I have done that and it runs super smooth, but then again in runs super smooth in 4K High-End for me. I have since been bitten by the VR bug though and very much want to see the improvement they can make to that experience. It’s good right now but limited in terms of planes and locations. Flying over London in a TBM is a recipe for disaster in VR.
It’s science fiction. But also a great idea. In 2009 - before DX10 - the current MSFS 2020 would have been science fiction. 12 years later it runs.
Indeed. A few years is all it took for technology to get to a point where something like this is viable. And that will only get better as tech evolves in the future. By the time we reach the mid-life point of the 5th anniversary of MSFS, entry level hardware of that era will likely be able to run it on today’s Ultra settings the way today’s bleeding edge hardware does.
And to clarify, by “today’s Ultra settings”, I’m referring to the claim in the last Q&A that with the new optimizations they’re baking into the sim, we’ll soon be able to run at “beyond ultra”. By then though, perhaps we’ll even have “beyond, beyond Ultra”. lol
1 Like
Wait – the developers have stated that they are addressing the performance? In writing? I have heard people say this, but would love to see it for myself. If that’s the case, I’ll feel a whole lot better and end my FPS crusade for the time being.
It’s not in writing, but rather on video. Watch the last Q&A. They explained that by optimizing for XBOX, they were able to get some performance gains for the PC version as well. They even claimed that it will allow for higher end graphcis than we’re currently seeing.
Capital! That’s great news.
I’d say keep your expectations in check. It’s not like we’ll be seeing huge frame rate increases. And we’re not likely to see those improvements until they roll out the DX12 support. But in any case, any performance improvement is welcome, so long as it doesn’t come at the expense of other aspects of the sim, like we’re currently seeing with tree draw distance getting closer and closer.
I’d be happy with +10 FPS across the board. I tend to fluctuate between 50-80 FPS right now. If I could hold 60 FPS, I would be delighted.
Lucky you. I currently limp along at 30 fps if I’m lucky. I’d love to get back my pre-WU3 numbers in the 40+ fps range. Or even better, my post launch 50+.
One thing that had a big impact on my FPS was setting Cockpit Glass Refresh to low. I found that setting to have the biggest impact on my performance (in glass cockpits, obviously 
)
Also, if you don’t use the third person HUD, disabling that netted me 10 FPS. It continues to calculate even after you’re back in the cockpit. Those two things took me from dipping into the 30s and 40s to where I am now.
I have the hud disabled, as well as most of the stuff from the top menu. I see no difference between setting glass cockpit on med or low. Only high seems to have a detrimental effect.
That said, the biggest hit I take is from popping out my instruments for my cockpit. If I use the C152, I can maintain 40+. But I used to hit over 60 with that plane originally. WU3 was a real nasty downturn for me performance-wise, as it was for a lot of others.
The next flight simulator software from different company will implement dlss highly chance. Then, we will see the competiton.
The question remains, what exactly the performance benefit of upscaling would be for a flight simulator?
There are not really any outlandish shaders or highly complex geometry outside of the aircraft that would computationally max out a GPU like a RTX 3070 or higher. I assume proc-gen scenery and photogrammetry don’t use a large amount of different materials. So the problem largely seems to be a lack of RAM/VRAM and the high number of objects to be rendered.
There is weather of course, but the clouds seem to be particle-based and have no textures. For me, performance is largely the same in IMC and VMC.
DLSS however, does not help with object density at any resolution. So as long as the bottleneck is the CPU/GPU interface, DLSS doesn’t help that much. Whatever performance optimizations Asobo work on for the X-Box, I assume those are largely centered around smart memory management and improve draw call batching.
That’s also why a better API (DirectX 12 or Vulkan) should help to stabilize performance.
That’s how I understand it. So if I am completely wrong, please feel free to shed some light on these matters.
1 Like
Roughly it does what the “render scale” setting does, but with much better upscaling: rendering at a lower resolution than the screen reduces GPU usage, which can in some circumstances increase frame rate.
This is dependent on actually being GPU-limited in your render pipeline; folks who’ve hit the CPU bottleneck could still see improvement in increased resolutions or graphics quality settings.
However if you’re at Ultra at native screen resolution and you’re CPU limited, you’ll see no benefit from DLSS.
1 Like
Which is the majority of people using MSFS today, and likely in the near future (1-2 year time span). CPUs will remain the bottleneck until hardware catches up.
A lot of people are CPU bottlenecked, DLSS won’t help those users.
And a lot of people that are barely GPU bottlenecked will get CPU bottlenecked because of DLSS. Which is bad because that causes the stutters. Unless you can lock the FPS to 60 with vsync it will only get worse. And getting 60 FPS reliably is very hard with any current CPU.
If you currently have a 3080 it’s almost impossible to get 100% load on the GPU at 4K and that’s without the DLSS. That’s why a lot of people with high end systems complain about bad performance. The CPU causes a very unstready FPS count because its workload varies so much between different areas in the sim.
Most need a better CPU, so they can get 100% GPU usage for stability.
1 Like
I have a 3080 RTX and get 98-99% load on my GPU at 1440. My CPU utilization is about 20%. I realize that’s not 4k, just FYI.
That’s TOTAL CPU utilization across all threads. Break out your task manager and view CPU by logical threads vs overall view, and you’ll see a very different story. You’ll see one thread (main thread) that’s likely near 90-100% at all times when running MSFS. That’s the CPU usage that matters in MSFS, not the overall usage. Your overall performance is only as good as that 1 thread.
2 Likes
Ah, interesting. I’ll do that, appreciate the info. Main thread is the dispatch thread I take it?
Indeed it is. MSFS is actually quite multi-threaded. It will pass work off to other threads / cores for processing. But you’re still bottlenecked by how fast that main thread is able to do its thing. It’s what handles all the data coming into the CPU, assigns it to other threads, and then takes that data and passes it back out to the rest of the system.
What you’ll likely see while MSFS if running is 1 thread maxed out, another 4-6 with moderate workload, and the rest of them doing very little at all. That’s how you get the overall 20% usage you see. It’s the average usage of all threads combined. That really doesn’t paint an accurate picture of what’s going on.
1 Like