Performance Deteriorating during longer flights?

[PacificSet90456]

@MorsAbAlto84

What you are talking about explains performance problems in general very well, but not performance degradation. Assuming the “data bubble” around the aircraft is always the same size, if the system could not handle the data load for the selected level of detail, it should be slow from the beginning to the end of the flight, only dependant on the complexity of the terrain.

This is a bad assumption because aircraft are different, speeds are different, and graphic parameters are different. Assume there is a 10 nm graphics data bubble. An aircraft flying at 60 knots will traverse the bubble in 10 minutes. An aircraft flying at 360 knots will traverse the bubble in 1:40. The CPU needs to collect and process 6x the graphics data for the faster aircraft!

However, people experiencing degradation have splendid performance at first and get down to single digit frames per second as the flight progresses, no matter the terrain.

System performance is not constant nor is it linear for MSFS.

Memory does not have to be “cleaned out”.

Yes it does. Windows will stop running or freeze programs if memory is completely filled.

When you delete data on your computer, no matter where it simply gets flagged as free space and is overwritten. It’s not actually being cleaned out. A write operation thus is always more costly than a delete, since a delete does not actually do that much.

You are thinking of deleting files on a disk. Memory management is very different. Data in memory is not “deleted” until a program terminates or the program deallocates it. Windows can move the data around in memory but cannot force a program to release it.

The problem is, that for some reason the simulator does not release some of its data at all.

It needs a lot of graphics data to create the beautiful scenery we see. It DOES release its data when it is finished with it. The problem is that with a very high graphics demand, the CPU has to process all the data and free its memory BEFORE new graphics data arrives. If it doesn’t, the incoming data is stored in memory until it is processed. When it isn’t processed fast enough, memory fills up and FPS craters.

Not even after you quit the program.

Windows cleans up everything after the program finishes. Memory used by MSFS is available for use by other programs within a few seconds.

There are simply no or not enough mechanisms in place that help the simulator to alleviate memory usage.

I mentioned three things that can be done to manage memory usage: pause MSFS, decrease monitor resolution, decrease some graphics parameters.

Memory usage should vary with the complexity of the terrain and to some extent it does, but the committed memory is not freed up properly as it should and this leads to degradation at first and CTDs second, depending on the VAS available.

Committed memory shouldn’t be freed up until a program doesn’t need it. It IS freed up when it isn’t needed. “As it should” is your POV. Committed memory is allocated based on the graphics quality required by the user. If the user requires ULTRA 4k graphics, MSFS and Windows will do everything they can to deliver those frames no matter what the hardware is.

Has anyone seen any MSFS messages saying “WARNING, your graphics settings are too high. If you continue, performance will be degraded.” Nope! The only message is seeing FPS lower than 10.