going to retest for SU11, have a bit more spare time on my hands now 
might be a while until i have time to pay attention to this again
Here is a detailed analysis of each setting’s visual and performance impact. I’ve benchmarked the effects of multiple different settings in a sterile scenario.
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, but this should be enough to give you a gist.
System Specifications:
- i9 9900k, 4.8 GHZ @ 1.28v
- Hyperthreading Enabled
- 32GB of 3600MHZ 16-20-20-38 DDR4 RAM
- GTX 1080 at 1987 / 5454 MHZ @ 1.093v
—
- Windows 10 build 21H1.
- Nvidia drivers 471.41 with HAGS On.
- MSFS Client + Packages + Cache is installed on an NVME SSD.
Methodology and Scenarios
Testing Methodology:
-
Tested on Sim Update 5 build 1.18.14.0 with all available World Updates
-
Screenshots are taken at GPU Bottleneck settings for greatest clarity
-
Framerate numbers are captured by developer mode FPS counter
-
GPU usage and VRAM usage are monitored through MSI Afterburner
-
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 between CPU bottlenecked settings and GPU bottlenecked setting
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. Scroll down to “Settings Analysis” for recommended settings.
Baseline Test Settings:
GRAPHICS
Display Mode: Fullscreen
Full Screen Resolution: 1920X1080
HDR10: Grayed out (in on position)
Global Rendering Quality: Custom
Advanced Settings
V-Sync: Off
Render Scaling: 100
Anti Aliasing: TAA
Terrain Level of Detail: 100
Terrain Vector Data: Ultra
Buildings: Ultra
Trees: Ultra
Grass and Bushes: Ultra
Objects Level of Detail: 100
Volumetric Clouds: Ultra
Texture Resolution: Ultra
Anisotropic Filtering: 16x
Texture Supersampling: 8x8
Texture Synthesis: Ultra
Water Waves: High
Shadow Maps: 2048
Terrain Shadows: 1024
Contact Shadows: Ultra
Windshield Effects: Ultra
Ambient Occlusion: Ultra
Reflections: Ultra
Light Shafts: Ultra
Bloom: On
Depth of Field: Ultra
Motion Blur: Off
Lens Correction: Off
Lens Flare: On
TRAFFIC
Aviation Traffic
Aircraft Traffic Type: Off
AI Airliners Traffic Density: 0 (grayed-out)
AI General Aviation Traffic Density: 0 (grayed-out)
Show Traffic Nameplates: On
Airport Life
Airport Vehicle Density: 50
Ground Aircraft Density: 50
Worker Density: 50
Land and Sea Traffic
Leisure Boats: 50
Road Vehicles: 50
Ships and Ferries: 50
AI & Multiplayer Traffic Detail
Use Generic Plane Models (AI Traffic): Off
Use Generic Plane Models (Multiplayer): Off
Traffic Variety: Medium
DATA
Data Connection
Online Functionality: On
Bing Data World Graphics: On
Photogrammetry: On
Live Real-World Air Traffic: On
Live Weather: On
Multiplayer: On
Data Bandwith Usage Limit
Bandwidth: 40 Mbit/s
Rolling Cache Settings
Rolling Cache: On
Rolling Cache Limit (GIB): 100
GPU Limited Test Settings:
Following baseline with following changes:
GRAPHICS
Advanced Settings
Render Scaling: 200
CPU Limited Test Settings:
Following baseline with following changes:
GRAPHICS
Advanced Settings
Render Scaling: 30
…
Anti Aliasing: Off
…
Terrain Level of Detail: 200
…
Objects Level of Detail: 200
…
Volumetric Clouds: Low
…
Shadow Maps: 768
Terrain Shadows: Off
Contact Shadows: Off
…
Ambient Occlusion: Off
Reflections: Off
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.
- Suggested to force V-Sync via graphics driver instead of using sim implementation
-
Some settings were benchmarked at larger increments (eg. AF 0x, 4x, 16x only) 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
(right click > view image in new tab, in order to full screen and see effects in full detail)
* - indicates that further testing is required
** - indicates that setting is broken with current Sim Update 5
Graphics
Anti Aliasing
Off
FXAA
DLAA
TAA
Recommended Setting: TAA
Performance Impact:
No impact on CPU performance.
Off gives 23.3 FPS
FXAA gives 22.9 FPS (1.8% reduction)
DLAA gives 22.8 FPS (2% reduction)
TAA gives 22.3 FPS (5% reduction)
Visual Impact:
- FXAA and DLAA seem to have some post processing / coloration issues
- Geometry aliasing is visible in motion on Off, FXAA, and DLAA, which is not present in TAA.
