Windows and Mac

That’s a very kind offer, thank you. I need to just keep tweaking and tweaking.

I have to say, the patch that came out this week changed a lot for me. Not only am I now getting 30-40fps, but I’m able ti increase the quality settings and still get those frame rates.

Good to hear!

Initially I thought I’d taken a performance with the patch, but after fiddling around I also found I could ratch up my settings as well.

I noticed some of the setting seem to “stick,” like object detail. If I move it up I need to pick one of the default overall settings like “low-end” to bring it down and start again. I tried it 3 or 4 times and every time was the same.

I’ve got a solid 30 FPS with quite a few settings on high or Ultra–and that with a 3-year old 4GB video card–not so bad for a mac! :smile:

My GPU temperature is about 70-72C now, and my CPU is a ridiculous 25% tasked.

Thought I’d check in again on our rather quiet “MSFS2020 Mac Corner.” :grinning:

Installed the latest patch last night and did a bit of flying in Japan (just to see the new scenery) and also in my local area. Everything seems good.

I did notice the “tall buildings” issue. I was really surprised when I was on final at Yao airport and I had to hop over a building at the end of the runway to land!

Overall I think performance is slightly improved–seeing less variation in FPS–more steady.

I was reading another thread and from that discovered OnAir Company. I now know there’s similar add-on ‘flight company’ programs out there, but this one hooked me in and I’ve been addicted. So I’ve been focused on working my way through their challenges (currently flying from the Canary Islands to South Africa).

As far as the Mac/PC angle goes, I’ve started helping my son build his first computer. I haven’t built a PC since Apple launched BootCamp and I made the switch. So many things different out there. I think I mentioned before that I’m probably sitting at my last Mac that I’ll buy. When the time comes, I really think I’m going to build my own PC and MSFS2020 is a big reason.

Certainly looks a lot better on this iMac than it did on my Commodore 64 though.

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Just checking back in post 1.9.5. on the Mac front.

Again, no problems installing or running the patch. I’ve seen an increase of about 20% in FPS this time around, and I was able to raise rendering from 90 to 100 with all of my old settings and still turn out a solid 25 FPS.

I really feel for all the people having problems post patch, but I’m glad to have avoided it!

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Run it on a 2019 MacBook Pro 16”, 8 core i9, 16 GB RAM, 4 GB VRAM.

It took some work getting BootCamp up and running, and configuring MSFS to run well on it.

(Be sure you are running current BootCamp drivers, especially graphics.)

I am running in 3072 x 1920 resolution with high/ultra settings with one big catch. Render scaling is at 50%. So I am getting roughly 1080p rendering, but other effects are applied at the native resolution so the results are surprisingly sharp.

I do run medium textures, and usually have Terrain Level of Detail set to 50-70% (At 50, pop in can be noticeable but it helps in city centers and airports and whatnot).

Results are basically the same as if I run at 1080p, but I get the perfect aspect ratio and sharpness of native resolution.

I work in sound, so Apple is useful in my industry, and the machine is brilliant for what I do at work, but I didn’t optimize it for gaming (it is an Apple after all). I am rather shocked on how well this sim runs on this little machine, and how scalable the MSFS graphics engine truly is.

MSFS runs fast enough (in the 20’s usually, or with minimal tweaking). It is a far cry from 60 FPS in 4K HDR, and yet, it is still the most beautiful, photorealistic sim I have ever seen, and it frequently fools my eyes. If I need to, I can get in the 30’s or 40’s, the cost in visual quality is rarely worth it… but sometimes you just gotta do some stunt flying through Chicago like in the old MSFS days.

For GA VFR, 20+ FPS is fine for me on this portable rig. I mean, at high/ultra settings, and native resolution, it is a sight to behold. Yes, render scaling is noticeable, but it looks much better than scaling down the resolution to get similar performance. What is a little blurry when render scaled, is just blocky at a lower resolution. Simply applying 3072 x 1920 TAA and 16 x Anisotropic Filtering to a 1080p render sharpens and adds detail that could never be achieved at a lower resolution.

Some day, the Xbox version will come out, and I will get my work rig back, but until then, it was worth the extra work to get this running on my MacBook. And since MSFS is all I use Windows for, it is a clean install. Good stuff!

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A question,
Which bootcamp driver version do you use? The October Red Gaming one?
I’m using the same MBP as yours (2019 16’, except for 64GB RAM and 8GB vram), but performance is very poor even on the most lowest settings (10-20fps)

Any help is greatly appreciated.

I use the latest Apple Radeon drivers since the Red is basically the same driver but out of warranty.

You are definitely missing a key tweak or two for optimal performance. Care to post a photo of your graphics settings so I can see if anything stands out?

Just realized a new driver update is available. Updating that first, I’ll see if anything changes

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Cool. I doubt it will be the miracle patch, but there are a few key performance tweaks within the MSFS options which should get you running smoother.

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Just updated the drivers. As far as the performance goes… well I didn’t notice any significant improvement at all.

Anyways here’s my graphic settings as requested

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Ok, that is weird. Here are my current settings. Getting between 15 and 20 FPS on the handmade airport in Queensland NZ (with current time and weather) right now. I also added a picture of my traffic settings, as you may want to match mine just in case they are your root issue.

Do you mind matching my settings and letting me know your results? My MBP is basically the same computer with less RAM and less VRAM. You should be able to match my results if not beat them.

Matched my settings to yours, it’s a slideshow now. (gotten worse, 1-7fps)

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Hmmmm… let me think on this. How is your internet connection? When did you last delete your rolling cache?

I mean, I am not lying.

350mbps, not a problem

Never turned it on since last month

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I definitely see a boost with rolling cache on. Not tremendous, but if memory serves, it was around 5 FPS. Can you spare 10-20 GB for that?

And bear with me, because I know how much your machine cost. I want it running better than mine!

Have you run Apple Software Update recently?

Have you run your windows update recently?

Are all drivers up to date?

That still shouldn’t explain the slide show, but it might be an old driver somewhere down the line.

What version of Windows 10 are you running?

What do you do for your day job? Video? Just curious with that last question. That is a lot of RAM at Apple prices!

Turned it on. No improvement yet

Just got both updated this morning

Yes.

10.0.19041 Build 19041

Mostly for heavy video editing and doing work.

Seeing this, I don’t really have high hopes. As for now, I’ll enjoy the slideshow while thinking of a solution

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Yeah, it is definitely something. But the slideshow, and even low settings are as pretty as any other sim on the market.

The upgrade to Windows version 2004 may jive better with your new drivers. But I don’t know if you are using Windows for any video stuff that might prevent you from updating. I tend to keep my work stuff in OS X, so Win 10 is just for gaming.

But here is a crazy trick that might work. Open your task manager while MSFS is running, select the Details tab, and then right click Flight Simulator.exe and change the priority to high. If this helps, you will have to do it every time you start the sim. On my system, this gives me a good 5 FPS boost above what I showed you. But as fast as your system is, you may have a resource heavy process or a conflict running ahead of MSFS. That might solve your whole issue (or like most windows troubleshooting, it might do nothing at all.

I will post anything else I can think of, but for now, this is all I can come up with.

Really hope you get this running better. It is quite something on my machine, and I imagine yours will eventually run circles around mine.

I am thinking of upgrading to the i9 iMac with the Radeon Pro 5700 XT with 16GB of GDDR6 memory and 32Gb ram (photoshop and final cut user for work) and am new to this user group. Would these specs solve any of the usual problems? Having built 3 pc’s for MSFS in the past, really don’t want to spend the $ and have to use 2 separate systems. Any advice welcome:)