First impressions! (Low-spec PC users read this)

[ThrottleUp 617]

Hello friends 😃

So I just hammered the credit card and got the Premium Deluxe on Steam. Just wanna share first impressions & observations and also give feedback as a user with a low-spec PC. 

Installation from Steam went flawlessly. 

1. First off (no surprise here) the visuals are amazing 😲 - and this is coming from someone who has a dislike for photo scenery. I still cant help notice Google imagery is better in some places I've been too but I know the Bing imagery will be updated. I set the time to early evening and droned around in the C150, absolutely stunning. What they have achieved with the 1:1 virtual earth is something else.
2. Having said that I cant shake the feeling that now and then it does have a bit of a cartoon look to it but I only get this feeling on rare instances. 
3. Desperately needs sliders for brightness, saturation, gamma, contrast & vibrance. The landscape has a whitewashed bleached over-bright feel to it. I will get ReShade to help deal with this, or I can use GeForce Experience filters. I realize this is a subjective issue but having sliders would be great.
4. Needs a "Universal Autopilot" pop up window, FSX had these via mods and they were so useful. No doubt one will emerge in the mod scene.
5. Putting aside the amazing virtual earth & visuals for a minute a couple of things jumped out at me. Here and there the UI interface feels just like Dovetails FSW. Even the light GA planes "feel" like they were dropped in from FSW. They have that slight FSW jiggle , I cant explain it. That title never got to completion but had some good ideas (notably the UI) and I have no doubt MS noticed. 
6. The UI tiles are too big and they need an option to show a compact List View in the Airplane Selection menu, Market Place etc. It all seems designed for a tablet!
7. I miss the FSX ability to switch airplanes at any time.
8. I just cant seem to find the Quick Look function to look down!
9. When it comes to trees, bushes and buildings I see next to no difference between Medium & Ultra
10. There needs to be an option to completely disable (turn off) glass cockpit displays. Not just a visual turn off but a background calculation turn off. All of us mostly fly from the left seat - the right seat PFD, NAV display are no use. I was in the TBM and wished I could turn off the right seaters PFD. Same for the airliners like A320. Let us us turn them off will save resources, specially for those of us on weaker systems.
11. Anti Aliasing: FXAA gives me smoother lines than TAA
12. The built in Dev Mode display for FPS & resources is excellent and I strongly advise using them, tells you everything. Shows not just FPS but VRAM and sys RAM use. Extremely useful!

Observations from playing on a low spec (see my sig) 2008-era PC @ 1920 X 1080

This demanding new title runs better on my system than FSX. In areas where FSX (with Orbx) gave me single digits MSFS is throwing out 25+FPS. Pleasant surprise!

1. Make sure Windows is on Game mode
2. Use just one monitor, disable the others if you use multiples.
3. Check that security software is also in Game Mode
4. Turn off needless background stuff - do you need OneDrive, CCleaner etc running?
5. In nVidia card settings you can set the Texture filtering Quality to High Quality, Performance or High Performance. See what works for you (sue Dev mode FPS feedback). Also experiment with the Power Management Mode , I have mine set to Prefer maximum performance. 
6. From pressing Play in Steam to arriving at the Welcome screen takes 5 minutes. Launching a flight takes 2.5 minutes. This is from slow old school spinner HDs
7. These are all disabled/turned to minimum: volumetric clouds, all traffic, reflections, live weather, photogrammetry, glass cockpit refresh rate. 
8. Play with Texture Res and the other Texture options to find the sweet spot
9. When flying out over the boonies I get up to 45FPS
10. Flying near mid size towns it drops to 30FPS
11. Large cities are unflyable on my PC, drops to single figs . But no surprise, I expected this. 
12. I cannot fly airliners either, drops to single figs ☹️. Its clear that I can only use the game for light GA flying out in bush country. Which is fine by me, its what I had planned. 
13. Analog panels not surprisingly give much higher FPS

Conclusion: even on a weak machine this title is playable however you need to drastically disable/reduce/turn off some elements. Yes that means elements that make MSFS outstanding like the volumetric clouds, live weather etc. But, heres the important bit : even on the low settings with the major eye candy reduced this game looks a trillion times better than FSX can ever hope to be. 

