FS2024 Graphics Settings and Performance Guide (11/20/2024)

Link to FS2020 guide

Here is a detailed analysis of each graphics setting’s visual and performance impact in FS2024. haha


This guide is supposed to help you make decisions on visual impact versus CPU / GPU impact in the simulator.

Note that situational and hardware differences results can result different performance responses to individual settings,


System Specifications:

  • i9 9900k, @ 4.9 GHZ OC / UV with hyperthreading enabled

  • 32GB of 3400MHZ 17-19-19-38 DDR4 RAM with tightened secondary / tertiary timings

  • RTX 3080 at 1700 / 10001 MHZ @ 775mv, Rebar enabled but not forced

  • Windows 11 24H2 build 26100.2314

  • Nvidia drivers 566.14 with HAGS On.

  • 2560x1440 165hz FreeSync Monitor (G-Sync enabled)

  • FS2024 Client + Packages + Cache installed on an NVME SSD.


Methodology and Scenarios

Testing Methodology:

  • Tested on release build with all available World Updates

  • Overall frametime, GPU usage and VRAM usage are monitored through MSI Afterburner / Rivatuner Statistics Server, and Devmode FPS charts.

  • If a setting seemingly requires a restart to take effect, a standardized position will be used

  • CPU / GPU dependency of a setting is determined by contrasting the performance difference across settings in both CPU bottlenecked scenarios and GPU bottlenecked scenarios.


Testing Scenario:

Multiplayer: Off (Group Only)

Air Traffic: Off

Weather & Time: Custom, few clouds 12 PM

  • Camera angles kept static per each graphic setting

  • Testing locations vary between graphics settings


Test Settings:

Please note that the settings below are not meant to be copied and are only meant as a point of reference for testing, in order to force a severe bottleneck. Scroll down to “Settings Analysis” for recommended settings.

GPU Bottlenecking Test Settings (Baseline):

GRAPHICS


Display Mode: Fullscreen

HDR10: Grayed out / disabled

Full Screen Resolution: 2560X1440

Anti Aliasing: TAA

Render Scaling: 125 (Render Resolution: 3200x1800)

NVIDIA DLSS Frame Generation: Disabled

FidelityFX Sharpening: 100

V-Sync: Off

Nvidia Reflex Low Latency: Off

Frame Rate Limit: Grayed out / disabled

Dynamic Settings: Disabled

Global Rendering Quality: Custom


Advanced Settings

Terrain Level of Detail: 100

Off Screen Terrain Pre-Caching: Ultra

Displacement Mapping: On

Buildings: Ultra

Trees: Ultra

Plants: Ultra

Rocks: Ultra

Grass: Ultra

Objects Level of Detail: 100

Volumetric Clouds: Ultra

Texture Resolution: Ultra

Anisotropic Filtering: 16x

Texture Supersampling: 8x8

Water Waves: High

Raytraced Shadows: On

Shadow Maps: 2048

Terrain Shadows: 1024

Contact Shadows: Ultra

Windshield Effects: Medium

Ambient Occlusion: Ultra

Cubemap Reflections: 384

Raymarched Reflections: Ultra

Light Shafts: Ultra

Depth of Field: Ultra

Motion Blur: Off

Glass Cockpit Refresh Rate: High

Characters Quality: Ultra

Traffic airport quality: Off

Air Traffic: Off

Road traffic: Off

Sea traffic: Off

Fauna: Off

ONLINE


Data Connection

Photogrammetry: On

CPU Bottlenecking Test Settings:

GRAPHICS


Display Mode: Fullscreen

HDR10: Grayed out / disabled

Full Screen Resolution: 2560X1440

Anti Aliasing: Off

Render Scaling: 30 (Render Resolution: 3200x1800)

