For those with higher end PC's not happy with the current graphics, come on in

[danzio56]

I can’t take credit for this but I heard a little chatter in some other posts so I thought I’d give this a try and at least for me, and at least for one flight in particular (the only one I’ve completed since implementing this) it worked quite well. I by no means have a God Like PC.

i7-10700K @4.8, RTX 3070, 32GB RAM @3200. I’m running all settings on Ultra, 2560 x 1440 monitor at 150% Render Scaling with in-game settings for Terrain and Object LOD at 200%.

I am seeing just a slight bit of artifacting on a few external view screens but it is nothing serious and probably could be eliminated by bringing those settings down just a bit. Also I’m still seeing high frame rates near or in the 60’s.

A simple change of a digit in the user.cfg made this difference. Under “Graphics” change the 2.0000 to 4.0000 and then make the file read only in properties then save.

I did experience a CTD on my first start-up just after loading into the cockpit of the TBM but after a re-load I was able to complete my flight and feel that the graphics are very close to what they were pre SU5. Again, this was just one flight so more trials are needed but I’m encouraged and wanted to share this.

Keep in mind being this is now a read only file you will need to change it back prior to any future updates.

Below is the part of the file that I changed. Terrain LOD and Objects LOD. Simply change the 2’s to 4’s. And please, no flaming, I’m just sharing something that seems to be a workaround (at least for me), not a fix for what has happened with SU5 in general.

Good luck fellow simmers!

{Graphics
Version 1.1.0
Preset Custom
{Texture
MaxAnisotropy 8
Quality 0
}
{SuperSampling
SuperSampling 3
}
{Terrain
LoDFactor 2.000000
}
{ObjectsLoD
LoDFactor 2.000000
}
{Shadows
MaxSliceCount 4

[danzio56]

Also, if you are so inclined as to try this, maybe you can report back here with your findings and PC specs so that others may benefit from your experience too.

[meh1951]

@danzio56

Terrain LOD and Objects LOD

It was a great tip.

I’m so super impressed with MSFS! Ever been curious about what the full potential of graphics looks like? LOD 9.00s No Photogrammetry melt as far as the eye can see

I changed mine to
Terrain LOD = 6 and Objects LOD = 6

For VR
Terrain LOD = 5 and Objects LOD = 5

The difference was night and day

[saschpe]

I own an AMD Radeon RX6900 XT, 32 GB RAM, 1 TB Samsung 980 Pro and an AMD Ryzen 5800X. I use an LG 34WK95U-W monitor on which I play the native 5K resolution with all settings cranked up to Ultra and some beyond (some texture stuff that goes further). I use render scale 100%. I’d say you can’t go any higher than this.

The graphics fidelity decreased substantially. So much so that the game looks like when I was playing with a NVidia GTX 1070 on an i7.

[danzio56]

Great to know. Apparently there is lots of headroom on these settings. I did not previously see the thread you linked but with so many people agonizing over SU5 it is good that these tweaks get a lot of exposure.

Thank you!

[danzio56]

But have you made the changes to the cfg file mentioned in the two posts above yours?

[saschpe]

Nope, I want a real fix. I might forget these modifications with the next Sim Update and get a month of random CTDs. I have to admit that this is the one thing that SU5 improved substantially for me. Before, I had plenty of crashes and assume it’s related to AMD graphics compared to using NVidia before (where I had no crashes). Since XBox is AMD based, I think the update did a lot of good in that regard.

[SubtotalGuide81]

Tried this already and it does work, but the culling causes extreme stutter after each camera move.

[YourMajesty80]

Where do I find the user.cfg in the Microsoft Store version? Thx!

[danzio56]

Fair enough, I want a real fix as well. But in the meantime I want to keep flying and the current situation without this workaround has been painful.

[danzio56]

likely: C, users, (your user name), AppData, Roaming, MicrosoftFlightSimulator

Could be different if you OS is not on C drive.

[wombatlemineur]

Will immediately try! Thank you.

[saschpe]

Just some examples near Svalbard. Cockpit looks 5K to me. Terrain looks bad. Could be that download servers are at their capacity limits but I made the screenshots 5 minutes ago and the terrain still looks funky.

[saschpe]

I just recall the tears of joy I had a month ago when doing a VFR flight across Iceland. That was the definition of amazing.

[wombatlemineur]

Ok folks, back with some test results. Imo room for improvement, but with some future update it looks promising.

[GarrisIiari]

@wombatlemineur

Ok folks, back with some test results. Imo room for improvement, but with some future update it looks promising.

Are you SURE it looks better? A user on Discord cranked all the LOD up to 10 and posted before and after shots of LAX and it didn’t look much different. Are we seeing a placebo/hope effect?

[wombatlemineur]

For me it looks better, yes. I am sure because I tested yesterday and I had horrible melting. With the load settings it seemed better.

[StarlessLion50]

I’m using 4/7 and it works well. I can fly at 4K Ultra and get just about 30 FPS with beautiful world detail. If I drop to 3/6 I get more FPS but I prefer the detail to the FPS as long as it’s at least 30.

Running a 3070, 5600x, 32 GB RAM, MSFS installed on an NVMe drive.

[GamingCat2130]

What does this feature do:

{Shadows
MaxSliceCount 4

Enables it more shadows and a higher amount of cloud shadowing and trees and scenery shadowing? I have never tried to modify this feature.

[ricksastro]

There are so many variables, it’s difficult to do A/B comparisons. As time goes on, I’m sure the load on the servers is lessening, which could have an impact to the “melting”. But the positive reinforcement makes one sure of the causation.