Sim Update 5.1 Beta (1.7.30.0) Forum Surveys

Based on the release notes for this build, I was not expecting any significant changes in performance in v1.7.30.0.

Just to be sure, I decided to recreate the initial park-taxi-ready-for-takeoff section of my previous EGLL-EDDF flight in the .28 build. You can see the screenshots of that test with the dev-mode widget in this post.

PC specs, GPU drivers, MSFS graphics & other settings are all the same (there have been a few windows security updates since then, but IMO it’s highly unlikely that these would impact MSFS in any way). Flight settings are almost the same - the date is different (todays date) and time is slightly earlier, I think, based on the lighting (I did not make a record of the time of the start of the flight).

So what did I see?:

View Location & Camera Build 1.7.28.0 Build 1.7.30.0
Cold-n-dark, just spawned in 64.2 87.6
Cold-n-dark, just switched to cockpit view 72.5 88.4
Pushback, external view 36.5 82.9
Taxiing, cockpit view 43.4 89.2
Runway, ready for take-off external view Mid 30’s 85.6
Runway, ready for take-off internal view Mid 30’s 86.3

Unlike the .28 build, there were no stutters at all. Nor did the dreaded “Peaked over Retail Budget” notification, which appeared (with its associated pop-up) in .28 rear it’s ugly head in this .30 build.

These results were so surprising that I double-checked all my settings to confirm that they were the same, plus exited MSFS, then restarted and re-ran the test, resulting in virtually identical framerates (within the margin of error).

Note that I always delete all caches and the rolling cache between builds, so the results reported here are not due to cached data being read / used for the first test in this .30-build.

Screenshots. I’ve tried to recreate the same screenshot locations from the .28 build, that you can view here.
Cold-n-dark, just spawned in:

Cold-n-dark, just switched to cockpit view:

Pushback, external view:

Taxiing, cockpit view:

Runway, ready for take-off external view (no equivalent in .28):

Runway, ready for take-off internal view (no equivalent in .28):

I have no explanation of why I’m seeing such an increase in framerates on my PC in this build, but whatever the devs did to try to make “Improvements to reduce instances of low memory/avionics issues on Xbox Series X|S and PS5” appears to have improved performance on my PC in high-resource-usage situations. Yay! :smiley: :+1:

Edit:
On reflection, although I don’t have an explanation, there is a clue to what might be going on.

In my .28 build post, I noted that:
“Having powered up and started the pushback, framerates have halved. I’d was hoping for somewhere around 45 with this viewpoint. You’ll also notice the dreaded “Peaked over Retail Budget” notification, which appeared (with its associated pop-up) after I had powered up.”

In the .30 build, the dreaded “Peaked over Retail Budget” notification did not appear. Where was the greatest improvement in framerates? After I had powered up the aircraft.

Looking at the data from the dev-widget:

View Location & Camera Build 1.7.28.0 Build 1.7.30.0 Build 1.7.28.0 Build 1.7.30.0 Build 1.7.28.0 Build 1.7.30.0
- AllocateMem (Max 32425) PeakAllocMem GPUMem
Cold-n-dark, just spawned in 26652 23885 31177 29017 13543/14413 12276/14327
Cold-n-dark, just switched to cockpit view 25701 23797 31177 29017 12524/14332 12108/14122
Pushback, external view 33833* 23407 40617 29017 15290/14263* 11782/14056
Taxiing, cockpit view 32814* 23738 40617 29017 14393/14185* 12051/ 14123
  • = Exceeded limits
View Location & Camera Build 1.7.28.0 Build 1.7.30.0 Build 1.7.28.0 Build 1.7.30.0
- PhysicalMem SwapFile
Cold-n-dark, just spawned in 12337/24584 11081/25402 14315 12803
Cold-n-dark, just switched to cockpit view 12456/24729 11101/25283 13244 12696
Pushback, external view 19623/25084 11068/25324 14210 12338
Taxiing, cockpit view 18619/24802 11161/25279 14195 12577

It may be that once the Allocated Mem exceeds the max (32425 in my case), and / or the GPU exceeds the available memory (~ 14056 to 14413 in my case), framerates will drop and never recover.

Memory usage in the .30 build is considerably less than the .28 build. Since the memory never peaked over retail budget, framerates remained high.

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