I’ve had a bad run with Steam MSFS, to the point of going beyond the rational for reasons.
After only a few months, I’m on my second full reinstall. Before each reinstall, MSFS was unplayable in VR, with some issues in pancake as well. Usually my system is running well and then around the time of something updating, which could be a coincidence as something is always doing this, MSFS just gets worse and worse.
From the first use, the behaviour changed on how to start the program and then the inevitable deterioration of performance. After a reinstall, MSFS would be good. I was even able to use the newest NVIDIA driver on DX12 without issues a few weeks back, while others were struggling. This indicated the reinstall as a fix, but why?
Yesterday it wouldn’t start, and all the packages had been deleted by something. The day before, a glitchy mess but running.
So with my understanding, MSFS ‘lives’ in three areas. On your C drive under AppData, also in ‘Steamapps’, and the packages in Steam>MSFS which is where I have them on another drive.
Having done verification checks in Steam, the files in Steamapps are verified as all good, but MSFS wouldn’t start. So something in there could be failing, but not picked up. But more likely something in AppData is causing it.
It is also possible that the packages could be the problem, but my guess is that they are basically read only.
I’m going to make a copy of Steamapps and AppData, and restore them when things get funky again to see if that works. I found the 16 gb manualcache file in AppData, which can’t be good as i wasn’t using it.
My thoughts are that the only solution is the extreme measure of a dual boot with fresh Win11 and only MSFS, and then using imaging to restore working versions, or even a regular fresh Win11 image and then install MSFS.
I’m really getting very frustrated with all of this and regret MSFS, because I know how good it can be, which is contrasted by the pain.
Those who have consistent good performance, what is the secret?