Looking forward to learning a lot from other users on the forum, specially those who got the title at launch and have become familiar with it 🙂

 

 

[filou 2,744]

After reading your commentI feel like MSFS came out yesterday or maybe a second time .I didn't think there could be so much jet lag. It's been almost 9 months that MSFS is tested , tortured , on all the world forums about its visual, performance, setting ,pc component etc.And here thousands of pages to read since August 18, 2020 on all its topics. Don't torture yourself with your MSFS settings, either.

If you want to enjoy a comfortable experience you will need a more powerful PC.There is no secret .Just fly simple with MSFS settings proposed and adapted and put aside all unnecessary old fsx mechanisms.

 

 

[spacedyemeerkat 421]

2 minutes ago, filou said:

There is no secret .

I agree. 

Now, where do I change processor affinity? 😁

[ThrottleUp 617]

8 minutes ago, filou said:

If you want to enjoy a comfortable experience you will need a more powerful PC.There is no secret .Just fly simple with MSFS settings proposed and adapted and put aside all unnecessary old fsx mechanisms.

Totally agree 🙂 I am planning on a new gaming rig. I have not chosen the components yet but it will have 32GB RAM, at least RTX3060 12GB and 11th Gen Intel or Ryzen 5800X CPU. 

 

1 minute ago, spacedyemeerkat said:

I agree. 

Now, where do I change processor affinity? 😁

Oh that brings back memories! ☝️ and also HIGHMEMFIX

[filou 2,744]

21 minutes ago, ThrottleUp said:

Totally agree 🙂 I am planning on a new gaming rig. I have not chosen the components yet but it will have 32GB RAM, at least RTX3060 12GB and 11th Gen Intel or Ryzen 5800X CPU. 

 

Oh that brings back memories! ☝️ and also HIGHMEMFIX

it is better to choose if you can a less powerful CPU and a more powerful GPU like RTX 3070 if you want to use also 1440p resolution. in my case I could not go back to 1080p.

[ThrottleUp 617]

8 minutes ago, filou said:

it is better to choose if you can a less powerful CPU and a more powerful GPU like RTX 3070 if you want to use also 1440p resolution. in my case I could not go back to 1080p.

That is a good point but the reason for the powerful CPU is that I want to future proof the PC for a long time. I can always sell the 3060 and upgrade the gfx card. Also I will need a 1440 monitor which I dont have...additional cost 😞 I would love to game at 1440, i will look for used display on eBay!

[767lover 285]

Thanks for posting your first impressions. About your 'whitewashed bleached over-bright feel to it', I very much like this, as it provides some much needed brightness in the otherwise apocalyptically dark world MSFS is. Have you tried overcast? It looks like the final hours of dusk. In full harsch sunlight in the real world, don't you get the same over-bright bleaching effect you complain about?

Asobo has not done anything about the brightness since launch. 

[ThrottleUp 617]

1 hour ago, 767lover said:

In full harsch sunlight in the real world, don't you get the same over-bright bleaching effect you complain about?

 

Yes,this is why I said it was a subjective thing. I feel they are a bit overdone but I understand when others say it looks fine to them. I wish they had sliders so that both sides can be happy. Many many other games have them so Im hoping this one gets them in a future update. I realize its not a priority for them. 

If you see the first 40 seconds of this video, thats how I want the world to look. Yes bright but not the bleached effect - although I would agree with bleach while flying over barren desert or white beaches!

 

[devgrp 1,233]

4 hours ago, ThrottleUp said:

Hello friends 😃

So I just hammered the credit card and got the Premium Deluxe on Steam. Just wanna share first impressions & observations and also give feedback as a user with a low-spec PC. 

Installation from Steam went flawlessly. 

