Having fun on a low spec potato!

Hello,

Since the launch I have been having a lot of fun in the new Flight Simulator. The fact that I’m using a low spec machine isn’t impeding my enjoyment :slight_smile: I am quite surprised at the performance I’m getting, I was expecting a lot less with my machine.
As performance seems to be a hot topic on the forum, I thought it would be helpful to showcase what is possible (and what is not :sunglasses:). And not in the least to show off this still looks (& plays) great on low powered machine.
Specs: i5 6400 - 16 gb - r9 380 4gb - Medium settings
Enjoy my pro aviation skills :joy:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uLpSnKd8kog

See you at the proper altitude!

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Right on! I’m glad to hear you’re having fun! Me too. :blush:

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Bravo! I could feel the heat from your computer panting its guts out all the way across the Atlantic. Surely your computer is the most physically fit of us all, what with all the cardio exercise you’re giving it. It could probably run marathons on consecutive days. It might not win them but it could certainly go the distance. I salute your potato! :smiley:

Seems to me most of the complainers are either

  • having some internet / system problem on their end that prevents installation, or;
  • wanting all aircraft to require a real world type rating and are miffed that hoi-polloi like me can fly them with 10 minutes of study, or;
  • over-controlling because they have a non-ergonomic yoke instead of a stick and can’t get their sensitivities to suit them, or;
  • any combination of the above.

I feel quite sorry for those with technical issues preventing proper installation and/or operation. And I feel somewhat sorry for anybody who bought a yoke for aesthetic reasons without considering the ergonomics. But I have no sympathy at all for folks complaining that that the game is too accessible to the masses when that was obviously one of its chief design parameters. They might say that the “real” problem is that this or that automation function doesn’t work right, but if they could actually aviate instead of activate and hibernate, then they could work around this and would just roll with it. Which is, I HOPE, what real pilots are trained to do. Otherwise, I’m taking the train from here on :smiley:

Think you are spot on with your analysis of the issues being reported.
Sure there’s some bugs here and there, and some planes can have more functionality enabled. But in the end, it has been a really enjoyable experience so far.
I really love the fact that I can go explore nature and islands around the world. And in the process I learn a thing or 2 about flying aircraft.

Nothing is ever perfect and I think Asobo accomplished something truly remarkable here - even with this release version. There isn’t one flight sim that has ever managed to captivate me like this one. And I have been trying them since the 90’s.
The sim will only get even better from here with the ongoing support of Asobo and the 3rd party devs. It has a great future ahead of itself!

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Just out of interest, are you running it in 1080p?

Yes, it is 1080p, anything higher would not be possible on the system, from what I can see.

Interesting. I’m reading a lot of complaints here about performance from people that have much more powerful machines than me. I’ve got an i7 6700K, 32gb ram, GTX 1070 and am even running it from a normal drive, X-plane is on my SSDs for now. I haven’t messed with the settings and went with the recommended High-End, and my performance has been great, averaging 52-67 fps. MSFS has been an exception and I normally play everything in VR, so I’ve just got a standard 1080p monitor as I don’t need anything else, so that’s what I’ve been using. I was therefore wondering why people with better computers than me were getting such dreadful performance, and I’ve noticed a correlation across the forum, and those using 1080p seem to be doing OK, whilst others using 1440p or above are not. Anyway, I’m thankful that I’ve also been having a great time in this sim with smooth performance and no issues or crashes. What a time to be a flight simmer.

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Same here - i5 4790k (oc’d to 4,000), 8GB ram, rx 470 (nitro+ so slightly oc’d but still below min specs) and i’m running everything on medium, 100, with clouds/buildings/vectors on high and texture resolution on ultra (8GB graphics card) and getting 30fps when flying - it stutters to 15-20 when it’s loading a city i’ve just spawned in or if i’m flying quickly and low.

I adjusted everything until my gpu and cpu were running near 100% and it flicks back and forth between the two as the bottleneck, which is perfect.

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I had also noticed a lot of the posts where of machines with way better specs. If 1440p is the differentiator, i’d expect that render scaling should solve the issue. Still, many variables are inherently there in a PC setup, but it’s interesting observation for sure

While on my machine I obviously don’t get the level of performance you are getting, I do exactly recognize the same scenario for the stutters. In fact I made that a point in the vid. When a city gets loaded, I noticed my cpu would go to 100% on all cores and that kills the performance for a few seconds. In rare cases it does choke completely and the gpu doesn’t get any work for that period. But that’s always only temporary and frankly expected with my hardware. I’m also seeing a good balance in cpu / gpu usage, even with default settings. Ideally I think I can optimize it a bit by having a little bit less cpu and a little bit more gpu load. But that’s really squeezing the last few percentages in my case :slight_smile: