In P3D turning on environmental effects on a low spec PC brought everything to a standstill, with frame rates dropping into the lower single digits. In MSFS these come at little to no penalty in performance, and look good on geriatric hardware at medium settings. 

Now, it could always look and run a tad better, but so far so good.

Edited January 23, 20215 yr by Ricardo41

I would be interested to know which cpu and gpu are you running and what is the resolution of your monitor?

Indeed. On X-Plane I had to turn off reflections and reduce some settings because overcast 2d clouds would bring my top range computer down in terms of fps.

On MSFS I am running it maxed out and enjoying the A320Mod with no problems.

17 minutes ago, Fielder said:

I would be interested to know which cpu and gpu are you running and what is the resolution of your monitor?

Intel i5-6600k, AMD R9 380 4Gig, 8 Gig system ram. PC was purchased in 01/2016.

Monitor is a 2560x1080p ultrawidescreen monitor. 

Framerates aren't great, and I can't fly into or run complex addons. It's all about compromise. 

1 minute ago, Ricardo41 said:

Intel i5-6600k, AMD R9 380 4Gig, 8 Gig system ram. PC was purchased in 01/2016.

Monitor is a 2560x1080p ultrawidescreen monitor. 

Framerates aren't great, and I can't fly into or run complex addons. It's all about compromise. 

You have it so that you are satisfied and that’s all that counts.

Enjoy 👍

I get so confused when people say MSFS graphics needs to optimized... (it needs more reliable gps, some flight model tweaking, and some other things.. but i think considering how much is on the screen the optimization is pretty good ).. flights in MSFS run smoother while looking better with more object being drawn on the screen than they do on my same system in x-plane. (i admit my ryzen 1400 @3800mhz and 1650super are underpowered)  ...

I run very few addons in xplane. With context -- i have my settings in xplane at mostly high and objects on max .. i have my settings in MSFS at all medium except coulds are at ultra. (there really doesnt seem to be much of a penalty over med or high.. which is sort of my point)

and the problem is.. MSFS looks better.   i could lower my xplane settings to all medium and then it would run smooth as butter... but ... it  already looks worse now .. the gaps in the autogen medium gives you is so emersion killing.. especially since im running default ground textures mostly (i have ortho a couple places like cali and and a couple other forkboy tiles) 

I dont mean to shame x-plane... its an older sim and i still like it (i flew in my pc-12 rep couple hours ago).. working gps ftw...

im just specifically not understanding some folks expecting that  drawing way more objects with more detail (trees, clouds, autogen/photogrametry) to have no performance cost.. and very shocked how well these cost are mitigated in the sim.  It seems extremely optimized to me. .. 

My settings:

1 hour ago, sanh said:

Indeed. On X-Plane I had to turn off reflections and reduce some settings because overcast 2d clouds would bring my top range computer down in terms of fps.

Same for me. I get insane FPS with Vulkan, but once there are too many clouds, it's goodbye frames...

I'm running it on a i5 3.2ghz, Nvidia 1060 6GB card, 16GB ram and most settings are on high and i only fly the TBM, it won't run the airliners and any major cities I just stay away from, bit I'm quite happy with my setup, hope to get a new computer in a couple of years... hopefully. 

I have a 3 year old mid range (i5 8400 6 core) PC and an upgrade to 32GB and a shiney new 3070 card made the world of difference.

 

Here is a crosswind landing at St Bart's with the FPS counter enabled (1440 p, render scaling 80%, most setting high or ultra)  -- the goal  of the tweaking and testing was to keep FPS over 48 as 48hz is the minimum for my monitor, though I do have gsync enabled. Biggest advantage of render scaling though is my VRAM usage dropped.

 

 

Edited January 23, 20215 yr by Glenn Fitzpatrick

Ryzen 5 3600 cpu

RTX 2600 Super gpu

Abosolutely everything set to ULTRA

Framerates are 30 fps everywhere, no matter how dense the airport scenery. Locked at 30 Nvidia display settings.

The reason my modest computer can run ULTRA and never a stutter or low fps is that the display is 1920 x 1080 (32" curved monitor which costs $180 at Walmart).

The computer was $1150 including a great mouse and keyboard IBuyPower brand, check out the great reviews for that brand of computers compared to other brands of computers at BestBuy stores.

I see lots of reports here of stutters and so forth from people with a desktop + monitor costing 3 times what mine did. The reason is their high resolution monitors. I don't think these hi res monitors are worth their cost in performance and dollars.

 

 

Edited January 23, 20215 yr by Fielder

2 minutes ago, Fielder said:

 

I see lots of reports here of stutters and so forth from people with a desktop + monitor costing 3 times what mine did. The reason is their high resolution monitors. I don't think these hi res monitors are worth their cost in performance and dollars.

 

 

oh ... but they look so prurty

that said, I have not noticed any real difference render scaling at 80% on a 1440p. 

I haven't seen MSFS at hi resolutions. I wonder how long I would last in a Bestbuy store loading MSFS installation disks into a display computer set up on the shelf before the manager dragged me out of the store. Probably not long enough to run the 2 hour installation!

I don`t know how much Forza has contributed graphicswise to MSFS, but Forza utilizes much lower hardware power than other games that are on the same level.

At 4K it just uses less than 6 GB Graphics RAM: #1 #2

The hardware requirements of MSFS are the results of very good programming work,( but only graphicswise to me).

It`s crazy to see how many games have been cut by half of its size lately, tons of GBs trash that slow down the PC.

3 minutes ago, Fielder said:

I haven't seen MSFS at hi resolutions. I wonder how long I would last in a Bestbuy store loading MSFS installation disks into a display computer set up on the shelf before the manager dragged me out of the store. Probably not long enough to run the 2 hour installation!

If you have access to a 4K TV and could be bothered moving your PC you could try it on that.