When I first tested out the new computer / MSFS on my friends 4k 85 inch TV, the game ran perfectly. Everything on ultra-preset. Avg 35+ fps which is awesome in my book.
Cut to when I drove my pc back to my place, where I still have a 1080P monitor and the game is completely unplayable on Ultra on my 1080P monitor even when upscaled to 4k. Performance is even worse when I lower resolution.
The ONLY way I have been able to get playable frames, is to disable photogrammetry. But one of the main reasons I dropped 3k+ on pc parts is to play MSFS with photogrammetry lol.
The reason why I’m so baffled is that plugging into a 4k 85 inch tv via hdmi, it ran excellent, perfect. But on my 1080P monitor its a huge problem that I’m unable to solve with the main thread limiting performance.
Do I need to bite the bullet and upgrade sooner than I thought to a 4k display? But even so, shouldn’t my components run at 1080P no problem with photogrammetry on?
I’d say yes you need to think about upgrading to a 1440p or 4K TV/monitor if nothing else for the sheer beauty of FS at 1440p or 4K.
However re your current situation: At 1080 the 3080ti is not going to be loaded hard enough and will likely lead to CPU/GPU imbalance situations, where GPU is “twiddling it’s thumbs” a lot (as it were).
The only way to get it working better is to load the GPU more, you would ordinarily do that by resolution, but 1080 is low res output for that card so load it more by increasing your render scale slider in FS graphics options maybe try 150% → 200% to keep the GPU busier and you may get better results even outputing at 1080.
ps. all Graphical sliders are not the same LOD’s affect CPU load, most others affect GPU load so be careful not to mainthread limit your CPU with too high LOD’s. Start with them at 100-150.
The hiccup is your monitor. Upgrade to either the 4K TV or a real monitor capable of displaying all the data the video card is putting out. It overwhelms the one you have, nothing wrong with your PC.
Is it not the shadder cache guys? This will have been built up with the 4k tv attached and now there’s an HD monitor plugged in its all wrong.
Before you buy anything do a complete clean reinstall of the nvidia drivers (select the box to do a clean install) and try that. its only 10 minutes out of your life, and worth a try.
What is the refresh rate of your monitor? Assuming it’s 60HZ, go into settings and turn on VSync 60 or Vsync30 if you want really smooth as that video suggests. Put graphics settings to Ultra and LODs to 100 start with (you can increase this later once you’re happy with performance)
If your monitor is 144hz, set VSync to 20.
Also make sure your Traffic Sliders are mid range (just to start with)
Now turn on the fps display from dev mode and tweak your settings. The idea is that you can increase LOD and Traffic only enough that you still stay GPU Limited and not CPU limited.
But those settings I suggested should help tremendously.
Yeah, I had bad experience with photogrammetry. It look both horrible and giving me horrible FPS. Having it off is actually a better experience for me.
But a limited by Mainthread issue might be solved by following this step. I know I followed it, and it restored my FPS.
Just for clarification - you said you tested it out on a friends tv - was that also using the friends internet connection, and on getting the pc home you found the performance is worse at an easier resolution?
If that’s the case then it’s your internet connection that could be the issue, especially if photogrammetry makes such a difference. A wired ethernet connection and good download speeds are a must-have - your hardware is more than capable of great performance in the sim.
As suggested above, this could be an internet issue. Your Main Thread went from 657ms to 58ms after you turned off photogrammetry.
Do check if your internet is working as expected in other applications. Also as suggested above, locking VSync to 30 might actually work better, but there is definitely something a miss here for you to be seeing those numbers (657ms Main Thread)
