People keep complaining about the main thread and performance etc asking why they haven’t fixed it and why performance has gotten worse with the updates…
No, I don’t have any inside information but doesn’t it seem obvious that Asobo hasn’t put much effort into fixing the main thread issue because we’re still on DirectX 11? DX12 is a big step forward in thread/scheduler management.
Additionally, there’s a reasonable chance that performance has gotten worse in the past couple sim updates because they’re optimizing for DX12?
I do get that people are upset that they paid for the game and we’re basically using beta software right now. That’s definitely a good point, and that isn’t 100% fair. I do agree there.
But between Asobo finally moving us towards DX12 and them fixing the update schedule so they actually have time to address the bugs we find in the public beta, there’s actual reason to believe this sim will start to show the performance/stability this forum is commenting about.
What I do know, however, is that we shouldn’t have to wait this long for a fix to get the performance back to what it was pre SU9.
My concern is that if Asobo don’t sort out the issue in SU10 then how much longer will it take for a fix to come. SU11, SU12, SU13 ? I am seeing very little urgency here!
This is particularly of concern now that updates will not be as often as before. It is clear to me that basic sim performance is not of paramount importance to Asobo otherwise it would have been addressed well before now.
I think the issue is that people here don’t realize just how big of a change DirectX 12 is, and just how much the advantages of it are particularly suited to FS2020.
Even though this is not technically correct, to keep it simple, switching to DirectX 12 is like running the game on a whole new engine. It is a massive massive change. One that requires a lot of background work more than they could do in just the sim update 10 cycle.
DirectX 12 also is a game changer in load distribution for CPU. FS2020 is extremely CPU dependent, not necessarily because of the coding but because of what it’s accomplishing. Computational Fluid Dynamics is one of the Processor intensive workloads you can do on a computer, period. Add to that the compression workload from the server data (which is guaranteed to be highly compressed) plus all the flight systems modeling, hydraulics, radio beacons, weather modeling on and on. FS2020 has crazy computational needs before you even think about rendering. All of which needs to go through DirectX 11, DirectX is not just for graphics it sits between the hardware and the entire game. Not sure how many people realize that.
To be honest it’s kind of crazy that they built the thing on DirectX 11 at all. If there’s a single piece of software that could use DirectX 12 it’s Flight Simulator 2020. You want to talk about mistakes, that was the mistake that Asobo made, and now they need to overhaul/reoptimize code and move it to DirectX 12 while we’re trying to use it. Which they’ve probably been doing in the background for quite a while.
The other relevant question is in my view: is Asobo responsible for everything performance?
Shouldn’t we as community first compare apples to apples by disabling everything not Asobo, and fly the same plan in the same plane with the same system and sim settings, drivers, etc.
Then we would be able to compare fps and stutters on the basis of system specs.
This would be the only fair way to make performance statements. Otherwise we know nothing, and Asobo will put time searching for a needle in a hay stack.
I’m the same way we can add some ons, to see what breaks the performance to find the culprit there.
I mean, do you see the complexity behind the validation of all these many statements about bad performance?
Totally agree 100%. I wish they would make us all only use safemode in su10 BETA and everyone needs to post issue reports on an addon free sim. Only way to make sure the core sim works as it should. Then it’s up to 3rd part devs to make their addons optimised for the new version.
Many of the addons we are using is not updated for the new verison.
Agree, the core sim has also problems but it’s hard to pinpoint the issue if most of the users post issues while using addons.
The simplest logical answer I can find is that game was too much for the Xbox HW. There was no reason to reduce CPU utilization other than helping Xbox, specially when in PC many people is already using CPUs with more than 8 cores and Nvidia cards of the series 20xx or 30xx.
Regarding DX12 yes, it was a big mistake to use a more than 10 years old solution like DX11 when DX12 already exists. As said before, if one game could take the best out of DX12 it was clearly MSFS. If they fail in the implementation that´s going to be a pitstop for many users I guess. I will at least think twice to continue onboard.
For me the issue is that updates continue to be issued without adequate quality control testing leading to a continual build up of bugs over time.
