Last week I finally decided to try the FBW mod for the A320neo since the USA update broke the default A320 (which I had been using). I’m someone who never used any mods or add ons before (except for a livery pack) and I thought the mod was okay.
However, one of the major issues I experienced was a noticeable loss of FPS while using the mod. It was unbearable and frustrating so I deleted it and now I’m stuck waiting for the default to hopefully get fixed soon since it was performing smoothly for me in terms of FPS. My brand new gaming PC has been able to handle medium-high settings on everything with the default airliners, even though I have some less important settings set to low just to reduce CPU stress. I also tried everything I could think of to raise my FPS back, but it turned into me lowering pretty much all of my settings to low/medium which I didn’t like. It was even bad at smaller airports with less traffic and buildings.
Has anyone else also suffered FPS loss while using the FBW mod?
It does reduce framerate by about 5-10fps give or take for me. It varies based on system which is probably why PIC4506 hasn’t seen a real impact. You have to understand the difference between using built-in aircraft and mods and third party aircraft in general.
In flight sims in general, 3rd-party aircraft and or mods to the original aircraft will always impact performance to some degree because of the added system depth. In the case of FBW, the culprit is currently the separated PFDs and MFDs so that now each screen on captain and FO side run independently using way more resources. This usually isn’t a major issue with dedicated third-party aircraft (only time will tell with this) but this is a new flight sim that still needs further optimizations with making these systems more resource efficient. The FBW devs even addressed this and are working on optimizing it over time but they are limited currently in what they can do considering they are working with a default aircraft and not one from scratch. They also said in the meantime once they get everything sorted out they may add an option to toggle the systems as independent or together like the default for those who have major fps loss. This can be seen in that the stable version of the mod which does not have the independent systems yet but it does not work with the latest version of the sim (last I have seen anyway).
The FBW mod uses a 4K quality cockpit textures. So without a powerful GPU with a lot of VRAM, you would lose FPS in the cokcpit. (I believe this is your 3rd post saying the same thing?)
If you want, you can look for the default texture file from the Official A320 folder. And you can go to the A32NX mod, and look for the cockpit texture file there as well. Then replace the texture file with the one from the official A320 folder.
That way, (theoretically) the FBW mod will use the default A320 texture which will improve your FPS albeit with a blurry cockpit.
Actually, this is my first topic post on this issue. My only other topic was in regards to the multiple things I noticed about the mod and some things I didn’t like. Yes, this was one of the issues I mentioned in that topic, but I decided to start a topic focusing on simply FPS loss using the mod.
Yeah, it’s a similar loss for me and since I don’t have a super PC or super GPU, I suppose I’m feeling the impact more. Hopefully, like you said, they’ll fix this issue over time, but I guess in the meantime I’ll continue to be patient and wait for the default A320 to be fixed (since at least it ran butter smooth on my PC even at large, detailed airports).
Yes, having more working features is added realism, but smooth FPS performance makes it feel even more realistic.
Maybe, I’ll have to re-download the mod since I deleted it.
However, having a blurry cockpit would kind of ■■■■ and I’m not great with moving files around like you said. I’d rather not take a chance ruining the sim any more. I’d rather play it safe and wait it out (as I’ve been trying to do).
I found that turning down the brightness of the FO displays all the way gives an easy 10fps extra in the A32NX mod ever since they introduced de-coupled screens in 0.4.x or so.
Well the cockpit would be as blurry as the default A320. It’s probably not too blurry for you, but since I’m used to the high-res of the mod cockpit texture, looking back to the default A320 is considered blurry for me.
My native A320neo kept working fine even after World Update II.
It just started to fail to follow the route on AP after the latest so called hotfix (I still haven’t a clue what it fixes or breaks again instead) published the other day.
Once the AP is tuned into, it now keeps spinning around the airport in big circles and then crashes on the nearest hill.
I can say unequivocally that I don’t experience any adverse FPS issues using FBW mod.
What I will say, is don’t be surprised in the foreseeable future when 3rd party study level aircraft are finally made available for us in this platform, that there is every chance we will see a drop in FPS.
And as FBW continue to push the envelope with the current Asobo A320 and implement more accurate systems, don’t be surprised if eventually we see a reduction in FPS.
I have experienced this in the other previous flightsim platforms namely FSX and P3D. And it’s due to the fact that study level aircraft contain highly complex systems which replicate many/most of the actual systems of the aircraft they are emulating. This requires way more CPU power in addition to the external/internal models of the aircraft pulling more GPU power.
Currently, my cpu (i7 8700K @ 4.7Ghz) is of an excellent standard. However,I will be upgrading my current GPU (1070Ti) to a RTX3000 card sometime next year to accommodate any study level aircraft in an efffort to keep my FPS up and smoothness/visuals in check.
Any FPS loss you may be sufffering is more than likely due to a particular or speciific series of settings - or, one of your hardware pieces (GPU/CPU) is not performing as it should.