Looking over all the screenshots and videos from the months of betas, and then I saw Ms release of the minimum and recommended system requirements, and I thought, un-huh right.

Then Ms added what they called "Ideal requirements"...

 

They are still on DX 11 (older than dirt), DX 12 does many things more efficiently, using less resources. Who developed Direct X for games, oh that's right, it was Ms.

 

• Recommended:
• OS: Windows 10 version 18362.0 or higher
• Architecture: x64
• DirectX: Version 11
• Memory: 16 GB
• Video Memory: 4 GB
• Processor: Intel i5-8400 or AMD Ryzen 5 1500X
• Graphics: NVIDIA GTX 970 or AMD Radeon RX 590

 

• Ideal: (cough, cough)
• OS: Windows 10 version 18362.0 or higher
• Architecture: x64
• DirectX: Version 11
• Memory: 32 GB
• VRAM: 8 GB
• Processor: Intel i5-8400 or AMD Ryzen 5 1500X
• Graphics: NVIDIA GTX 2080 or AMD Radeon VII

 

My system is no slouch, and most of my settings are on high or medium  (FPS 40 - 55), I can't even get close to running anything on Ultra, FPS will drop like a rock from the sky.

My processor load has never gone past 80 - 85%, this leaves most of the low FPS issue (Ultra) in the hands of my GPU.

 

i7-6700K Quad-Core - 4.0GHz

GA-Z270XP-SLI - socket 1151
G.SKILL TridentZ Series 32GB DDR4 3200 Model F4-3200C14D-32GTZSW
Gigabyte AORUS GeForce RTX 2080 8G (factory OC)
On-board Realtek ALC1150 High Definition 8 channel Audio
Sennheiser Game One / Sennheiser GSX 1000 Gaming Audio Amplifier
SSD - M.2 NVMe 1 TB port 0
Corsair HX850i Power Supply
Win 10 Pro 64bit
LG 32GK850G-B 32" QHD Gaming Monitor with 165Hz Refresh Rate,l G-Sync

DiRT Rally 2.0, Devil May Cry 6, Beyond a Steel Sky, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 Campaign Remastered and Dead or Alive 5 are some recent well known games that are DirectX 11. More relevantly, A Plague Tale: Innocence is also a DirectX 11 game. It's stunning. And its the latest game from Asobo before MSFS. If Asobo (the actual devs, not MSFT!) had moved on from their intimate knowledge of DX11 to DX12, this game would still be in a closed alpha for another year or so. DX11 is delivering stunning results and the game engine will eventually be updated. This particular criticism feels like -- forgive me -- someone looking for things to whine about. I'm on an RTX 2060 6G with no overclock and performance is just fine. And people with less hardware than you have posted streaming videos (streaming also eats FPS) with good performance. 

27 minutes ago, HC1Gunner said:

DX 12 does many things more efficiently

Yeah, but it does many things inefficiently too, to the point where it isn't always a practical solution.

Have a read of this:

https://developer.nvidia.com/dx12-dos-and-donts

One positive of DX11 is i haven’t seen a single thread in this forum about running out of VRAM. 

Asobo Studio might be the dev team, Ms outsourced to them for their large world experience. There are Ms technologies at work behind the scenes (Azure), Ms is the one calling most of the shots, and has the final word.

The system requirements are way off, you're not going to run FS on High settings with GTX 970, and not with a RTX 2060 either, let alone the Ultra settings that my RTX 2080 can't handle. The Ms post "Ideal" system requirements  refer to being able to crank everything all the way up, you can't do this with a single RTX 2080

Most of these titles you refer to run DX 11 because they were coded for the console, and ported over to PC, then tweaked (this is where lot PC issues come from). Past and current (excluding the PS5 and new Xbox coming) are designed to work with DX 12. When something does things more efficiently, using less resources, this means less load on the CPU and GPU.

I’ve played a lot of high-end FPS titles, even DICE is smart enough that the last few BF titles have the had the user option to run under DX 11 or DX 12.

I have an RTX 2080, and before that it was a GTX 1080, and I’ve never had an issue running out of VRAM.

I have a 1TB SSD dedicated to Flight Simulators “rolling cache”. I’ve only been to (4) small airports, no cities near them, and my 1TB drive is already full. I planned on staying near an airport doing training, honing my flight skills, was hoping to store most of the local scenery.

I did this because Comtrash, my provider, has me on a 1229GB monthly cap, and I have to watch my data usage, as I could easily go over every month. No one knows yet how much streamed data the sim sim is going to use.

The sim was clearly rushed to market, hence all the nightmare threads on installs and CTD issues. Hoping in the new few months they can address a lot of the bugs, and maybe better optimize the game engine.

Ms is so flooded, they have stopped taking support calls, instead you have to go to Xbox help site and request a call back (stated 90 min wait) My first call back came at just over two hours, and it was a recording saying there are no agents to take my call right now. Second attempt of a call-back was a repeat, both request were put in at the beginning of their business day, meaning the had the entire day to respond, but had no one to do it.

