I wonder how many problems are self-inflicted?

Oh yeah. I absolutely refuse to use any mod that requires me to alter default files, even if it’s a simple, single character edit.

If it doesn’t come from the marketplace or live in my community folder (thereby easily removed if problematic), I don’t use it.

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The community has not caused a “self-inflicted” issue upon itself. I put this at 0%. I run at zero mods, but this is not a mod-related performance issue. The consensus is, this is an issue related to geographical areas.

That’s what I mean. No matter how brilliant the WT stuff is, to me the risk isn’t worth the reward. And that isn’t to single them out, to be clear.

ONE issue is related to geographical areas.

There’s are currently 3 disctinct performance issues that were introduced in SU3. All are clearly described in other threads. The geographical issue is just 1 of them.

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I’m not sure what the other two issues are. All I know is, that it’s worse and I haven’t touched a thing. I’m not alone.

It’s possible that mods could cause problems, but this is the reason why the Community folder was created. One location for any and all mods to aircraft, scenery, etc.

If you empty your community folder, delete any rolling/manual cache, and haven’t modded any of the core files, you should be getting a vanilla sim experience.

I’ve developed a few mods for this sim and am pretty familiar with the file structure and coding of aircraft and airport scenery. Some things haven’t changed too much since the 90s with regard to this. Tbh, there aren’t many mods I’ve seen that could cause the kind of performance degradation that we’ve seen in these last updates.

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The other 2 issues:

The first - massive stutters that happen everywhere regardless of the plane flown, and regardless of any other observable factors. Not everyone is experiencing that one, but a large number of users are.

The other is massive performance drop overall since SU3. It’s not stutters, nor is it geographical. People experiencing this one are almost all reporting that the UK update caused major performance issues on their end as well that were never recovered, and SU3 dragged them down to sometimes single digit frame rates. There are reports of people with 10900K and RTX3090 that can’t currently play the sim due to single digit frame rates since SU3. Luckily, this only seems to be affecting a small number of users, although they’re the ones most affected making their sim unusable in some cases.

The geographical one is random locations, and is reproducible by anyone, even by folks that seem to be unaffected by the other 2 issues.

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Very true, but you must uninstall it via the content manager. But in the strictest since, you are absolutely correct.

But the WT mods don’t require any modification of anything. Drop into your community folder and you’re good to go. If you see a problem delete the mod’s folder, and you’re done.

The WT mods have been extensively tested. If anything, they’re more efficient and actually less of a system hog than the default Asobo Garmins.

It’s your choice to not use them though. I just can’t get over the cartoonish mockery that the stock ones are compared to the real thing. If I were Garmin, I’d be ■■■■■■ off to see how badly Asobo butchered my likeliness.

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No mods here to default code. I do have the WT mods in my community folder along with a couple of add-on aircraft. But even with all of those removed, I’m having performance problems - frame rate loss and intermittent stuttering. It reminds me of that FS 2004 and FSX phenomenon where you’d hit a “seam” in the scenery - there was one on a north-south line across Connecticut and Long Island, just west of KHTO - where it’d grind to a near-halt until you cleared the area. Not sure if the cause is similar here - just a rough analogy. But there’s definitely an issue in the core code, independent of mods or add-ons.

That’s how I roll

I think the performance issue is the simple fact that Windows systems come in an almost infinite variety of hardware, peripherals, drivers, chips, graphics cards, motherboards, firmware, and applications to make it impossible to stress test everything. Some setups have no issue at all. Other setups apparently see massive problems. There is no one magic bullet to fix any issue on your system.

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On the surface, you’re right. But there’s a lot underlying that.

The performance issues arise because the devs are still tinkering with core optimizations 7 months after release and they have no public beta program to test these updates.

Here’s a somewhat rough analogy. You’re a website developer who for whatever reason doesn’t have a staging site, just the live site. You can only work on your changes in real time, so anything you do, even if it’s an error or it’s not polished, is live for the world to see as you work on it. That’s what FS feels like right now.

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From release day i could run at High-Ultra with no problems at 30-45fps depending on location. I got the odd small stutter once in a while but nothing where i needed to change my settings.

Months of downgrades later performance was the same. No improvement but an uglier game in some regards.

SU3 happened & now it’s essentially unplayable. Cities or built-up area’s are between 10-15fps (but that comes with long freezing, screen tearing & stutters). Empty countryside area’s runs around 25fps but with frequent long stutters.

Nothing on my PC, including drivers has changed since installing SU3. Followed update advice etc.

I had been curious before the update & so had been using the FPS toolbar. My CPU was constantly in the green as were the other bars except GPU which never left yellow. Now after SU3, My CPU is almost constantly in the red zone as is another bar & my GPU is constantly in the red zone.

This isn’t a me thing. It’s an ASOBO thing. My game ran perfectly up until SU3.

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I’ve been (mostly) fine since the first day, having some odd issues but mostly pretty stable.

I have not flown without an issue since WU3; Sim Update 3 has rendered the software so badly broken I have not been able to complete a flight longer than half-an-hour, and then only in the C172.

The Mooney runs in the high teens and eventually crashes, freezing the computer to the point I have to reset using the power switch on the PSU. That has never happened before.

The Seminole is unflyable with the AP, applying full left aileron when engaging AP.

The only plane I’ve had any luck with at all is the C172, but frame rates stutter and drop into the low 20’s even at small airports. It’s a badly broken bit of code at the moment. I’ve “shelved” it for now.

At launch, I used to be able to run consistently 40-45 on all Ultra, even seeing over 50 and close to 60 at flight levels. Even hotspot areas like KLAX would only drop me into the low 30s - perfectly acceptable IMHO. It remained like this until the VR update in December.

After that update, I could still maintain 35+ fps on ultra, but decided to tune down a few graphics settings in order to be able to maintain that buttery-smooth performance. And with a mix of Ultra and High, could maintain 40+, but never reached 50 after that. And the hotspots would bring me down to low 20s - not quite as enjoyable as before.

The UK update is what kicked me in the teeth. At that point, I had to lower my settings once again to a mix of medium and high in order to maintain 35+ most of the time. Even then, it would often dip to below 20, and sometimes dangerously close to 10 in hotspots. I still haven’t flown over London to check out UK updates, as with my few attempts to do so, my frame rates plummet to low single digits.

SU3 is what really ■■■■■■ with me, bringing my overal performance down to 20 fps or less pretty much everywhere. Doesn’t matter what I select for settings (720p, all low, all online services disabled), it has no effect on my performance at this point. That seemed to be my ceiling.

A full reinstall of Windows and MSFS has gained me a few frames, where I’m now riding mid 20s at best. But the lows are still there.

And same. Nothing changed for me. I was happily flying around at 35 fps. SU3 dropped, I updated, and frame rates plunged into the crapper. Nothing changed on my system other than the update.

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I even cleared my Community Folder, just in case.

Same as your report: frames in the high teens and low twenties are the norm everywhere. At KLAX or KSFO (I haven’t tried either one since SU3) I’m pretty certain it would be a slide show.

I’ve been doing that since the early days. I clear the Community folder, get the update, restart the sim, and fly at least one flight ‘vanilla’ to ensure there are no issues, then add my mods back in.

Only the last 3 updates, “vanilla” showed performance degradation.

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We talking gunshot wounds here or simply a broken flight sim?
Community folder…blah blah blah blah rolling cache blah blah…
The sim has performance issues and needs tons of work.
That’s the bottom line…

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Well, I doubt that any of us users have the actual data to hand to be able to definitively
answer the OP’s question.
But undoubtedly some issues are the result of the user and or his kit.
Whilst equally undoubtedly some issues are the result of inherently buggy code.

I do know, albeit anecdotally, that my completely vanilla installation of MSFS 2020 now suffers from
post WU3 performance degradation. No question about it!
That and the at best now …flaky flight systems in my 172.