NVIDIA DLSS Frame Generation: Disabled

FidelityFX Sharpening: 100

V-Sync: Off

Nvidia Reflex Low Latency: Off

Frame Rate Limit: Grayed out / disabled

Dynamic Settings: Disabled

Global Rendering Quality: Custom


Advanced Settings

Terrain Level of Detail: 100

Off Screen Terrain Pre-Caching: Ultra

Displacement Mapping: On

Buildings: Ultra

Trees: Ultra

Plants: Ultra

Rocks: Ultra

Grass: Off

Objects Level of Detail: 100

Volumetric Clouds: Low

Texture Resolution: Ultra

Anisotropic Filtering: 16x

Texture Supersampling: Off

Water Waves: Low

Raytraced Shadows: Off

Shadow Maps: 768

Terrain Shadows: Off

Contact Shadows: Off

Windshield Effects: Medium

Ambient Occlusion: Off

Cubemap Reflections: 384

Raymarched Reflections: Off

Light Shafts: Ultra

Depth of Field: Ultra

Motion Blur: Off

Glass Cockpit Refresh Rate: High

Characters Quality: Ultra

Traffic airport quality: Off

Air Traffic: Off

Road traffic: Off

Sea traffic: Off

Fauna: Off

ONLINE


Data Connection

Photogrammetry: On


Foreword:

  • Fullscreen typically nets you the lowest performance loss

  • V-Sync is recommended to be disabled unless you can constantly maintain the same framerate as your display refresh rate, otherwise there will be frame pacing issues.

  • I suggest to force V-Sync via graphics driver instead of using sim implementation

  • Some settings were benchmarked at larger increments to save time.

  • Always set “Full Screen Resolution” to your native monitor resolution, and tweak rendering resolution with the “Render Scaling” slider. This ensures lowest input lag, and the UI will be as sharp as possible.


Settings Analysis

Click on imgsli link in order to get an uncompressed comparison.

(Alternatively, right click > view image in new tab,)

‘*’ - indicates that testing is incomplete

Graphics

Anti Aliasing

AMD FSR2, and Nvidia DLSS were tested in their own sections.

Anti Aliasing - Imgsli

Compressed Screenshots

Off

TAA

Recommended Setting: TAA

Performance Impact:

No measurable impact on CPU performance.

Under a GPU bottlenecked scenario:

Off gives 54.2 FPS

TAA gives 53.4 FPS (1.5% reduction)

Visual Impact:

  • TAA helps denoise Ambient Occlusion, Volumetric Clouds, and Raymarched Reflections, but blurs the image slightly and can add motion artifacts.

  • Running <100 Render Scaling with TAA enabled reconstructs the image to native resolution, netting the performance impact that would come with a lower resolution but the image quality similar to a higher resolution. This can be considered visually similar to FSR2.

|

Nvidia DLSS Upscaling

DLSS - Imgsli

Compressed Screenshots

Ultra Performance

Performance

Balanced

Quality

DLAA

TAA

Recommended Setting: Disabled (TAA)

Performance Impact:

No measurable impact on CPU performance.

Under a GPU bottlenecked scenario:

Ultra Performance (33% resolution) gave 61.1 FPS

Performance (50% resolution) gave 57.3 FPS (6.2% reduction)

Balanced (58% resolution) gave 55.1 FPS (9.8% reduction)

Quality (67% resolution) gave 52.6 FPS (13.9% reduction)

DLAA (100% resolution) gave 42.2 FPS (30.9% reduction)

TAA (100% resolution) gave 43.4 FPS (29.0% reduction)

Visual Impact:

  • Higher DLSS options increases the internal rendering resolution of the sim that DLSS upscales from.

  • The DLSS version in the sim is very outdated. You can get a considerable increase to image quality by updating to the latest DLL 3.8.10. Maybe by FS2028 they will start packaging it with the sim.

  • DLSS does not properly mask glass cockpit instruments and causes them to be unusable in many cases. The same is also true for FSR2. The fix for this issue was promised two years ago.

|

AMD FSR2 Upscaling

FSR2 - Imgsli

Compressed Screenshots

Ultra Performance

Performance

Balanced

Quality

TAA

Recommended Setting: Disabled (TAA)

Performance Impact:

No measurable impact on CPU performance.