 

Edited August 20, 20205 yr by HC1Gunner

4 minutes ago, HC1Gunner said:

I did this because Comtrash, my provider, has me on a 1229GB monthly cap, and I have to watch my data usage, as I could easily go over every month. No one knows yet how much streamed data the sim sim is going to use.

 

 

It tells you in the menu system how much bandwidth it has used.

So just check it twice (once now) and once after an hour of flying, then figure out how many hours you might play in a month, and make the rough calculation.

I've only used 21 GB since I started a couple days ago (if it is telling the truth), so it's really not that heavy, though I find that number it gives a bit hard to believe. Should be higher, but they are using some very high compression, you can tell by the tiles they are very compressed.

Remember, it's not downloading the trees and buildings and all that (well some it does, but I mean not most of them), so it's probably not all that bad.

Unfortunately Comtrash's User account data is not that accurate. "Data used in the last 24 hours may not be displayed".

I meant it tells you in the game's menu under Data...

 

Depends on the use case as well. A friend of mine finally managed to get his download done earlier today, and he runs a GTX 970. Butter smooth on High settings, BUT he only flies VFR in the countryside. It would probably hammer his frames over large cities, but for his use case, it works well on High settings. I believe he's even got clouds cranked to Ultra.

 

Edited August 20, 20205 yr by aktorsyl

14 minutes ago, aktorsyl said:

Depends on the use case as well. A friend of mine finally managed to get his download done earlier today, and he runs a GTX 970. Butter smooth on High settings, BUT he only flies VFR in the countryside. It would probably hammer his frames over large cities, but for his use case, it works well on High settings. I believe he's even got clouds cranked to Ultra.

 

Fly as to what some describe as "okay  or smooth" but what are the actual frame rates. All I fly is GA planes in the back country, that's my type of preferred flying. Its recommend to not fly the sim on anything below 30 fps. If my factory OC'ed RTX 2080 won't handle anything above High, some stuff I set to medium, like shadows etc. There's no way he's cruising around with good frame rates with a GTX 970 with high settings. Plenty of You Tube post with people stating the same thing about system requirements being way off, they have posted showing their hardware and FS settings, with the resulting frame rates (lower than expected).

3 minutes ago, HC1Gunner said:

Fly as to what some describe as "okay  or smooth" but what are the actual frame rates. All I fly is GA planes in the back country, that's my type of preferred flying. Its recommend to not fly the sim on anything below 30 fps. If my factory OC'ed RTX 2080 won't handle anything above High, some stuff I set to medium, like shadows etc. There's no way he's cruising around with good frame rates with a GTX 970 with high settings. Plenty of You Tube post with people stating the same thing about system requirements being way off, they have posted showing their hardware and FS settings, with the resulting frame rates (lower than expected).

I'm not sure what his fps is like, to be honest. I didn't really think to check. I've been chasing framerate my whole flightsim life, but I made up my mind to hide any form of FPS display in MSFS and just go by feel. I guess I got tired of chasing the golden 30 (and I still do that, in P3D).

You can quickly pick up juddering/stutters or bad framerates with the smooth-panning camera, and as long as all of it stays smooth I couldn't care less what the FPS number is 😛

(I'm not at all bashing those who do care, I'm just saying - there's a use case for those specs+settings combinations)

 

Edited August 20, 20205 yr by aktorsyl

System requirements doesn't list expected frame rates.. so, that phrase is strictly personal and totally imaginary.

I run an i7 6800K @ 3.4ghz with 32gb of DDR4 memory and an RTX 2070 SUPER with 8gb GDDR6 memory.  I have my system set where it runs 30fps (matches screen refresh rate) without any issue unless I get into highly congested areas at which point my GPU becomes the performance bottleneck and the frame rates drop.

If your system is better than mine, and your performance is worse... it's not the sim.

I’m pleasantly surprised at how stable the frame rate is in the release version. Except for heavy AI / dense cityscapes I get a rock steady 35-37 FPS in cockpit view, almost unaffected by clouds (admittedly only GA). With gsync the overall experience is really smooth albeit with the odd stutter here and there. Strange to see reports of poor performance from others because my rig (in sig) is really showing its age now and my monitor isn’t small.

45 minutes ago, HC1Gunner said:

Fly as to what some describe as "okay  or smooth" but what are the actual frame rates. All I fly is GA planes in the back country, that's my type of preferred flying. Its recommend to not fly the sim on anything below 30 fps. If my factory OC'ed RTX 2080 won't handle anything above High, some stuff I set to medium, like shadows etc. There's no way he's cruising around with good frame rates with a GTX 970 with high settings. Plenty of You Tube post with people stating the same thing about system requirements being way off, they have posted showing their hardware and FS settings, with the resulting frame rates (lower than expected).

FPS is generally 25 - 50 in cities under 500,000 and the countryside on my RTX 2060 with MOST things at ultra, but you have to turn a few things down and i'm playing in 1080p. It drops below that at times, but not that often. You just have to find the settings you are willing to tone down, you don't need to set everything at only High. A 2080 should handle it above high unless you are playing in 4k, that kills your FPS probably.

The Sim can be smooth at 20-25 sometimes, depends. Anything under 20 is pretty rough.

Edited August 20, 20205 yr by SceneryFX