Performance optimization…
While most users seems to be quite happy with performance some have reported issues:
- Load time
- Delay when changing time inflight
- Stutters
No two computers and settings are the same, so users will experience differences. Also users have different criteria when flying: some focus on the accuracy of systems and others spend the time looking out the windows to see the scenery etc… Add to that different levels of patience…
But in order to come with some recommendations for optimization I have been running tests together with one of the Beta testers, Knud, on two completely different computers. One just meeting the minimum spec for MSFS and the other a high end gaming computer with GeForce RTX 2080 SUPER, Ryzen 9 3900X, 4x8GB 3200MHz DDR4, 1TB SSD.
This is not a professional technical test, but rather an observation to see if there are differences and things which can be done to optimize.
Let’s start with the initial load time for the sim:
The sim will start loading AI traffic routes once the departure airport, plane etc has been selected and you enter the flight:
Compared with a situation with no AI ship traffic the high end computer spent 40-50 seconds more when it had to read the full package with all 2000 routes installed. The minimum spec computer spent 120 seconds more in the startup. This is due to the fact that it is 24.000 ship movements passing at least 250.000 way points which are being calculated… So load time is impacted.
Reducing the number of routes to 370 - that is North West Europe & Baltic routes only for a test flying out of Calais - the high end computer saw less than 10 seconds additional load time compared to no AI Ship traffic; the low end PC slightly more but still not something really noticeable.
Changing time in the simulation means that the sim again has to check which ships are close and should be displayed, so it recalculates again.
With all routes installed the simulator again has to run through the routes and it took around 40 seconds before ships appears again now in new positions according to new time of the day. On the minimum spec - roughly the double. Again reducing the routes to just the North West Europe reduces both these figures to less than 10 seconds - for the high end it was basically instantaneous.
So first conclusion: If you have little patience and a low end computer then it makes sense just to have the routes installed for the area, where you want to fly. All routes are in the scenery folder and they are named according to region so you can actually easily identify them e.g. Traffic_Ships_US_West or Traffic_Ships_EU_ If you remove routes you need to run a python script to rebuild your layout file compared to the one supplied with the Global AI Ship Traffic as standard. In a future version we might come with a more user friendly solution.
Stutters…
We tested flying out of Calais 14:00, plenty of ships in the Channel, clear weather…
On the high end computer with high rendering settings FPS remained stable at 55-60 over the coast and 60 as soon as over the water independently of meeting ships and maintaining altitude.
Going down lower and increasing ground wind to have nice high waves for a good screenshot FPS decreased to 48-50 - the impact actually seeming to be much more related to the waves than the ships.
Now the tricky part regards to the ships - yes - they are being converted and it seems that this happens at very close to distance to the ship.
But the combination of render settings, computer specs, and weather has a lot to say.
Using a Medium rendering basically we could on the high end PC do whatever at 60 FPS… No ship would affect it… Here diving towards the a DFDS ferry at 60FPS - at short range a 1-2 second drop occurred to 58FPS and then I ended in the water with 60 again…
Going on Ultra on everything and adding strong ground wind the high FPS could be maintained while well above the surface, but going down towards the surface FPS dropped to 48-52 FPS…
Getting very close to a ship even the high end computer experienced some stuttering and with FPS dropping to 25-30 FPS for a few seconds at close range
however turning around towards the same ship the stuttering didn’t appear…
Obviously for the low end computer results were worse - I do not have screens just description, with stuttering happening again on approach but more significant.
So conclusion. Yes, stutters do occur when approaching the ship at close range, but again it depends on settings. Going Ultra should be done on an Ultra computer not on a low end. Flying at some distance looking at the ships will not give issues even on a low end, but trying to fly through them gives stutters unless you run a more modest setting on high end PC. The sim does remember the converted models for a while… but it doesn’t seem to store them, but we might be wrong on that, and again here settings and space allowed for cache might influence… But this was enough ship chasing for today. Hope it serves for some of you. And then maybe for Christmas we can have a native package…