I was watching a YouTube video last night (I really need a life) and a guy was saying that, for best smoothness, we should lock our frame-rate to match our monitor refresh rate. So, if my monitor refreshes at 60hz, we should lock our frame rate to 60hz. Have I wasted my money on a monitor with 165mz refresh rate? Or is this a hangover from the older days of flight simming? Thanks a lot!
Hi @Grover2005,
I run on a 60hz monitor and lock to 60FPS by enabling VSYNC. This will help with nasty screen tearing when your sim consistently reaches a higher FPS value than your refresh rate. Locking at 60 can also help with any micro stutters and means your PC won’t constantly be trying to reach the highest FPS possible…therefore potentially lowering temperatures and usage.
If you run a 165hz monitor, you really won’t see a huge difference in smoothness unless you are consistently reaching 165FPS or more in the simulator. This is why competitive FPS gamers usually use 240 and sometimes 360hz monitors, because they can achieve those FPS values consistently and it will make those titles considerably more smooth.
I’d suggest playing around and seeing what works best for you! Usually in flight sim history screen resolution is more of an important factor than monitor refresh rate, but in the day and age of NVIDIA Frame Generation and other similar offerings, it’s not unheard of to be getting triple figure FPS values in MSFS!
Hope this is even a tiny bit helpful 
I have a 144Hz monitor.
I lock max frame rate @ 90Hz using Riva Statistics Server.
I turn Frame Sync on @ 100% monitor refresh rate.
This helps allow the sim to run at 90 FPS with low latency in a low stress aircraft (Bonanza) in a low stress environment (Sahara desert.)
I have no need for more FPS than that. Limiting frame rate improves latency, and using frame sync practically guarantees I’ll never have a screen tearing problem.
If I were to play a first person shooting competitively, I’d want the highest refresh rate possible. With this simgame, it’s only important insofar as bragging rights go.
Personally, I don’t want to limit myself to 60Hz (thus 60 FPS.) In fact, I see greater latency at a capped 60 FPS than at a capped 90 FPS. Not sure why.
YMMV.
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Hrm, doesn’t a lower frame rate lead to higher latency as there’s a longer average delay between actual input device events and the next frame’s inputs being handled and reactions calculated for display?
In principle, that makes perfect sense.
But I found my overall latency was better when I capped framerate @ 90, when compared to no framerate cap.
I could easily see 120 FPS in my low stress test, but latency was higher.
Don’t ask me to explain it. But if I had to guess it would be the CPU has to process more data at higher framerates.
Mysterious! It does though explain why you get higher latency at 60 Hz than 90 Hz.