Asobo have already given us the setting to get perfect smoothness (consistency).
It’s all about Consistent Interframe Timing rather than raw FPS.
You need to give the CPU enough time between frames to do it’s job.
High FPS is good for bragging rights, but it actually stresses out your GPU needlessly and restricts the amount of time between frames for the CPU to do it’s tasks.
Stop chasing FPS higher than your monitor or TV refresh rate. Those extra frames are wasted. Unless you have a G-Sync monitor, frames that aren’t in perfect sync with your display are either discarded, or will likely introduce microstutter.
Like I said, Inter frame consistency is the key to smooth stutter free visuals.
Spend a minute to give this a try and tweak up from there. You might be pleasantly surprised.
Set your desktop to 60hz
In the sim, enable vsync and select either 100% or 50% framerate limit depending on your hardware setup… (My triple screen 2080ti has no problems with 30fps.) Note: You must choose a setting that is lower than what you can achieve with vSync “off” so you have some headroom for the CPU to do it’s job.
A big test of the above approach, is to watch the runway lights move past perfectly consistently as you takeoff.
IMHO, consistent 30 or 60 fps is a better experience than higher , but sporadic non v-sync FPS. Your GPU will run cooler as well.
In my case, I run at 30fps and double it to 60 if needed using the $7 Lossless Scaling app whilst maintaining vSync which is key to the whole concept.
Don’t agree? Please just give it a try. It’ll only take a minute . Then tweak it up from there.
For my use of MSFS and style of flight simming, the OP is spot on. How others use MSFS, their preferred styles of flight simming (or gaming even) may not be measured by the same metrics or even visual appearance. When it comes to folks satisfaction with how MSFS appears/performs, beauty must be in the eye of the beholder. For folks who fly by FPS, well, that is how they measure the fun they are having with their sim set-up. Going for a smooth/stable flight sim experience by way of frame consistency can be much less exciting than tweaking for peaks.
Coming from Series X to PC recently, I really appreciate the sweet spot between 30 and 60 FPS. Folks with higher refresh rate monitors and/or who play other kinds of fast paced games would probably find what I see as boring and underperforming. The vantage point from where one flys also matters, probably much more so than we discuss here in the forums. For folks who fly from outside the cockpit, how the world of flight is rendered, what it looks like poses different technical challenges than those of us who fly primarily from the flight deck, behind the instrument panel.
There are also those for whom building, tweaking, and tuning their gaming rig is a whole hobby in itself. I am learning as I explore what my new PC is capable of (and not capable of) that the hunt and the chase for better PC performance numbers can be quite a different thing than just flying the sim itself. That I keep coming back to what works best for my rig, while correct for me and mine is probably not so satisfying for others who are driven to push the envelopes! Frame consistency works great for me and my flying style but then again I find boring sometime better: Excitement for me comes from improving my piloting skills, meeting challenges encountered in more or less realistic flight scenarios so frame consistency is key. Others may prefer a different look for different adventures?
This is quite a common issue on console games and most people know it as frame pacing, it happens in a lot of Fromsoft games like Bloodborne where the v sync isnt implemented correctly leading to a judder on camera movement
Guilty as charged. I’ve been experimenting with FPS caps and testing with CapFrameX. So much depends on the area, altitude, weather, LOD settings, and of course the aircraft itself.
At this very moment I’m tweaking and testing RAM timings and BIOS settings to achieve the best OCCT memory and cache latency/bandwidth benchmarks.
I don’t think that capping FPS (using vSync or RTSS) affects frametimes if the cap is higher than the flight can achieve. Perhaps it matters if, for example, I’m flying my Bonanza @ 10,000 ft. in clear skies with no traffic over the Sahara , where I can easily sustain 80 FPS. Capping my FPS @ 60 can decrease inter-frame latency in that scenario.
But flying a Fokker F28 @ 2,000 ft. over NYC on a cloudy day with AI traffic is a whole other thing, and I’ll never hit a 60 FPS cap.
Does that mean I should set a 60 FPS cap? I honestly don’t know.
Yes that’s correct, so you are likely to see some screen tear and you don’t get the headspace required as the GPU is still running at it’s maximum fps.
I prefer to use the $7 Lossless Scaling app available on steam (you can copy it elsewhere and not use steam to run it). It can double, triple. quadruple your fps (up to the desktop refresh rate) and it allows you to have v-sync enabled.
I’m appealing to everyone, to just to give it a try. You might be surprised at the results. They are so good on my 2080ti that I don’t actually use the framegen at all except maybe in the most extreme cases.
I agree with your points. The approach that I suggest only works if you select a setting that results in a fixed FPS that is “less” than what your system can achieve (with vsync OFF) so you create some headroom.
If you are able to easily achieve 80 fps, then set your limit to 100% desktop refresh rate of just 60hz and enable vSync.
You may be surprised by the results.
The best test is to watch the runway lights as you take off. On my relatively middle spec system, with the above approach, the lights pass by in a perfectly smooth and consistent fashion with no stutter whatsoever resulting in a less stressed CPU and GPU with lower temperatures and less fan noise as well.
I think my OP only applies to a PC. I agree with your points about fps in different scenarios.
Your rig looks like it’s really up to date. My rig has been built up over many years and is lagging behind the latest and greatest now. But as it goes, with my suggested approach, I won’t be compelled to upgrade until FS2030 comes out.
Oh I did the upgrade in the last year after about 6 years of being thrustmaster ecosystem for everything so pc then switching flight gear to moza like the wheel is the plan next
Same still applies tho as fps isn’t exactly everything for a smooth performance
I must say that your method works perfect. Before this, my monitor was set to 100mhz. For a smooth experience I needed to achieve 85FPS. With Loseless scaling that was easy. But in a setup with 2 monitors LL isn’t that great.
Now I have set my monitor to 60hz. Enabled Vsync via Radeon and actived FSR FG in the sim. Now I have a constant 60FPS and it really smooth. Even my headstracker is super smooth.
Reread this thread: If I understand the OP correctly, I have achieved the same outcome without using the $7 Lossless Scaling app by setting a Dynamic target of 30 and a 100% monitor Frame rate limit, which in my case is 60 FPS/60 Hz; of course with Gsync & Vsync on because I’m outputting to an old big screen HDTV with a VRR Game Mode (legacy not true Nvidia Gsync, but Nvidia deals with that).
Would it be interesting to put some latency numbers around the OP concept of Inter Frame Consistency to put more context around FPS? Just at thought!
