Smooth means no stuttering whatsoever. So whether you have 30 fps or 60 fps stuttering is not allowed. Is that right?
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20 in a fixed straight ahead view
30 with Track IR
~40 if you look to the side close to the ground and want a smooth picture
50 upwards in VR.
mines smooth no matter but I only use external for ss and cockpit. I can pan around the cockpit or the world with no issues what so ever, that is when the network / server gods are smiling on, which this morning they actually were. And this is on a potatoe compared to what a lot of people are running here.
I think it mostly relates to the ability of the human visual sensing and processing system (retina, optic nerves/radiation, various levels of visual processing - occipital lobe cortex layers) to distinguish “frames” from a continuously changing scene … just subjectively, at least on MSFS, once I get about 15-18, I don’t notice it … and we are not completely objective beings - higher levels of the brain may even fill in (confabulate) missing elements … of course, as mentioned, it depends on the velocity (rate of change) of the scene … this number may go up to 30 for some people, and MANY technical factors are involved … although, I don’t think the “holy grail” of 60 is really necessary … 
HOWEVER, doing the Top Gun thing through the mountain-canyons, I am now seeing “stuttering” at even fps’s of 30-60 … is this purely due to the speed of the plane, ie rate of change of scenery ?
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I’ve got it at 60 in the sim and 50 on the graphics card. I actually get high 40s, 47-50 most of the time.
Very occasionally it dips to 20-ish during testing and visually I don’t even notice.
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Let’s be clear about something. Higher is always better, even in a flight sim. Otherwise, what is the point of making more powerful and faster GPU’s?
Once you experience this sim at anything above 50fps, you realize when you try to go back down to 30 fps, how bad it is.
Yes, 30 fps is good enough. If you are at 30 fps looking straight out the window, everything looks smooth and decent. But once you start to pan around and changing views, 30 fps is garbage.
Again, it’s good enough, but for those folks that say there is no difference in a flight sim between 30 fps and 60 fps are in complete denial.
I have a 3080 Ti paired with a 12900k and between 30 fps and 60 fps, there is a BIG difference. Especially on a gsync monitor.
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Hi All,
Agree with most comments already said here, I think it’s a matter of perception
For me 30 fps has always been sufficient, and this value has stayed constant for nearly 40 years of flight simming, Flight simulation has always pushed the boundaries of processing power, I was happy with 30 fps in the days of Falcon series, ATP and FS titles of the day, as processing power has increased so as the visual fidelity and as such the ratio stays the same.
I believe I read somewhere that 30 fps is the minimum for the human eye to perceive smooth movement, and a such I have aimed for this throughout my 50 years plus of flight simulation…. As of today I’m happy with 30fps …I have an I7 and RTX 3080 everything on ultra on a 1440 widescreen…and it’s smooth and beautiful….10 years from now if I’m still here lol I will probably still have 30 fps but with 8k visuals in and out of the cockpit …. And so on and so on
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I used to dream of 30fps…
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For me I like to have a round 40. When it gets towards the low 30’s I start to notice it lagging when panning the view.
Up to a point as well as it depends on your display. For example, I game on a 4K TV. Anything that isn’t 30 or 60 fps doesn’t look very well due to screen tearing. Pushing more than 60 is unnecessary strain on my GPU since my TV can’t display frames any faster.
Now, if you’re on Free/G-sync then that obviously doesn’t apply, but even then you have to ensure you’re not going below the minimum acceptable framerate for the monitor and you can set a higher fps cap around 70-80 instead of letting it go the full 144hz (saves on power and generates less heat).
I usually manage to get anything between 40-50 FPS (depending on circumstances of course) and I’m very happy with that. If I lower my settings, obviously I can get a lot higher, but TBH, anything above say 55 FPS doesn’t become any smoother to my eyes. I don’t believe I’d be able see much difference between 60 FPS and 80 FPS.
My absolute minimum tolerance is about 30 FPS. Anything below that (even if it’s only slightly) becomes very apparent.
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More than what we have on Xbox.
60fps would be neat, but I could deal with a stable 30. Keyword: stable.
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limited to 25 fps
cause of old computer (10 years)
vatsim (traffic needs a bit of performance)
graphics… have most on high, clouds and textures on ultra cause of only 80% render scale and other on middle
I find even with my semi advanced eyes (57) dropping below 30 is where I suspiciously dart my eyes over to the fps counter to see why it isnt smooth, I see the number 27 a lot so I call that my minimum. 3 fps isn’t much but to me that’s the perceptual boundary. Even though the math is impossibly incorrect and can never be (it’s really 59.99 hrz ect) I’ve taken to setting my refresh rate at *60hrz capping my frame rate at 30 and using adaptive/half refresh rate v-sync.
Way back when I had a professor who taught, among other things, typography. He’d always say - especially to the students who insisted on using a line gauge to get things “perfectly” straight:
“If it looks straight, it is straight.”
I use that little pearl of wisdom to this day. 
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I was in the army, but worked with the RAF most of the time. They had an acronym, TLAR (pron “teelar”).
That Looks About Right.
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I like that.
MSFS is a pretty slow moving experience. I find that above 30 fps is more than acceptable. Over 35 and it can feel perfectly smooth. Once i hit that sweet spot of about 35, head movement with TrackIR is fluid and everything looks wonderful. Any extra fps above that just sweetens the experience IMHO. Without using popout windows, I’m able to typically maintain 40+ fps, sometimes hitting on the mid 50s. With popouts, it’s typically 30 to high 40.
The issue with MSFS isn’t so much the max frame rate, but rather consistency. Stutters and pauses, particularly at key times such as on final, are what wreck the experience. Jumping from mid / high 30s down to low 20s and back kills the fluidity of the frame rate.
Even when running planes where I don’t use popouts for my cockpit and am running 40+ consistently, there’s always that stuttering and pausing as I get to lower altitudes on approach, with frames dipping down to the low 20s. TrackIR motion becomes very jumpy and stuttery. And overall, that just kills what was a more than acceptable exeperience.
Once they can get rid of these pauses and stutters, I feel that things will be much better, regardless of what (usable) frame rates people are achieving.
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Consistent (=without stutters) 20 fps in MSFS are better than 40+fps with some stuttering. My rig theoretically achieves 50+ FPS wide full HD, but I didn’t manage to completely get rid of ANY stutters. IMHO this is not a question of hardware, but software optimization…
But I’m quite satisfied with what I have.
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fps obsession is never good. leads to tail chasing, deficit spending, excessive beer pouting…
My rig gives me decent performance at decent in-game settings - the only time I use the meter is when I buy an addon - I’ll use the meter to compare the new aircraft or scenery performance to the established benchmark I have, nothing more.
The sensitivity of the human eye is a variable - from color, to clarity, to ‘FPS’ values, different folks see these things differently to each other in some degrees.
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