Compared to other games, it seems impossible to achieve smooth frame times.
Compare the two graphs below, from MSFS and Control. I’ve capped frame rate to 70 to not bottleneck the GPU, and the CPU is a 13600KF with 32GB 6000MHz CL32 RAM.
MSFS
Control
Put simply, the GPU runs your game. The CPU runs your sim. Calibrate MSFS to your CPU. And look for 30 FPS. For real. That’s the Goldilocks Zone for this sim. It will give you overhead. This doesn’t do 60 well, again, because it is CPU not GPU limited.
I used to run Vsync or frame caps, but now I turn off all vsync. I’m not sure what you mean by “smooth frametimes”. There is a bit of tearing around vertical edges with no vsync, but the smoothness makes up for that. You want to be GPU limited, not CPU limited, so I add graphics features until my CPU frame times match my GPU frame times.
we speak hopefully not about
versus 
? Or what you mean with “smooth frames” ?
Frametime in MSFS is shorter in the screenshots…
Smooth as butter here - 30fps Xbox SX
Yes, the smooth line, more important the framerate because it’s what you actually feel. And I can feel the difference between the two games at the same framerate.
I think the frametime that’s displayed in those screenshots is just that moment in time. In MSFS it would fluctuate, say between 12-15ms. That’s the issue I’m talking about. 70FPS should equate to a constant 14.2ms as it is in Control.
@WellREDBarron I tried capping FPS to 30 as well:
Again I get the same issue, but anyway 30FPS is not playable at all. It’s fine when the camera is fixed but when you pan around it’s way too choppy. That’s why I fixed it at 70FPS, beyond that you don’t notice a difference and the GPU just consumes more power.
I know the majority of people are happy with 30FPS (I started a long thread about this), but I wonder if they’ve experienced 60+ to see the difference.
@OldpondGL I am usually GPU limited yes. Obviously it depends on the scene, but on this particular landing challenge I set resolution to 1080 and removed framerate capping to see what the CPU was able to produce and it’s about 85FPS when in the air. When I set it back to 4k frame rate was about the same with the GPU at 90-100%, so the the two are quiet well matched in this scenario. It’s a different story at big airports though with CPU only managing about 50FPS, and that’s with all traffic turned off, otherwise it would be around 35 (which causes tearing because my VRR doesn’t work that low, but that’s another story).
My point though, is the two games behaving differently at the same framerate and I was wondering why.
Well, Nvidia Reflex should help take some latency out. Set that with Low Latency = Ultra or Nvidia Reflex = On in Game Settings. The latter is the preferred method. This prevents frame buffering when the CPU is firing more frames than the GPU can handle. You may only notice a smoothness in the FPS charts or a smoothness in the GPU utilization charts. You may not notice any frame rate difference. This works well with frame caps because with caps the GPU is making the frames, just not sending them. With Reflex, they don’t make the extra frames.
Set FPS to 50% and 100Hz in the Screen settings (in Windows) , and get 50 FPS and that´s inuf, and it won´t get hot, then adjust L.O.D. until you get stutter free ~
Thanks for your suggestions. I’ve tried everything - latency settings, screen refresh rate limit, frame capping at 30 and 60FPS, LOD down to the lowest setting, DX11/12, antialiasing OFF/TA/DLSS. Allowing the CPU and GPU plenty of headroom still cannot result in smooth frametimes.
I’m assuming those of you who have the frametime graph displayed will see the same not-quite-smooth line.
Same here.
But flight is smooth.
It isn’t impossible: get a series X.
Optimised out of the box … 30fps across nearly the entire map. About add-ons I don’t know … cos people have reported fps issues with those across both PC and Xbox
I guess it’s easier to optimise an engine for a fixed hardware setup. Do you have visibility of the frametime graph and is the line steady? I’m curious why it behaves differently on PC, even at 30fps.
I’d be targeting 60fps anyway.
Was that for me? I’m on Xbox.
You can still get 30+ fps with VRR
On pc, if you want 60fps without stutters…then you’ll need i9, 4090, 32gb minimum and an SSD