Under a GPU bottlenecked scenario:

Ultra Performance (33% resolution) gave 62.4 FPS

Performance (50% resolution) gave 57.6 FPS (7.7% reduction)

Balanced (58% resolution) gave 55.6 FPS (10.9% reduction)

Quality (67% resolution) gave 52.8 FPS (15.4% reduction)

TAA (100% resolution) gave 43.9 FPS (29.7% reduction)

Visual Impact:

  • Higher FSR2 options increases the internal rendering resolution of the sim that FSR2 upscales from.

  • FSR2 does not properly mask glass cockpit instruments and causes them to be unusable in many cases. The same is also true for DLSS. The fix for this issue was promised two years ago.

|

Render Scaling

Render Scaling - Imgsli

Compressed Screenshots

50

75

100

125

150

Recommended Setting: 100

Performance Impact:

No measurable impact on CPU performance.

Under a GPU bottlenecked scenario:

  • Impact to GPU performance is highly subjective to your own graphics card’s scaling behaviour.

  • Increasing render resolution can quickly cripple performance if the graphics card runs out of VRAM.

50 gave 55.4 FPS

75 gave 46.7 FPS (15.7% reduction)

100 gave 40.5 FPS (26.9% reduction)

125 gave 15.5 FPS (72% reduction)

150 gave 10.4 FPS (81.2% reduction)

Visual Impact:

  • Controls the internal rendering resolution of the sim. Higher settings increases the amount of color samples for each final pixel.

  • Reflections, Ambient Occlusion, and Contact Shadows also scale with resolution.

|

AMD FidelityFX Sharpening

FFX CAS Sharpening - Imgsli

Compressed Screenshots

0

100

200

Recommended setting: User Preference

Performance Impact:

No measurable impact on CPU performance.

Under a GPU bottlenecked scenario:

Off gave 41.7 FPS

On (100) gave 41.4 FPS (0.7% reduction)

Visual Impact:

  • Sharpens textures without inducing as much edge aliasing or sharpening halos as a traditional sharpening algorithm.

|

Nvidia Reflex Low Latency

Recommended Setting: On

Performance Impact:

No measurable impact when CPU bottlenecked

Under a GPU bottlenecked scenario:

Off gave 24.1 FPS

On gave 23.9 FPS (0.8% reduction)

  • Whenever GPU bottlenecked in a 3d application, input lag increases tremendously regardless of framerate (minimum of one frame).

  • Nvidia Reflex Low Latency effectively forces the CPU to always be ever so slightly slower at processing a frame than the GPU, artifically introducing a slight CPU bottleneck. It can be interpreted as a dynamic FPS cap that engages slightly below your GPU’s potential FPS.

  • Ensures consistent input latency regardless of GPU load, but can induce slight stuttering.

  • Has no effect when CPU bottlenecked.

Visual Impact:

  • No visual impact

|

Terrain Level Of Detail

Photogrammetry:

Terrain LOD Photogrammetry - Imgsli

Compressed Screenshots

10

50

100

200

300

400


Autogen

Terrain LOD Autogen - Imgsli

Compressed Screenshots

10

50

100

200

300

400

Recommended Setting: 100

Performance Impact:

This setting impacts both CPU and GPU performance as it is increased. It also increase RAM usage.

Under a CPU bottlenecked scenario, in photogrammetric scenery:

10 gave 114.3 FPS

50 gave 105.2 FPS (8.0% reduction)

100 gave 102.0 FPS (10.8% reduction)

200 gave 87.5 FPS (23.4% reduction)

300 gave 79.1 FPS (30.8% reduction)

400 gave 73.1 FPS (36.0% reduction)

Under a GPU bottlenecked scenario, in photogrammetric scenery:

10 gave 74.0 FPS

50 gave 68.4 FPS (7.6% reduction)

100 gave 62.7 FPS (15.3% reduction)

200 gave 54.5 FPS (26.4% reduction)

300 gave 49.3 FPS (33.4% reduction)

400 gave 46.0 FPS (37.8% reduction)

Under a CPU bottlenecked scenario,: in autogenerated scenery:

10 gave 101.6 FPS

50 gave 95.8 FPS (5.7% reduction)

100 gave 87.8 FPS (13.6% reduction)

200 gave 76.1 FPS (25.1% reduction)