- 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.
I highly recommend using TAA as it helps denoise Ambient Occlusion, Reflections and other effects.
Terrain Level Of Detail
Photogrammetry:
10
100
200
Synthesized
10
100
200
Recommended Setting: 100
Performance Impact:
This setting impacts both CPU and GPU performance as it is increased.
Under a CPU bottlenecked scenario,
10 at 142 FPS
100 at 130 FPS (9% reduction)
200 at 120 FPS (18% reduction)
Under a GPU bottlenecked scenario,
10 at 26 FPS
100 at 22.4 FPS (16% reduction)
200 at 20.8 FPS (25% reduction)
Visual Impact:
- Linear quality increase up to 100, but going past 100 leads to lower framerates with smaller visual impact.
Terrain Vector Data *
Recommended Setting: Ultra*
To be tested at a later date. Should control quality of elevation data (e.g. mountains, etc).
Buildings
Low
Medium
High
Ultra
Recommended Setting: Medium (low end), Ultra (high end)
Performance Impact:
Under a CPU bottlenecked scenario,
Low at 74 FPS
Medium at 72.5 FPS (2% reduction)
High at 71 FPS (4% reduction)
Ultra at 70 FPS (6% reduction)
Under a GPU bottlenecked scenario,
Low at 24.8 FPS
Medium at 23.1 FPS (7% reduction)
High at 22.8 FPS (9% reduction)
Ultra at 22 FPS (13% reduction)
Visual Impact:
Main impact on synthesized buildings.
- Low has very barebones buildings.
- Medium adds clutter / objects to buildings.
- High and Ultra improve the shading on the buildings.
Trees
Low
Medium
High
Ultra
Recommended Setting: Ultra
Performance Impact:
- No impact on CPU performance
Low ran at 23.4 FPS
Medium, High, Ultra ran at 22.8 FPS (3% reduction)
Visual Impact:
- Higher settings increase draw distance
- Low has higher contrast appearing on the tree textures, and looks flat / billboard like.
- Medium makes the trees look significantly more lush and 3D, and somewhat fixes the aforementioned contrast issue.
-
Will have a larger impact in more forested areas
Grass and Bushes
Off
Low
Medium
High
Ultra
Recommended Setting: High
Performance Impact:
- No notable impact to CPU performance
Off gave 23.6 FPS,
Low gave 23.2 FPS (2% reduction)
Medium gave 22.5 FPS (5% reduction)
High gave 21.7 FPS (9% reduction)
Ultra gave 20.9 FPS (13% reduction)
Visual Impact:
- Density and render distance of the grass changes as the settings increase.
Objects Level of Detail
10
100
200
Recommended Setting: 100*
Performance Impact:
Under a CPU bottlenecked scenario,
10 at 70 FPS
100 at 63 FPS (11% reduction)
200 at 60 FPS (17% reduction)
Under a GPU bottlenecked scenario,
10 at 24.2 FPS
100 at 24.1 FPS (0.5% reduction)
200 at 23.4 FPS (3% reduction)
Visual Impact:
- Controls render distance of the LODS of various objects in the world, such as traffic cars and planes.
Volumetric Clouds
Low
Medium
High
Ultra
Recommended Setting: Medium (low end), High (mid range), Ultra (High end)
Performance Impact:
No notable impact to CPU performance.
Low ran at 27.4 FPS
Medium ran at 25 FPS (10% reduction)
High ran at 22.5 FPS (22% reduction)
Ultra ran at 19.5 FPS (40% reduction)
Visual Impact:
- Mainly affects cloud resolution (presumably noise texture resolution)
Anything below high looks like mashed potatoes 
Texture Resolution *
Low
Ultra
Recommended Setting: Ultra*
Performance Impact:
Setting had no noticeable impact to CPU or GPU performance. May have slight impact to GPU performance if on older GPU with lower memory bandwidth.
If you run out VRAM on your GPU, consider lowering this setting.
VRAM usage difference yet to be measured
Visual Impact:
- Textures on low are generally blurry and pixelated.
- Textures on ultra more crisp
Anisotropic Filtering
Off
4x
16x
Recommended Setting: 16x*
Performance Impact:
No notable impact to CPU performance
Off gave 23.3 FPS
4x gave 22.7 FPS (3% reduction)
16x gave 21.2 FPS (10% 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 *
I think this setting is potentially broken with SU5. I suggest 4x4 for now.
Texture Synthesis *
Difficult to benchmark, studying later.
Water Waves
Low
Medium
High
Recommended Setting: Medium
Performance Impact:
No notable impact to CPU performance.
Low gave 23.8 FPS
Medium gave 22.7 FPS (5% reduction)
High gave 21 FPS (13% reduction)
Visual Impact:
- Waves become more detailed as setting is increased
Shadow Maps
768
1024
1536
2048
Recommended Setting: 1536
Performance Impact:
No notable impact to CPU performance
768, 1024 and 1536 gave 23.4 FPS
2048 gave 23 FPS (2% reduction)
Visual Impact:
- Shadows get sharper / higher detailed the higher resolution they are set to
Terrain Shadows
Off
128
256
512
1024
2048
Recommended Setting: 512
Performance Impact:
No impact on CPU performance.
Off gave 29.5 FPS
128 gave 29.3 FPS (1% reduction)
256 gave 29.2 FPS (1% reduction)
512 gave 28.9 FPS (2% reduction)
1024 gave 28.2 FPS (5% reduction)
2048 gave 26.5 FPS (11% reduction)
Visual Impact:
- The screenshots were taken at very similar time of day.
- The shadow sharpness and accuracy increases as the setting increases.
Contact Shadows
Off
Low
Medium
High
Ultra
Recommended Setting: Ultra
Performance Impact:
Off gave 23.8 FPS
Low gave 23.2 FPS (3% reduction)
Medium gave 23 FPS (3.5% reduction)
High gave 22.9 FPS (4% reduction)
Ultra gave 22.8 FPS (4.5% reduction)
Visual Impact:
- Trees and grass are get SSRT shadowing when enabled
- Quality / Amount of shadowing increases with higher settings
Windshield Effects
Low
Medium
High
Ultra
Recommended Setting: High
Performance Impact:
No impact on CPU performance.
Low gave 19.7 FPS
Medium and High gave 19.3 FPS (2% reduction)
Ultra gave 18 FPS (9.5% reduction)
Visual Impact:
- Raindrops become more dense and smaller at higher settings.
- Low seemingly renders no raindrops on windshield.
- Ultra adds SSRT reflections to windshield.
Ambient Occlusion
Off
Low
Medium
High
Ultra
Off
Low
Medium
High
Ultra
Recommended Setting: High
Performance Impact:
No notable impact on CPU performance.
Off gave 25 FPS
Low gave 24.3 FPS (3% reduction)
Medium gave 24.1 FPS (4% reduction)
High gave 23.4 FPS (7% reduction)
Ultra gave 22.3 FPS (12% reduction)
Visual Impact:
- No ambient occlusion is present at off setting.
- Resolution increases at higher settings.
- The amount of ambient occlusion increases at higher settings.
- Ghosting / Artifacts may be present without TAA.
- Ghosting / Artifacts more severe on lower settings.
Reflections
Off
Low
Medium
High
Ultra
Recommended Setting: Ultra
Performance Impact:
No notable impact to CPU performance
Off gave 25.9 FPS
Low gave 23.9 FPS (8% reduction)
Medium gave 23.7 FPS (9% reduction)
High gave 23.2 FPS (12% reduction)
Ultra gave 23 FPS (13% 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
Off
Ultra
Recommended Setting: Ultra
Performance Impact:
No impact to CPU performance
Off gave 22.5 FPS
Ultra gave 21 FPS (7% reduction)
Visual Impact:
- No light rays when turned off.
Bloom
Off
On
Recommended Setting: On
Performance Impact:
No measurable impact to CPU or GPU performance.
Visual Impact:
- Adds a “blur / bleed” effect to exceptionally bright areas
– Employed to emphasize bright light beyond a monitor’s peak brightness
Depth of Field
Off
Low
Ultra
Recommended Setting: Ultra
Performance Impact:
No impact on CPU performance.
Off gave 20.5 FPS
Low, Medium, High, Ultra gave 20.3 FPS (1% 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
- Probably on/off switch, no difference found between low and ultra
Motion Blur
No visual demonstration can be provided due to difficulties with video compression
Recommended Setting: User Preference
Performance Impact:
No effect on CPU performance
Visual Impact:
- Intensity of motion blur increases at higher setting
-
Quality of motion blur remains the same at every setting
Lens Correction **
broken with SU5 Asobo pls fix
Lens Flare
Off
On
Recommended Setting: On
Performance Impact:
- No visible impact to CPU or GPU performance
Visual Impact:
- Simulates a camera lens artifact when looking at bright objects such as the sun.
Wishlist to Asobo:
- 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 (especially for LOD)
- 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 - Quality Assurance
To learn more about how you can support my projects, view more information about this guide, or download a .zip version, click here.