until a few weeks ago. Feels like ages already!

2 Likes

I’m of a different opinion, once I got over the wow factor of the scenery, the bugs became a glaring annoyance. I find myself already playing it less and less… I hope that the updates start rolling out soon, because so far I am completely underwhelmed. FSX held more appeal for me in its day and I put in hundreds of hours, yes it took a long time for FSX to fully develop, so I have hope that MSFS will do so too - but after being bitten by MS Flight, I fear abandonment is the more likely future.

1 Like

VFR map pop out is a bug with FPS counter. Your FPS does not get doubled. It is just FPS counter adds individual FPS of game and popouts, showing false double amount.

1 Like

Okay I already made the changes like in the video but I still see some stuttering going on. Maybe a patch will fix this? How do you change the exe. file to priority on windows?
What did you do to have more frames?

I still get stutters too. Latest patch has less stutters for me.
Right mouse click on start bar (Task bar)
Select Task Manager
Select Details tab
Find the Flightsimulator.exe (it might be named a little different. I’m not at my pc now)
Right mouse click the exe and select Set Priority
Select High (Do not select Real Time)

https://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/89548-set-cpu-process-priority-applications-windows-10-a.html

Ok good! I thought it was just me getting these stutters. I spent so much money on this new pc and I was disappointed that it stutters but hopefully a patch will fix this. Now, as of setting it on high, does it effect the cpu?

It’s an interesting response, and I tend towards something similar. I must say that after the initial excitement of the first few days of using MSFS 2020, I am now less inclined to spend time with it. It feels unfinished, and I know there are (hopefully) quite a few patches and updates to come (some of them doubtless fairly substantial).

The things which annoy me about MSFS 2020 are the same things that degrade my experience - for instance, poor texturing in many places (it destroys the immersion for me), incomplete (or absent) systems, etc.

Performance, funnily enough, isn’t one of those things. I think I must be one of the lucky ones in that respect. Generally speaking I’ve managed a relatively trouble-free experience with MSFS 2020’s technical performance.

But I have started to set aside MSFS 2020. I’ve gone back to XP11 - it can’t compete with MSFS 2020 on the visual front, but what is there in XP11 is consistent, mature and, for the most part, fully-functioning (as far as I can see). It lacks MSFS 2020’s immediacy and accessibility, but it makes up for that by virtue of its more fully rounded-out nature. For me, simple things like being able to enjoy genuinely busy airports buzzing with activity (Traffic Global). MSFS 2020 just isn’t there. It feels dead, unpopulated. Like a pristine shell, gorgeous to look at, but lacking any semblance of personality.

Anyway, no harm in setting MSFS 2020 aside for a while. Let a few more patches and updates find their way into the sim and then come back, further down the line, to see how things may have hopefully improved.

doing this does what ?

Not really…just tells the CPU to give priority to FlightSimulator.exe. Might run a little warmer, but not by much.

I have to agree. “Out of the box” it is great. I had to keep adding so many refinements to FSX that I got tired of it, and spent a load on third party apps. I have to say that FSX gave me a great working knowledge of Windows, but that isn’t really what I wanted.

Switched to P3D determined to be done with MS. The next month MS announces MSFS 2020. So here I am, but much happier than before. Just waiting on third party jets.

Can you tell me your in-game settings?
Also, do you recommend me lowering down to a 1080p?