Say what you want about Laminar (Xplane devs) (and I have said and continue to say quite a few negative things about Xplane) but their beta testing, at least to me, was pretty solid. There were very few bugs in any of their ‘final’ versions. I found this aspect very admirable. Asobo could learn a lot from them in this regard.
Yes, i remember they had several release candidates available to use. But i think a software always gets complains about performance. Especially flight simulator. I never seen a single flight simulator released without complains about performance. I just wonder when we is finding the sim 100% optimised? Is it when it’s runnin 60FPS on any kind of pc hardware?
To be fair, my fps is quite good on short flights of maybe 30-40 minutes. I actually get around 60 fps or more at times which is very impressive.
For longer flights of maybe an hour or more I get lags, sound stutters and massive fps drops just prior to landing. Very occasionally (not very often tbh) I CTD.
Honestly, I cannot recall ever having this issue before SU 9 and I have used the sim since launch.
I am convinced that this is a sim performance issue and should be addressed as a priority
Maybe the airports you fly to now has more live-traffic than it had at release? I know i had much less traffic at release than i have now because of that covid. When i turn off traffic i can set mostly same t-lod i had at release and have same FPS.
Traffic i can agree they should optimise and that photogrammetry, those 2 things makes my CPU overloaded. But i don’t know how much to make it perfect optimised. I just turn them off for now and i can enjoy a smooth flight. The dumb traffic are not worth 20FPS in my opinion.
I have all of those settings in traffic set to OFF and 0. I think those things really need to be looked at what causing them to use that much of CPU. Even if you have those on. Do you really find those need that much of CPU? The airport traffic are not that smart right? CPU should make them smart. To me those things should demand more GPU than CPU. If they make them samerter i could agree with the cpu-need. I had much more traffic in use in FSX and there they were much smarter too. They didn’t spin around while waiting on traffic on runways for example. And those busses and stuff just moves without purpose same thing with traffic on roads.
Yes, that probably will help you a bit with performance but it’s not something I really want to do on a permanent basis especially since before SU 9 I had very few sim issues
However, maybe I will experiment a bit more and see if dropping it to zero will help as a short term solution
Agree, i also wants to turn them on again. But it helps much to reduce the CPU load. And i really hope Asobo fix that specific traffic problem and i can enjoy an airport that feels alive again without that much of CPU-load
I also hope they fix photogrammetry to be less CPU demanding.
Using photogrammetry off increases the draw distance of buildings with less CPU-demand. Photogrammetry also looks worse in the distance than default (photogrammtry off) buildings.
Photogrammetry trees (especially in central park New york) has really high GPU demand. I think those has too much polygons in use.
I just wonder when do we actually know when it’s 100% optimised though? We flying in so many different places and airports right and using so many different planes.
Even if they make the sim use more cores there is still traffic that uses too much CPU in my opinion that could be used for something else.
I might be totally wrong here (not done any credible testing so can’t be sure) but it seems to me that SU9 uses the CPU much more than SU 8 for example and this might be why some of us are having performance problems.
If Asobo could switch the sim back somehow to using the GPU more then maybe this would help?
I’m not a coder, i’m only a user and have tested much since the performance decreased for me in su6 hotfix. Then i learned to optimise the settings to make the sim run smooth again Even back then the thing that requires most GPU is the resolution and the thing that requires most CPU is the T-lod. Maybe they have made the CPU utilize the main thread to 100% and it’s never good to run a core 100% becuase that will make it stutter because the CPU can’t work more than 100%. I’m not 100% sure if it’s more now than at release. I have not done any tests to compare that.
I’ve tried tons of stuff already over many hours without tbh much effect. The only thing that really helps is turning down settings as you have already mentioned.
I think the only real viable option for us is just to sit back and hope for the best.
We are in Asobo’s hands and our own hands are pretty much tied.
Even back then the thing that requires most GPU is the resolution and the thing that requires most CPU is the T-lod. Maybe they have made the CPU utilize the main thread to 100% and it’s never good to run a core 100% becuase that will make it stutter because the CPU can’t work more than 100%. I’m not 100% sure if it’s more now than at release. I have not done any tests to compare that.