Ok. I’ve been here since the beginning. I have a very mid-level computer -
I5-9600
32GB RAM
Z390 MB
Nvidia GTX 1060
NVMe PCIe M.2 500GB
Performance on release was as I expected. Fair at best, and some airport approaches in the 10FPS range. It seemed to have gotten worse as the updates came and went. Then with SU5, it’s like a light went on. I now get > 30FPS, with complex airports knocking me down into the low 20s. Never in the teens.
How did Asobo all of a sudden improve the performance as much as they did? I was all set to pull the trigger on an overpriced RTX 3XXX, but now I can wait until they come back to launch pricing, if that ever happens…
Larry,
Actually, your comments are nice to read.
I too, decided to use my very mid-level computer for MSFS.
A Ryzen 5 1600, 32 gig mem, Asus B350-F MB and a Nvidia GTX 1050i, NVMe 500GB.
Performance was in the 15-20 fps at medium settings.
After update 5, I am getting 30-38 fps most everywhere and have moved a few settings to ultra.
…
I was about to pay for a very overpriced 3XXX card too and , like you, I am going to wait.
I hate Corporate GREED !
…
Thanks for your comments. Made my day.
I decided to try out MSFS on my “old” computer (7700k/1080/16mb) and was pleasantly surprised at how well it runs. The efficiencies that Asobo managed with the xBox conversion were a real blessing for the vast majority of us who can neither find or afford a 3XXX card. Well don Asobo!
There is no doubt SU5 gave some extra life to mid-level pc specs, saving some people extra cash.
However, those with higher pc specs are feeling burned cause SU5 downgraded the visuals. Those 3080ti/3090 users aren’t getting the mileage they would expect.
The only thing that was downgraded in visuals was the culling resulting in buildings popping up when looking around. And now it has been fixed. A lot of people have been looking for other “downgrades” since but they have not been able to present any real evidence of it. It was not only the people with “higher pc specs”, we all were affected by the culling.
SU5 was a huge update code-wise for the sim, a ton was cleaned from the old FSX code and improved, you can only check the size of the update. It has given the team a lot more leeway for future development. That’s why the sim runs so much better after SU5 than before.
I spend 1800 Euro / 2100 USD on upgrading CPU and GPU, which - prob - caused my 750Watt PSU to fry itself and now I am installing a 180 Euro / 210 USD 1000 Watt PSU.
These changes also caused the necessity for both Win10 and MSFS to be reinstalled (several times),
… because Microsoft
DCS never ever causes ANY problem, ALWAYS works, VR looks better whenever it works
I’m one of those ones with a 3090. You shouldn’t lump all of us in that category as being displeased. I welcomed the SU5 changes as it also boosted performance significantly on my rig, along with everyone else. The only visual difference I noticed was the reduced LOD and object pops, but the LOD is easily fixed by changing the LOD to 4 in the UserCfg, and object pops was fixed with offscreen precaching added in the latest world update.
They changed the way they render objects. Before I think they render pretty much everything within your radius, that includes objects that are off screen and in the distance with uniform LOD. This puts quite a strain in both your CPU and GPU since the game also renders objects off-screen.
On the plus side, changing camera placements are smoother since you’ll see objects already rendered regardless of where you’re looking at with your camera. But on the downside is too much objects being rendered that you’re not seeing which impacts the hardware performance.
SU5 changed this so that the sim only renders objects that are on-screen, and a different LOD distance. So there’s fewer objects for the CPU and GPU to render since it no longer renders anything off-screen anymore.
On the plus side, due to less objects being rendered, there’s more performance that is gained by adding more frames into the same view, increasing your FPS. But on the downside, there’s a lot of popping effects when you move your camera, because now the game will have to start grabbing assets to be rendered as they go on-screen.
No, they didn’t render everything. What you’re describing is called culling and it is trivial for objects behind the view plane. Culling is a basic part of 3D rendering. Another part of culling but not as trivial is view plane edge clipping. However, this is now done in hardware with the GPU. Older or less powerful systems did this with the CPU which is one reason why they bogged down.
The most common problem across PC gamers is putting money in the most obvious components and forgetting the rest. A faster CPU won’t help if the cooling is bad. A fast CPU and GPU won’t help if the RAM sticks are old, slow, badly chosen. Expensive CPU and GPU won’t help if the PSU is cheap. or the storage is old and slow. You can go on like this for a while.
1000 Watt is overkill for your PC, important is the quality, not the quantity.
They changed culling and LOD and render distance and some other details as clouds.
Now they the changing it slowly back since WU6 we have a slider for culling. In SU6 we get 400 Tree Render distance , that’s 200 more, also With a slider
I don’t think this is quite correct.
If you recall the sudden loss of window, roofs, entire airport terminal buildings etc which occured as a result of SU5 this has nothing to do with culling.
They changed a lot with regards how LOD works. They even said as much during the last Q&A and a lot of 3rd part developers had to rework their products because of this.
It would be a fair guess to say that the Asobo 3d scenery assets probably had their poly count reduced (result of automated re-mesh can result in solid objects no longer being solid and bingo, you have missing objects) - the handcrafted model for Edinburgh castle that is presently visible in game is in fact a lower quality version than the one that existed (and had a flag) prior to SU5
None of this is actually a bad thing if it is done with care and it improves performance for less capable hardware like mid range PC’s and consoles but to say that the ONLY thing they changed was the culling is not correct.
Didn’t they change something in the color rendering too? Since there is a lot of color banding in the sky, clouds and water? As if they reduced the color depth.
Not only that. They also cleaned up a lot of the legacy FSX code that was anything but optimized for today’s hard- and software, plus implemented more efficient RAM handling.
If you can pull the trigger on a 30 series card I would.
It won’t be any time soon until you see msrp prices or even close to it. NVIDIA completely messed up the way they sold these cards and let scalpers get hands on it. Combine that with the recent shortages of supplies, you be lucky to even find one soon.