300 gave 66.1 FPS (34.9% reduction)

400 gave 60.1 FPS (40.8% reduction)

Under a GPU bottlenecked scenario, in autogenerated scenery:

10 gave 59.9 FPS

50 gave 50.4 FPS (15.9% reduction)

100 gave 44.4 FPS (25.9% reduction)

200 gave 39.3 FPS (34.4% reduction)

300 gave 35.5 FPS (40.7% reduction)

400 gave 33.4 FPS (44.2% reduction)

10 consumed 6300MB VRAM

50 consumed 6400MB VRAM (100MB increase)

100 consumed 6751MB VRAM (451MB increase)

200 consumed 7267MB VRAM (967MB increase)

300 consumed 8150MB VRAM (1850MB increase)

400 consumed 8868MB VRAM (2568MB increase)

Visual Impact:

  • Increases draw distance and LOD of trees, terrain, autogen, and photogrammetry.

  • Linear quality increase up to 100, but going past 100 leads to lower framerates with smaller visual impact.

|

Off Screen Terrain Pre-Caching

Recommended Setting: Ultra

Performance Impact:

  • This setting reduces the average CPU framerate, but reduces stutters by pre-caching terrain that is not visible on screen yet.

  • Results in a more consistent experience, at the cost of peak framerate.

No measurable impact on GPU performance.

Under a CPU bottlenecked scenario:

Low gave 70.2 FPS

Medium gave 68.4 FPS (2.6% reduction)

High gave 63.5 FPS (9.5% reduction)

Ultra gave 62.3 FPS (11.3% reduction)

Visual Impact:

  • No visual impact

|

Displacement Mapping

Displacement Mapping - Imgsli

Compressed Screenshots

On

Off

Recommended Setting: XX

Performance Impact:

Under a CPU bottlenecked scenario:

Off gave 67.6 FPS

On gave 64.9 FPS (4% reduction)

Under a GPU bottlenecked scenario:

Off gave 49.6 FPS

On gave 45.4 FPS (8.5% reduction)

Visual Impact:

  • Adds 3D detail / bumps to ground

|

Buildings

Imgsli

Compressed Screenshots

Low

Medium

High

Ultra

Recommended Setting: Ultra (high end)

Performance Impact:

Under a CPU bottlenecked scenario:

Low gave 98.1 FPS

Medium gave 97.2 FPS (0.9% reduction)

High gave 96.3 FPS (1.8% reduction)

Ultra gave 96.0 FPS (2.1% reduction)

Under a GPU bottlenecked scenario:

Low gave 50.2 FPS

Medium gave 49.2 FPS (2.0% reduction)

High gave 49.2 FPS (2.0% reduction)

Ultra gave 48.0 FPS (4.4% reduction)

Visual Impact:

  • Main impact on synthesized buildings.

  • Increases LOD and complexity of buildings

  • More buildings visible at distance at higher settings

|

Trees

Trees - Imgsli

Compressed Screenshots

Low

Medium

High

Ultra

Recommended Setting: High

Performance Impact:

Under a CPU bottlenecked scenario:

Low gave 92.9 FPS

Medium gave 92.4 FPS (0.5% reduction)

High gave 90.3 FPS (2.8% reduction)

Ultra gave 90.3 FPS (2.8% reduction)

Under a GPU bottlenecked scenario:

Low gave 49.1 FPS

Medium gave 45.1 FPS (8.1% reduction)

High gave 35 FPS (28.7% reduction)

Ultra gave 32.5 FPS (33.8% reduction)

Visual Impact:

  • Higher settings increase draw distance

  • Higher settings increases density and shading quality

  • Will have a larger impact in more forested areas

|

Plants

Plants - Imgsli

Compressed Screenshots

Off

Low

Medium

High

Ultra

Recommended Setting: High

Performance Impact:

No measurable impact to CPU performance

Under a GPU bottlenecked scenario:

Off gave 46.7 FPS,

Low gave 46.7 FPS (0.0% reduction)

Medium gave 46.3 FPS (0.9% reduction)

High gave 45.7 FPS (2.1% reduction)

