Found this good graphic presets comparison video on YouTube. Some of you guys have probably seen this. For most of the options anything above medium makes no difference. Even for options like building quality and texture resolution I’m seeing no benefit with anything above medium. The LOD sliders seem to have no effect above 100 as seen in this video although different viewing from greater distance would be apparent by taking the sliders above 100, especially for terrain. Some things I noticed were pretty well figured but also a few surprises, at least for me. Probably be changing some of my settings before my next flight 
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Me personally I need all the bells and whistles. The LOD Sliders indeed seem to have little effect above 100. Though the fps takes a massive hit. The clouds, textures and also the reflections on the windshield an windows need to be on ultra/max in my oppinion.
But thats just me, I get nervous playing a game on medium settings knowing it could look better. I get lost in the optimization process to the point of frustration. So I put all on max, and get the newest hardware. As I said, that is just me.
Couldn’t agree more. 100 seems to be sweet spot between quality and performance, reducing stutters etc.
Also allows a good balance between GPU and Main thread loads, without being heavily limited on one, while the other is “sitting and waiting”.
I disagree. Look at the clouds. Also if you put the window effects on high and not ultra, you won’t get the screen space reflections of the inside of the cockpit on the windows. Admittedly DoF, Lens flare etc. Are all minor increments at higher settings. Than again it won’t effect the performance as much.
Best is at 1440p or 4k to set the resolution scale to 80% and set the Lod to 100. That gives the most FPS boost and stutter reduction in my opinion. Next up are the cloud details which are demanding at ultra and overcast weather. The rest seems kind of unimportant performance wise. If you got a vid card north of 1080ti, you can safely set the textures and shadows to max I think.
Also disable all the apps in the quickbar via the cog symbol. This also seems to somehow reduce the load on the cpu. Someone posted that a while ago. I get sometimes 10 fps more with that neat trick.
I think that it would depends on what you do more. Airliners flight really high, so I would set clouds on ultra and reduces the other. For general aviation, I would focus more on terrain
If you do IFR flights and fly around a lot of photogrammetry you will see why some of us run terrain LOD@200 Some with even more poweful rigs run it pass 200 
If you have a beefy CPU and lots of ram its worth bumping the LOD up
Things look a lot less melted @200 LOD and do not pop up all of a sudden!
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Lens flare, bloom and DoF are effects that you would experience if looking at the world through a camera lens, not your eyes. For that reason, I turn them off.
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Can anyone here differentiate the different levels of ambient occlusion and light shafts?
I said most settings obviously there are a few where there is a difference, clouds being one of them.
Yea those settings didn’t seem to make a difference.
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That’s indeed an excellent video. I will also revisit my settings according it. Thanks!
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I have this video bookmarked to use in discussions exactly like this. The first time I saw it, I said I’d need to come back to it. When I did, it was with paper and pencil! The items that make the most difference visually are set to high/ultra on my system. The things that don’t make that much impact visually stay relegated to the low end. I end up with a weird mashup of high and low settings, but my visuals look nice and I still get decent frames.
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This is a very good example of finding that sweet spot for your system that will help with a ton of issues that crop up all over the forum. Stutters and many cases of CTD can be attributed to pushing the system past the happy point.
Turning any settings below 4K Ultra is perceived as a weakness. Those that ran out to get the latest and fastest hardware and moan about anything under 60 fps with everything maxed have dominated the settings threads by complaining how poorly optimized the software is. A clear case of “mine is better than yours” syndrome.
My system will happily provide stunning visuals and stable, smooth performance as long as I don’t abuse it. That makes my system “better than yours” from where I sit.
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Hi Valkenswaard, I’ve searched but can’t find the meaning of “quickbar” and “COG”. Can you tell me what they are?
Thanks!
They are talking about the settings icon (COG, looks like a gear) for the menu (quick bar) at the top of your display while in flight. Turning off the apps selectable in that menu has had some effect on frame rates and stuttering for some users.
Yes the quick bar on top of your screen, you can turn those icons off and you get some performance when you are cpu limited.
Personal comments:
For low end machines, the biggest bang for the visual buck is the Clouds and Terrain Vector (improves patches and adjacent tiling). If you can afford it turn up Trees, Bushes and Grass. That’s me in a nutshell.
As someone told me long ago on this board: “Don’t touch my clouds, anything but my clouds.” 
Thanks! Can’t wait to try it!
