I’ve no idea what it is, but I’m convinced that although the updates may (and probably do) cause some issues, there are also other forces at work with this game which are easy to forget.
It could be Windows, it could be server problems. One thing is for certain, nothing at all changed with the sim. This is something external.
Exactly.
And to be honest, I still don’t have the greatest confidence in our MSFS mechanics. I hope for the best, but I am ready to brace for impact! I suspect a DX12 release will not be without its initial upsets.
No idea what’s going on. Stand 2 at Pilot Plus’ EGTK in the Arrow is where I always test the ground fps. Earlier today this wouldn’t go above 38fps and the GPU utilisation wasn’t above 60%. I have updated the Nvidia driver to the new one (released today) but that FPS is just the same as I was getting before the weekend.
Dark forces at work…
I would never see fps like this during cruise before the update. Despite that, this is an example of a lighter case, as i’ve had it gradually drop to as low as 8fps on one flight.
Using RTX 3070 and I5-9600k with 16GB ram.
I used to do that, but after awhile I noticed it wasn’t making much of a difference. It also didn’t seem to be hurting anything else, though sometimes I completely forgot I had it setup that way, and I could have been hurting performance, especially in other games, but it was still good enough that it didn’t bother me.
But maybe it’s time to give it another shot. It actually may be hurting me in other games, but my 10600K/2070 Super combo chews up and spits out pretty much everything I throw at it except MSFS (and it’s still pretty darn good there, too, so much so that I’m considering suspending my search for a new GPU because, hey, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it), so we’ll see what happens. I hardly play other games any more anyway.
I don’t really check fps counts anymore, rather I just rely on my eyes to tell me if I’ve got a problem, but when I was, I found that for 2D anything at or above 35fps was more than good enough, and for VR, it’s much lower than that. Even high teens looks smooth, I suppose as long as it’s transient and not always there. But that’s a hypothesis, not something I know to be true.
There is definitely something going on with this game that is not hardware related.
I just had a look out of interest at the same benchmarking point again and actually saw the issue or change occur from high performance to not so.
Exact same place as the screenshot a couple of posts above. It was sat at 46fps which I put down to the slightly different live weather (although 7fps is quite a lot just for some slightly different clouds). GPU utilisation was at 98%. Suddenly the frame rate dropped to almost 0 briefly then settled at 38. GPU utilisation fell to 70%.
There is no throttling - GPU @ 58-65 degrees and CPU @ 51 degrees.
This has to be either something in the coding of the game, some background Windows process or something on the server side causing these performance changes. The game, post update, has performed very well indeed but then for absolutely no discernible reason in the last couple of days the performance tanks. If you’re starting from a lower base anyway it’s easy to see why some people are having very poor performance indeed.
D a mned if I can figure out why.
I may have inadvertently found the solution to this whole thing.
If you’ve read some of my prior posts, you know that this performance issue was not affecting me. Until I turned hyperthreading off last night. Then I went from having no issues, to having symptoms that are consistent with those described in this thread. Once I turned it back on, I went back to having no problems.
So, for those of you who are having issues, if you have hyperthreading available, turn it on and your problems should go away. Where this doesn’t help is for those with CPUs who don’t have hyperthreading capabilities in the first place. You guys might be stuck until/unless a solution is found by MS/Asobo. But now that I’ve discovered this, that may help them zero in on a solution even faster.
@OlieTsubasa443 and @Jummivana, you guys need to be aware of this and let those who are trying to find a solution know what I found. And in return for my finding the possible root of this problem, I don’t think I’m being unreasonable if I ask for some free aircraft from the store, in fact I think my choice of 10 of them is totally within reason. Plus, I feel like I’m entitled to the Carenado Mooney and 182T (in addition to the 10) at no charge because I bought and paid for them, but lost my licenses for something that was ultimately MS’s fault.
And please don’t tell me to contact the zen desk, I did when it originally happened, and they refused to help. In fact, because of their incompetence, I had to rebuy the entire sim from scratch as well. I would say I’m off topic (and I am) but I’ve already made my case, if you want any further info, we can take it offline.
Back on topic, and at the risk of repeating myself, I think I have found the root cause of this problem, at least for those with hyperthreaded CPUs. Now that the fix-it team knows of that (or at least as soon as @OlieTsubasa443 and @Jummivana inform them), they can probably drill down on a fix for those with non-hyperthreaded CPUs rather quickly, and I would suggest that it be released as a hot-fix when ready.