Ultra gave 45.3 FPS (3.0% reduction)

Visual Impact:

  • Adjusts draw distance of plants / bushes.

|

Rocks

Rocks - Imgsli

Compressed Screenshots

Off

Low

Medium

High

Ultra

Recommended Setting: High

Performance Impact:

Under a CPU bottlenecked scenario:

Off gave 69.2 FPS,

Low gave 66.0 FPS (4.6% reduction)

Medium gave 64.5 FPS (6.8% reduction)

High gave 64.2 FPS (7.2% reduction)

Ultra gave 64.2 FPS (7.2% reduction)

Under a GPU bottlenecked scenario:

Off gave 52.3 FPS,

Low gave 52.3 FPS (0.0% reduction)

Medium gave 50.1 FPS (4.2% reduction)

High gave 50.1 FPS (4.2% reduction)

Ultra gave 49.7 FPS (5.0% reduction)

Visual Impact:

  • Adjusts quality and draw distance of rocks.

|

Grass

Grass - Imgsli

Compressed Screenshots

Off

Low

Medium

High

Ultra

Recommended Setting: High

Performance Impact:

No measurable impact to CPU performance

Under a GPU bottlenecked scenario:

Off gave 68.7 FPS,

Low gave 66.8 FPS (2.8% reduction)

Medium gave 65.5 FPS (4.7% reduction)

High gave 64.9 FPS (5.5% reduction)

Ultra gave 62.8 FPS (8.6% reduction)

Visual Impact:

  • Controls density and draw distance of 2d grass sprites.

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Objects Level of Detail

Objects LOD - Imgsli

Compressed Screenshots

10

50

100

150

200

Recommended Setting: 100*

Performance Impact:

Increases RAM usage with higher settings

Under a CPU bottlenecked scenario:

10 gave 54.2 FPS

50 gave 49.9 FPS (7.9% reduction)

100 gave 48.9 FPS (9.8% reduction)

150 gave 47.9 FPS (11.6% reduction)

200 gave 47.2 FPS (12.9% reduction)

Under a GPU bottlenecked scenario:

10 gave 48.2 FPS

50 gave 45.3 FPS (6.0% reduction)

100 gave 44.8 FPS (7.1% reduction)

150 gave 44.2 FPS (8.3% reduction)

200 gave 43.8 FPS (9.1% reduction)

Visual Impact:

  • Controls render distance of the LODS of various objects in the world, such as traffic cars, airport buildings, and planes.

|

Volumetric Clouds

Volumetric Clouds - Imgsli

Compressed Screenshots

Low

Medium

High

Ultra

Recommended Setting: High (mid range), Ultra (High end)

Performance Impact:

No measurable impact to CPU performance.

Under a GPU bottlenecked scenario:

Low gave 55.9 FPS

Medium gave 50.6 FPS (9.5% reduction)

High gave 46.3 FPS (17.2% reduction)

Ultra gave 43.4 FPS (22.4% reduction)

Visual Impact:

  • Controls cloud resolution

  • Anything below high looks like mashed potatoes :smiley:

Texture Resolution

Texture Resolution - Imgsli

Compressed Screenshots

Low

Ultra

Recommended Setting: Ultra, dependent on VRAM

Performance Impact:

No measurable impact to CPU or GPU framerate

Under a GPU bottlenecked scenario:

Low consumed 5439MB VRAM

Ultra consumed 8216MB VRAM (2777MB increase)

Visual Impact:

  • Controls resolution of loaded textures.

  • Also adjusts resolution of PBR textures accordingly (AO Maps, Normal maps, etc)

|

Anisotropic Filtering

Anisotropic Filtering - Imgsli

Compressed Screenshots

Off

4x

16x

Recommended Setting: 16x*

Performance Impact:

No measurable impact to CPU performance

Under a GPU bottlenecked scenario:

Off gave 53.2 FPS

4x gave 52.3 FPS (1.7% reduction)

16x gave 51.5 FPS (3.2% reduction)

Performance impact will lessen with higher GPU memory bandwidth.

Visual Impact:

  • Removes some of the texture blur caused by mipmapping.

