This is strange! I put the exact same settings like you have and tried to search the matching spot:
The above image was shot with ctrl + y being pressed in LOD400, so the plane was frozen.
The pic below was shot in actual flight mode in LOD400:
Seems like when freezing the plane with ctrl + y, your CPU is ways less under load (compare 58% vs 26%).
It’s also strange that my VRAM is already at over 7Gb in contrast to your setup, though everything is the same. Also i dont have these 40+ FPS in the rest of this area around LAX when actually flying…
Edit: I think the high CPU load on the second one can be ignored. I tested it again and found out that the CPU is under heavy load (fans are going up) when releaseing the plane from that ctrl + y mode. After about 5 seconds the CPU load drops back to about 25-30% in this scenario.
Edit2: Just for comparison i tested with lower LOD settings as well:
LOD300 ctrl + y mode:
LOD300 flight mode:
LOD200 ctrl + y mode:
LOD200 flight mode:
