Major FPS loss in any glass cockpit aircraft

User Support Hub Install, Performance & Graphics
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Hi all,

I have been experiencing a major FPS loss in glass cockpit aircraft. I would normally be getting 20-30 fps on external view but as soon as I enter the cockpit My FPS drops to below 15 and it is almost completely unflyable at that point. Aircraft without electronic displays work perfectly for me with no issue even in big cities. I had no problem like this before world update 4. I mostly fly the A320 and have flown it for 100+ hours before the world update. Now it’s just impossible to fly. I run MSFS on ultra settings with a 3080.

Any ideas?

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What CPU do you have?
It sounds 100% like you’re CPU limited, it’s an extremely common issue (search for e.g. “limited by mainthread”). However it’s very weird if it started at WU4 as I’ve had this issue since the alpha, and lots of people have it now. (I’d say everyone has it now, but since some are happy with 30 fps, it’s not really an issue, per se, for them.)

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I have a AMD Ryzen 5 5600x 6-Core. Any ideas on how to fix this?

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Glass cockpit refresh rate on Low in video settings.
Also, disable the VFR Map from the overhead toolbar, that’s a fps sucker too.

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Yep, agreed on both of the above. Though I probably prefer medium on the refresh rate since otherwise the displays are too choppy. But it sucks to have to choose between choppy displays or choppy everything.

In addition it does seem that turning virtualization support (SVM or AMD-V) off in the BIOS may help. I’ve no idea why but every time I’ve benchmarked it there has been a measurable difference. I’ve been too lazy to test 5+ times on and 5+ times off but I have tested at least 4 times each in total by now, with 5+ fps in favor of off every time.

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Agree with the above in general, it certainly sounds like CPU bottlenecking but they should be doing much better than 15fps with a 5600X even in a glass cockpit aircraft… so me the question is why are they bottlenecking that bad with that CPU.

Anything else changed on your PC regarding bios updates, other hardware changes? SSD filling up?

What ram are you running and at what speed & latency?

Check your cpu during play, what’s it boosting to? I’ve seen people suffering extremely sub par performance due to power plan settings keeping the CPU from boosting correctly.

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I haven’t changed anything on my PC regarding bios updates or hardware changes and my SSD isn’t filling up. I have 16gb ram and it is running at 3200 MHz. And my latency is 16 clocks. The suggestions above did help in a way but I am still only getting around 17-20 fps in the cockpit and as well as outside. As I said earlier this only happened after WU4.

Edit: This seems to only be a problem on the ground. Once I take off my FPS is steady around 25-30.

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Maybe just check your ram is actually running at the spec you expect and that your bios hasn’t reset anything.

Also definitely worth checking your CPU behaviour during gameplay, you should see it boosting to at least ~4.6ghz

Do you know what Windows power plan your pc is using? Have you tried both enabling or disabling windows game mode and hardware accelerated GPU scheduling?

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I have the Bitsum highest performance set as my power plan, I have tried disabling and enabling game mode and I don’t see much of a effect. I haven’t experimented with hardware accelerated GPU scheduling yet so what do you suggest for that option?

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In theory it can help reduce some CPU load by offloading scheduling tasks to the GPU. In theory being the important point…

Have you had a chance to check how it’s boosting?

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I am testing it out right now. Will keep you posted.

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Also are you using the FBW or stock?

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Yea I can confirm it boosts to around 4.6ghz when loaded in.

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Odd then… Open dev mode (in developer settings) on the ground and then go up to the top menu, select the view drop down and I think it’s something about on screen display. That will give you a perf overlay and display the reason for your limitation.

Do you see mainthread limited all the time?

If you aren’t using the FBW mod then do, it’s much better in every way but also I believe had some optimisations done to the glass cockpit displays.

The only other relatively low impact thing to try would be to uninstall the main launcher and reinstall while leaving the community and official folders intact. When you do you can just point it to the existent MSFS install and won’t have to redownload the whole sim. Do be careful though as if you uninstall incorrectly then you have a long night of downloading ahead of you!

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FBW mod is fair bit more demaning than the stock unless they optimized it a bunch in the last month. And that’s after I’ve turned off the CO displays to get a bit of performance back.

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I see limited by GPU when on the ground. I would use the FBW mod but I have had some problems with the autothrottle. I’ll give it another try though. Otherwise my other problems have been fixed, thanks a lot!

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The FBW mod now pretty much requires you to go into the tablet and set the gates otherwise you’ll potentially have real issues getting it to stick in the desired gate… just go into the tablet settings and you can adjust the position and range that counts for each gate, I made it quite a bit bigger so it’s easier to hit. Once you’ve set it up it’s a big improvement actually and if you felt so inclined you could add hardware gates or detents to your thrust lever and tune the controls to match.

As to the above by @Aeluwas I can’t really comment as I never use the stock one, I remembered a past release note about flight display optimisation so assumed it would be lighter in that specific regard. Good idea about turning off the superfluous displays though! Obvious when someone suggests it!

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Just out of interest since I don’t play in flatscreen anymore I thought it would be interesting to see how my performance compares in 2D to give you something to weigh up against as we are not miles apart in specs.

By way of comparison, I loaded up the FBW A320 ready to go on the runway at Orlando (KMCO) and waited for everything to start up and settle down.

Settings at 4K, 100% render resolution and the standard “Ultra” graphics preset (note this appears to set displays refresh rate to medium) with broken clouds.

FBW got 32fps sat on the ground, limited by GPU. Mainthread not limiting but running at about 22-23ms

Stock 320 got 34fps limited by GPU. This time mainthread is marginally better at around 21-22ms, so for me there is a very slight performance penalty to the FBW on the ground.

Repeated the experiment in the air, again all same settings but choosing Kennedy space centre as the start point, Orlando as destination. I climbed up to 10,000ft and checked performance by just observing for a couple of minutes flying.

FBW got 41 minimum to 57 maximum flickering constantly between mainthread and GPU limited. Mainthread bouncing around too much to read reliably but generally 13-16ms I would say.

Stock got 53 minimum to 63fps maximum and was still flickering between Mainthread and GPU limited but spent much more time in GPU limited. Mainthread seemed to be significantly more stable and easier to read at around 12-13ms.

My specs are 3090FE with a small undervolt @ 1980mhz in game, 5800X @ 4750mhz, 32gb @ 3600mhz CL16 so should be broadly comparable to yours if you wanted to reproduce the test conditions and see how they compare. The FBW defo more performance hungry in flight, but it’s much much better so worth the trade off personally!

edit - oh and worth noting that last month Seb mentioned specifically that the displays have been moved off to their own thread in the DX12 update, so the displays sucking so much perf should be improved substantially.

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New update. The problem occurs when looking around OUTSIDE on the ground at a airport. When I zoom in on any display or buttons and shake the camera around it stays at 40 fps (I have it locked on 40) I have turned off all traffic density which has helped a bit. I also cleaned up my community folder. Any new ideas on why this could be happening? My FPS is perfect just not when looking through the windshield. If I stay still while looking outside it stays at 20 FPS but is still very annoying.

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By lowering my graphics setting to high-end it got better by 6-9 fps, but I also lowered it to low-end and it stayed the exact same as high-end. My computer should very well be able to run this on ultra, I have a 3060 and a AMD Ryzen 5 5600x 6-Core. Meaning that the problem isn’t related to that.