  • Provides noticeable increases to quality up to 16x

|

Texture Supersampling

Provides a graphical effect similar to anisotropic filtering, though I have not been able to find a single situation in which it makes a visual difference in FS2024.

Recommended Setting: 2x2

Performance Impact:

No measurable impact to CPU performance

Under a GPU bottlenecked scenario:

Off gave 70.5 FPS

2X2 gave 69.9 FPS (0.9% reduction)

4X4 gave 68.3 FPS (3.1% reduction)

8X8 gave 64.9 FPS (7.9% reduction)

Visual Impact:

  • Decreases blurriness of textures when viewed at a distance and at extreme angles. (Similar to anisotropic filtering.)

|

Water Waves

Water Waves - Imgsli

Compressed Screenshots

Low

Medium

High

Recommended Setting: Medium

Performance Impact:

No measurable impact to CPU performance

Under a GPU bottlenecked scenario:

Low gave 71.3 FPS

Medium gave 69.7 FPS (2.2% reduction)

High gave 65.5 FPS (8.1% reduction)

Visual Impact:

  • Waves become more detailed as setting is increased

|

Raytraced Shadows

Raytraced Shadows - Imgsli

Compressed Screenshots

Off

On

Recommended Setting: On

Performance Impact:

No measurable impact to CPU performance

Under a GPU bottlenecked scenario:

Off gave 40.9 FPS

On gave 37.6 FPS (8.1% reduction)

Visual Impact:

  • Provides shadows more detailed than what would be possible with shadowmaps alone.

  • Main difference in interior.

|

Shadow Maps

Shadowmap Resolution - Imgsli

Compressed Screenshots

768

1024

1536

2048

Recommended Setting: 2048

Performance Impact:

Should be no measurable impact to CPU performance

Under a GPU bottlenecked scenario:

768 gave 60.7 FPS

1024 gave 60.7 FPS (0.0% reduction)

1536 gave 60.4 FPS (0.5% reduction)

2048 gave 60.4 FPS (0.5% reduction)

Visual Impact:

  • Has little impact on cockpit shadows with raytracing enabled.

  • Shadows get sharper and cover more details as setting increases

|

Terrain Shadows

Imgsli

Compressed Screenshots

Off

128

256

512

1024

2048

Recommended Setting: 1024

Performance Impact:

No impact on CPU performance.

Under a GPU bottlenecked scenario:

Off gave 69.1 FPS

128 gave 68.2 FPS (1.3% reduction)

256 gave 68.2 FPS (1.3% reduction)

512 gave 67.2 FPS (2.7% reduction)

1024 gave 65.0 FPS (5.9% reduction)

2048 gave 58.7 FPS (15.1% reduction)

Visual Impact:

  • The shadow sharpness and accuracy increases as the setting increases.

  • The screenshots were taken with very similar sun positions. Differences in shadow formation are due to the setting.

|

Contact Shadows

Contact Shadows - Imgsli

Compressed Screenshots

Off

Low

Medium

High

Ultra

Recommended Setting: High

Performance Impact:

No measurable impact on CPU performance

Under a GPU bottlenecked scenario:

Off gave 35.0 FPS

Low, Medium, High gave 34.0 FPS (2.9% reduction)

Ultra gave 33.3 FPS (4.9% reduction)

Visual Impact:

  • Foliage gets shaded with SSRT shadowing when enabled

  • Quality / Amount of shadowing increases with higher settings

|

Windshield Effects*

Currently bugged and can’t change setting.

Oddly i can remember 3~ settings be broken for FS2020 launch, maybe they need another four years and another $60 to figure out how to release a sim.

|

Ambient Occlusion

Ambient Occlusion - Imgsli

Compressed Screenshots

Off

Low

Medium

High

Ultra


Ambient Occlusion (Outdoors) - Imgsli

Compressed Screenshots

Off

Low

Medium

High

Ultra

Recommended Setting: High

Performance Impact:

Should be no measurable impact on CPU performance.

Under a GPU bottlenecked scenario:

Off gave 51.3 FPS

Low gave 51.3 FPS (0.0% reduction)

Medium gave 50.9 FPS (0.8% reduction)

High gave 50.3 FPS (1.9% reduction)

Ultra gave 50.3 FPS (1.9% reduction)

Visual Impact:

  • No ambient occlusion is present at off setting.

  • Resolution / scale increases at higher settings.

  • Scales with rendering resolution.

|

Cubemap Reflections

Cubemap Reflections - Imgsli

Compressed Screenshots

128

192

256

384

Recommended Setting: 256

Performance Impact:

Should be no measurable impact on CPU performance

Under a GPU bottlenecked scenario:

128 gave 57.5 FPS

192 gave 57.2 FPS (0.5% reduction)

256 gave 57.2 FPS (0.5% reduction)

384 gave 55.7 FPS (3.1% reduction)

Visual Impact:

  • Resolution of cubemap reflections increases with higher settings.

  • Cubemap reflections are used for reflections of objects that are not on screen.

|

Raymarched Reflections

Raymarched Reflections - Imgsli

Compressed Screenshots

Off

Low

Medium

High

Ultra

Recommended Setting: Ultra

Performance Impact:

No measurable impact to CPU performance

Under a GPU bottlenecked scenario:

Off gave 57.0 FPS

Low gave 55.1 FPS (3.3% reduction)

Medium gave 55.1 FPS (3.3% reduction)

High gave 54.4 FPS (4.6% reduction)

Ultra gave 53.5 FPS (6.1% reduction)

Visual Impact:

  • No screen-space reflections are visible when setting is turned off.

  • Reflections artifact at lower settings.

  • Resolution increases with higher settings.

  • Reflection length also increases with higher settings.

  • Reflection resolution / quality scales with rendering resolution.

|

Light Shafts

Light Shafts - Imgsli

Compressed Screenshots

Off

Low

Medium

High

Ultra

Recommended Setting: Ultra

Performance Impact:

No impact to CPU performance.

Under a GPU bottlenecked scenario:

Off gave 43.5 FPS

Low, Medium, High, Ultra gave 43.3 FPS (0.5% reduction)

Visual Impact:

  • No light rays when turned off.

  • Ultra and low seem identical. Maybe by FS2028 we will have a tooltip that explains what this actually does.

|

Depth of Field

Depth Of Field - Imgsli

Compressed Screenshots

Off

Low

Medium

High

Ultra

Recommended Setting: Ultra

Performance Impact:

No impact on CPU performance.

Under a GPU bottlenecked scenario:

Off gave 27.6 FPS

Low, Medium, High, Ultra gave 27.0 FPS (2.2% reduction)

Visual Impact:

  • Depth of field seems to only be visible in drone camera and in main menu hangar

  • Depth of field is not present when setting is off

  • Higher settings increase the qualtiy and amount of blur, though this could just be slight variation from going into pause / unpause menu.

|

Motion Blur

Recommended Setting: User Preference

Performance Impact:

No effect on CPU performance

Under a GPU bottlenecked scenario:

Off gave 40.6 FPS

On (Ultra) gave 39.9 FPS (1.7% reduction)

Visual Impact:

  • Intensity of motion blur increases at higher setting

  • Quality of motion blur remains the same at every setting

|

Glass Cockpit Refresh Rate

Recommended Setting: High

Performance Impact:

  • No measurable impact to CPU or GPU performance.

– This is because although the load on the CPU is increased, it’s calculated on a different thread which doesn’t usually bottleneck the mainthread or the GPU thread. CPU’s with lower thread counts might experience a performance regression.

This setting used to have a huge impact on FS2020, however this is no longer the case

Visual Impact:

  • Refresh rate of glass cockpit instruments increases with higher settings.

Higher refresh rate is not always more accurate to the actual refresh rate of real life instruments.

|

Characters Quality*

Should control LODS for characters. Difficult to test, did not find any differences in singleplayer.

|

Traffic settings were not tested, however they should control just density.


Wishlist to Asobo:

  • give me an internship

  • readd DLAA and FXAA to anti aliasing options? makes zero sense to remove them from the sim?

