Is anyone know when/if MSFS 2020 or 24 will support Direct Storage 2.0?
IslandSimPilot recently did a vid on thisâŠwill give you the whole story.
Note for Nord VPN users, thereâs a conflict with Direct Storage.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3osxxjVudg4
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Games need explicit support for direct storage to benefit from it ! The devs need to specifically implement its use in the game. When asked on a recent dev stream if MSFS 2024 will use direct storage, the devs had no clue if it did or not !! That tells me 2024 does not use direct storage which is a shame because it enables decompression of object assets in a fraction of the time as it is done directly on the GPU, bypassing the CPU which dramatically improves performance.
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This might be a silly question, but can anyone explain why I canât find a single reference to âDirect Storage 2.0â?
Hmm ⊠I personally would explain the benefits in a slightly different way.
The main tradeoff IMHO is:
- A) raw bus speed (data transfer) of a raw file (e.g. texture) ⊠vs
- B) raw bus speed (data transfer) of a smaller file + decompression time (with added memory footprint for a second e.g. texture copy during decompression)
The âbypassing the file system layer overheadâ by allowing âdirect GPU PCI to SSD PCI interaction at the low kernel levelâ might not really have any significant benefits for MSFS.
I would also not assume dramatic speed differences in decompression between a GPU and (modern) CPU.
This is a classical tradeoff problem and I do not think that there is an âalways trueâ answer here. It might greatly depend on the kind of assets and the way in with loading is handled by the game engine.
I think in one of the interviews Sebastian did mention that they are not happy with the compression-decompression performance. And so I would guess that they do benchmark such stuff ⊠and will make the correct choices which fit the architecture.
(P.S: Just to be clear, I do not think that Sebastian was talking about DirectStorage compression, but rather compression related to loading assets from the server. But my point is that Asobo does benchmark their code and does understand the tradeoff they are making)
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One of my favorite YouTubers.
⊠and just to follow up to my own post with some of my more âorder of magnitudeâ assumptions.
MSFS2024 is planning with around 100 Mbps network connections. If I can saturate that link then I get around 10 MB/s of new data into my system.
At a very optimistic 1:10 compression ration (which for JSON is normal, but for textures would seem very optimistic) that means the game at best can introduce 100 MB/s of new data ⊠or 0,1 GB/s.
Now when I look todays GPUs with say a PCIe 4.0 x 4 connection, then we are looking at around 8 GB/s raw data transfer speed on a dedicated bus. So compared to the maximum of new (streamed) data intake from the network that is around factor 100 faster.
This why I think that DirectStorage seems to be solving a problem which open world games like MSFS do not have.
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- Itâs written as one word: DirectStorage
- The latest version is 1.2, not 2.0
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Google is smart enough that the space doesnât make any difference.
So we have a completely misleading topic title, and a video from an absolute idiot.
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Why? This video appears to be 100% genuine BS.
DirectStorage 2.0 doesnât apparently exist. The latest version is 1.2 which was released in 2023 and I canât find any evidence of changes to it in W11 24H2.
The consensus also seems to be that MSFS has never used DirectStorage in any form.
Looking for more general gaming performance improvements in 24H2 doesnât find anything useful either. If anything, quite the opposite.
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Latest version of Directstorage is 1.2.3 so if youâve read about Directstorage 2.0 somewhere, it means that person doesnât quite know what theyâre talking about.
FYI, if Asobo doesnât add the ability to use Directstorage, thereâs no need to switch to the bug-ridden version of Windows 11 24H2.
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Itâs his overall body of work. He looks at things other donât, tests them himself, doesnât stray away from the sim, and in general has given me info I can use in my decision-making.
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Why do you say âquite the oppositeâ? I agree with the general point about DS, but 24H2 is generally the fastest version of Windows for gaming. The changes are small on average, but massive for some games.
After the vid post by IslandSimPilot I decided to give it a go even tough I didnât find any references to upgraded DirectStorage in Win 11 update.
Itâs understated that if it works itâs only in DX12 mode.
Thing is by desktop is starting to show its age. I only have 16GB of RAM and 8GB of VRAMâŠ
Changing to DX12 those limits are even more relavant.
And the new A380x was a perfect example to test it out since it eats VRAM like no other.
Loading times for me were the same in general.
In a test environament whithout any other addons with DX12 the RAM and VRAM were imediatly surpased and the FPS dropped hard to 10-12 in a standard airport cold and dark.
With DX11 with same conditions and no other change in graphics settings I got 25-30FPS and was able to complete a flight with the simrate at 2x with minimal sttuters.
Maybe not a good test environament to check the DirectStorage, but the impact in a system with not that much overhead with DX12 compared to DX11 is just not worth it. Even if DirectStorage is working and effectivly reduces the CPU workload, going with DX12 with addons and heavy aircraft the RAM and VRAM just canât handle it and theres goes the CPU benefits.
Cheers
they had their classic ââwtf are they talking aboutââ no clue face
Better forget about that feature I guess
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Mightâve been a bit hasty. Quick google suggested gaming problems, but it looks like that might be a specific issue with some online games.
If there are performance improvements though, itâs a â â â â situation for me and any other Reverb G2 owners. 
My motherboard has two M.2 slots that share lanes with the GPU.
I wonder if thatâs good or bad if DS is implemented.
Higher-end motherboards donât have lane sharing, leaving the GPU to have exclusive access to all 16 PCIe lanes. But what if the M.2 drives can talk to the GPU directly across that bus?
Amen to that.
Inexcuseable, IMHO.
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2020 would have benefited from directstorage. because the mainthread sometimes stops when loading big assets. As 2024 will have its mainthread relieved of some tasks maybe this wonât be an issue anymore. If it is still an issue, they really should look at direct storage imho. Or maybe it introduces some new issue we are not aware of?
Just pointing out that despite a loud chorus from some subset of people, Win11 24H2 has been great for some of us.
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