@Fmgc320 for a dummi (I can’t believe the properly spelled version of that word is censored), sometimes I can be pretty smart, no?
this is probably a separate issue, most user, including me had never had hyperthreading turned off
also you are hilarious but I won’t comment on that so we don’t lose focus on this thread
Dude get a grip on your self.
Team knows how to put performance back because it was performing flawlessly at release and prior to that as well. When they finish xbox rollout hope they revert back.
Performance is still a problem with CPUs bearing HT either on or off. Thats not a solution.
@bodyspike No, it’s not. Because when I have HT off, I have the same problems that have been described here, but when it’s on, I don’t. Try it yourself (assuming you’ve got the right CPU) and you’ll see first hand that I’m right. I don’t know how stout your machine is, so it might be having performance problems just because you have an older system or whatever (I’m not saying you do, but if you do, I don’t know the first thing about your rig), but if you’ve got a machine anywhere close to mine, and you turn HT off, just like me you’ll see the same thing. Unless you’ve got something else going on like overclocks or the usual suspects that cause CDTs, even though we’re not dealing with CTDs here.
@LaKbessita, you might be surprised at how many simmers actually have it off, because it does help with performance by preventing the “Main Thread” process from running on a weaker 2nd CPU core, resulting it that core being maxed out. I had it off myself for months until I decided it wasn’t helping me that much, even though it did result in the Main Thread running on a core that was not maxed out. That could be because my rig is stout to begin with (10600K married to a 2070 Super, but I don’t overclock (even though I can get a pretty big one) because it does not help MSFS performance to do so).
Having it on, like it is now, probably helps other games perform better, but I’m so addicted to MSFS I barely play other games.
Also, I thank you for calling me hilarious (I do try!) but if you don’t mind, could you PM me to explain just what it is you found so funny? I think I know, but I want to hear your version… Thanks! No hard feelings if you don’t, you are certainly under no obligation to. 
9900K @5, 32GB RAM M2 RTX3080 5760x1080.
Back in FSX says I was standing by that HT should be bios disabled but in FS2020 (have tested this before posting) doesn’t have any effect… glad it works for you though 
SMT is on so it’s not that causing the performance drops I’ve seen.
I have had a 5-8 fps degradation with sim update 4 under the same conditions. This impact is when on the ground, which is when FPS is at its lowest, so 5-8 fps is a lot! Stutters are similar and did not increase.
Maybe the decrease is due to the greater number of trees since they reduced tree size and had to increase quantity to guarantee coverage.
System 10900k , RTX 3090, 32gb RAM @3733, 2TB M2
I had the performance degradation a couple times now and once was during a flight to Dubai, so maybe not the trees. Or at least not for me.
During one flight from EGLL to EGNT, my fps gradually dropped to around 8-13fps, but then increased to about 15-20ish fps on landing. While it still should have been higher, that’s the only time i’ve seen my framerate increase after gradually degrading.
Anyways, seems like this issue varies a lot for different people.
I’m just completely baffled by what’s going on.
Flying the 320x, on the same route I did last week, in pretty much identical weather and I am getting 20fps less in the cruise. My GPU is sat at around 50% utilisation. As soon as I go outside the fps jumps from 40 to 60. Last week it was 60 inside too.
To reiterate, this is all post update and I have changed absolutely nothing (unless FBW have broken the 320 with one if their recent updates, which I highly doubt). How can you troubleshoot when no variable has actually changed?! 
Hyperthreading is definitely NOT the issue since I recently swapped a 9600k for a 9900k and the i5 is devoid of HT and I still had issues with underutilized GPU/CPU and low fps with it.
Again, HT would also fail to explain why sometimes restarting the sim and the exact same flight gives you good performance.
This is a sim process failing to allocate resources or a bad interaction between the sim and recent Windows updates. I wouldn’t want to be Asobo right now and having to troubleshoot this one.
On a regular basis people are reporting their settings changed after updates.
I might be useful to go through them again. Might also help to change e.g. the refresh rate of the glass cockpits, save, turn it back to the original setting, save again.
I have the impression they sometimes change their internal structures, which then collide with certain files already saved.
I’d checked the settings but that’s a good suggestion re changing and saving. I’ll try that 
Interesting, seems settings are saved “cloud style” … doing a re-re-wipe and changing things up a bit on the PC.
Deleted and formatted all drives, just got done reinstalling, the Sim had my settings still?
