I’ve read about the issues that a poor pc display/ monitor can have on the overall display of a game and took this info into consideration. Thanks for the reminder.
However, all was well with my MSFS 2020 experience until the last world update.
I have been able to regain some smoothness and less stuttering by making video card adjustments.
I’m not looking to get 50-60 fps, just a return to what was 25-30 above 1000 feet and 7-15 close to street level.
Thanks for responding. Happy flying.
Yep, sitting here exactly 10FPS on the menu after a fresh launch. Rolling cache disabled and AI traffic disabled. So frustrating
Edit: This was resolved by turning off AI traffic AND multiplayer. I will say that live weather is stuck on inaccurate winds aloft like when the sim first launched.
I started seeing these intermittent drops in performance after WU3 as well. I’ve got a modest system (specs below) – certainly not top-of-the line – but had been getting acceptable fps (20-30 fps) in most areas outside the hand-made airports and large photogrammetry cities, with the light aircraft and with mostly “medium” graphics. (With a few on High and Clouds on Ultra)
After WU3, nearly every flight that has lasted over ~10 minutes I’ve seen drops for upwards of a minute or so. It has happened in all the airplanes I regularly fly (C152, C172, Bonanza, Baron)
Since getting the sim back in November, I have regularly monitored performance by putting Task Manager on my second screen. The image below captured one of the many performance drops I experienced in a recent Baron flight over the state of Kansas in the USA. The weather was sunny with few clouds. For those of you who know Kansas, you’ll recognize that there would be very little load on the sim there’s just not much there.
As seen in the image, the CPU and GPU drop at the same time as a spike in HDD activity followed by lower HDD activity. Note that the GPU memory is not full and there’s modest Wi-FI activity.
Just a quick update on my pc issues of poor frame rates and stuttering which seemed to occur after WU3.
I was able to “solve” this issue by returning my video card (Radeon 7800) to its original factory settings and suspending an auto scan function on my antivirus software. While there is still some minor stuttering, my frame rates have actually increased a bit at street level in NYC (14-16 fps) and above 1000 feet (26-30 fps) again over NYC flying in a Cessna 172.
This is the best I can expect from my older Dell system and I’m satisfied. All flights appear smooth again, with only minor occasional stutters.
Since World Update 3 I noticed that 2 out of 6 of my CPU cores would run at full 100% dropping my FPS dramatically. The only thing that would bring it down back to normal is to have the task manager open. So now I always have it running when using the sim and the performance is a lot better.
I have concerns that Microsoft Windows Defender “may” be causing some issues (at least for me).
Looking at Task Manager there are sometimes that MSFS-WD is active and using 3.0% or more CPU usage. I “think” for me that may be unusual. There have been some times that my GPU went down to 60% and CPU up to 45%. Normally it is 100% and 23%.
Running the File Explorer window does not make a difference. Only having the task manager open fixes the issue. Here are a couple of screens. Approaching heavy photogrammetry areas trigger the issue. 2 Cores are at 100% (main thread is core 6).
Definitely something going on, came into Gatwick about 30 mins ago on ILS 26L. At about 2,000ft, and 8 miles out, my laptop just came to a shuddering halt, literally frame by frame speed. I have a feeling the VFR map is casuing a memory issue or something as closing that, I got an instant boost back to near normal. Granted it was raining, high wind and low visibility but never done that before.
I also want to add that this isn’t the first time I’ve seen this issue. The first time I saw it was in the update right before world update 3. After testing I came to the conclusion that the fsacademy ifr in the community folder was triggering the issue so my fix was to have the community folder empty and restart the pc. Without a restart the issue would still be there. Back then I did not try having the task manager running.
When world update 3 was installed I saw the issue even when the community folder was empty, that’s when I realized that the task manager would fix it.
Having the community folder empty or not does not change the outcome. I only have fsacademy vfr and ifr in it.
Yesterday I saw the same - with task manager open the game was running more smoothly, while before it was a really bad stutterfest also with low FPS, and this within a pre-cached photogrammetry area.
On the other hand, the low trees radius seems not to be an issue within photogrammetry areas, I only saw the small circle of trees in areas without PG.
Running with high render scaling and high antialias settings to force 100% GPU load helps a bit with stuttering, but clearly lowers FPS.
All this wasn’t before sim update 3. They definitely broke something while trying to optimize the game. Sure, memory footprint has lowered, but given the low RAM prices it’s not such a problem with 32 GB.
I did a seven-hour flight yesterday from Nevada to New York. When I started in Nevada I had 14Gb memory being used. When I arrived in New York I had 21Gb memory usage. My system has 32Gb.
I don’t think there is a reason for the sim to hold onto an extra 7Gb of memory over time as a flight continues. The flight log entry is not “that” big.
I have noticed during stuttering my GPU usage drops down to 20 to 30 percent. It usually hangs around 70 to 90 when its buttery smooth and I’ve even seen 99-100 percent.
I am curious as to why the GPU usage drops when the stuttering occurs or is the stuttering caused by the drop in GPU usage? If so what is causing the GPU usage to drop in the first place?
It’s the CPU, or rather one thread having problems, maxing out one logical processor. The GPU usage drops since it has nothing to do but wait for the CPU to ask for the next frame.
Check in the task manager, performance, CPU, view logical processors. One will be maxed when your GPU usage drops and FPS tanks.
there’s just not much there.