  • separate generic models switch for multiplayer and traffic again?

  • DLSS masking glass cockpit instruments as was promised years ago?

  • less reliance on past frames for visual presentation, specifically regarding TAA and Raymarched Reflections.

  • Comparison images between Low and Ultra built directly into the sim (see Ghost Recon Wildlands, Watch Dogs 2)

  • More descriptive advanced settings

  • Ability to adjust post process shaders currently applied in the sim (such as sharpening, eye adaptation, bloom strength, film grain. Currently only possible by editing configuration files.)

  • Higher than ultra settings (shadows, reflections)

  • Loose tips on potential CPU / GPU impact on performance (see Forza Horizon 4)


Made possible by help from:

@OddSobriquet - Thread formatting

@DeferredGull247 - Light Rays implementation

@nxtherLOL @Papa4332 - Quality assurance


To learn more about how you can support my projects, and download lossless videos + screenshots; click here

141 Likes

Thank you!

I was actually looking at some comparison screenshots.

2 Likes

Absolutely awesome guide. Because most of us havent able to get even in to MSFS2024 and you guys allready did this to help rest of us.

@TheOriginalBabu one question. Where did you find process shaders congif .opt file? usercpt.opt hadnt those anymore yesterday that i checked.

1 Like

Thank you for this, very helpful and I’m sure it was a lot of work.

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Thanks for this guide, I wasn’t expecting to get something so thorough just a day after release!

RE: DLAA, it can be enabled by turning on DLSS and cycling options. It should be one notch above “Quality” mode. Looks great in the world but makes a mess of your instruments, at least on MFDs.

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referring to directionally localized anti aliasing (DLAA), not DLSS at native resolution (also called DLAA).

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Thanks for taking the time to put this together and present it so well with comparisons. Much appreciated!

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I found that if you change WindShield in usercfg.opt to 2 it will stick and stay on High permanently as long as you don’t touch the setting again in the sim. This is at least a workaround for not being able to change it permanently in sim. Change it as follows:

{WindShield
Quality 2
}

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Out of curiosity, do you notice any difference to droplets / windshield reflections?

From what I saw, medium on 2024 seemed roughly equvialen to ultra on FS2020, minus raindroplets not rendering on all windows.

Thank you for this in-depth and high-quality guide!

I’d like to know more about the Dynamic Settings feature. I assume that it still uses the settings I’ve chosen in Global Rendering Quality and only adjusts them when FPS drops below my Frame Rate Target?

Also, does anyone know how it determines which specific settings to change and in what order? Thank you

I’m just confused at this point. Keeping the DLSS files updated is trivial. And the ghosting on glass instruments was deferred to 2024. For such a proven way to improve performance, what continues to get development priority over this? Maybe DLSS 4 is on the horizon with the 50xx series and they know it’s not worth the effort.

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Yeah forgot to bench,

Doesn’t seem to increase settings above what you have set.

I keep it at the minimum framerate I want, to allow it to adjust and prevent stutters / frame drops.

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C:\Users*USERNAME*\AppData\Local\Packages\Microsoft.Limitless_8wekyb3d8bbwe\LocalCache

There is a user.opt file there but sadly there are no post processing options in there. Just the normal graphic settings. Maybe it’s a bug? I have problems with washed out colors and now I’m thinking: is the post process missing completely?

Thank you so much for the information. I like to know how to see the framerates in the sim or how? I’m using the NVIDIA RTX 4090. Regards, Harry

Amazing guide once again, doing god’s work! Thanks a LOT!

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Thanks for the effort, mate! Anyway, I’m struggling a lot on a Ryzen 7 5800x, RTX 3070 and 32GB RAM on 3200MHz.
With your settings I can’t even load A320v2. In Sao Paulo it looks like a slide presentation, 5 fps. I lowered the Texture Resolution to High, tried DLSS in Quality and in Performance but still the same. Can you please help me?

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That is the store versions path. Can you upload the usercfg.opt here, because steam users doesent have post processing options included.

This is quite nice. Thanks!

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hi “Rebar enabled but not forced” you mean not forced in NVprofiler?
not forced what do u mean?