1. First off (no surprise here) the visuals are amazing 😲 - and this is coming from someone who has a dislike for photo scenery. I still cant help notice Google imagery is better in some places I've been too but I know the Bing imagery will be updated. I set the time to early evening and droned around in the C150, absolutely stunning. What they have achieved with the 1:1 virtual earth is something else.
2. Having said that I cant shake the feeling that now and then it does have a bit of a cartoon look to it but I only get this feeling on rare instances. 
3. Desperately needs sliders for brightness, saturation, gamma, contrast & vibrance. The landscape has a whitewashed bleached over-bright feel to it. I will get ReShade to help deal with this, or I can use GeForce Experience filters. I realize this is a subjective issue but having sliders would be great.
4. Needs a "Universal Autopilot" pop up window, FSX had these via mods and they were so useful. No doubt one will emerge in the mod scene.
5. Putting aside the amazing virtual earth & visuals for a minute a couple of things jumped out at me. Here and there the UI interface feels just like Dovetails FSW. Even the light GA planes "feel" like they were dropped in from FSW. They have that slight FSW jiggle , I cant explain it. That title never got to completion but had some good ideas (notably the UI) and I have no doubt MS noticed. 
6. The UI tiles are too big and they need an option to show a compact List View in the Airplane Selection menu, Market Place etc. It all seems designed for a tablet!
7. I miss the FSX ability to switch airplanes at any time.
8. I just cant seem to find the Quick Look function to look down!
9. When it comes to trees, bushes and buildings I see next to no difference between Medium & Ultra
10. There needs to be an option to completely disable (turn off) glass cockpit displays. Not just a visual turn off but a background calculation turn off. All of us mostly fly from the left seat - the right seat PFD, NAV display are no use. I was in the TBM and wished I could turn off the right seaters PFD. Same for the airliners like A320. Let us us turn them off will save resources, specially for those of us on weaker systems.
11. Anti Aliasing: FXAA gives me smoother lines than TAA
12. The built in Dev Mode display for FPS & resources is excellent and I strongly advise using them, tells you everything. Shows not just FPS but VRAM and sys RAM use. Extremely useful!

Observations from playing on a low spec (see my sig) 2008-era PC @ 1920 X 1080

This demanding new title runs better on my system than FSX. In areas where FSX (with Orbx) gave me single digits MSFS is throwing out 25+FPS. Pleasant surprise!

1. Make sure Windows is on Game mode
2. Use just one monitor, disable the others if you use multiples.
3. Check that security software is also in Game Mode
4. Turn off needless background stuff - do you need OneDrive, CCleaner etc running?
5. In nVidia card settings you can set the Texture filtering Quality to High Quality, Performance or High Performance. See what works for you (sue Dev mode FPS feedback). Also experiment with the Power Management Mode , I have mine set to Prefer maximum performance. 
6. From pressing Play in Steam to arriving at the Welcome screen takes 5 minutes. Launching a flight takes 2.5 minutes. This is from slow old school spinner HDs
7. These are all disabled/turned to minimum: volumetric clouds, all traffic, reflections, live weather, photogrammetry, glass cockpit refresh rate. 
8. Play with Texture Res and the other Texture options to find the sweet spot
9. When flying out over the boonies I get up to 45FPS
10. Flying near mid size towns it drops to 30FPS
11. Large cities are unflyable on my PC, drops to single figs . But no surprise, I expected this. 
12. I cannot fly airliners either, drops to single figs ☹️. Its clear that I can only use the game for light GA flying out in bush country. Which is fine by me, its what I had planned. 
13. Analog panels not surprisingly give much higher FPS

Conclusion: even on a weak machine this title is playable however you need to drastically disable/reduce/turn off some elements. Yes that means elements that make MSFS outstanding like the volumetric clouds, live weather etc. But, heres the important bit : even on the low settings with the major eye candy reduced this game looks a trillion times better than FSX can ever hope to be. 

Looking forward to learning a lot from other users on the forum, specially those who got the title at launch and have become familiar with it 🙂

 

 

I often hear some people say the scenery looks white washed and bleached. The problem is your monitor. If its calibrated then you wont have this problem. I'm a photographer and a lg 4k ips monitor thats calibrated with a spyderX and never have that waashed out bleached look

[ThrottleUp 617]

22 minutes ago, devgrp said:

I often hear some people say the scenery looks white washed and bleached. The problem is your monitor. If its calibrated then you wont have this problem. I'm a photographer and a lg 4k ips monitor thats calibrated with a spyderX and never have that waashed out bleached look

Thats a good point. I have tried adjusting it manually and using the presets (Office, Movie etc). It also has a Game mode and that does reduce the bleachyness but also increases the sharpness to ridiculous levels so I play with it turned off.

However I have just installed ReShade and its helped a lot. Using its Levels setting slider I have reduced the brightness. Also used its Color boost mode to make the Asian and South American rainforests look more verdant! Now Amazon bush flying feels even more awesome.

[filou 2,744]

Put MSFS "Bloom" off

[Chock 17,769]

Might be a bit premature for you to be throwing add-ons at it, but an exception to this would be that if you want the visuals up high so you can check things out, take a look at the payware add-on Top Rudder 103 Solo, which is inexpensive (10 quid) and very good fun for exploring. The fact that it has next to no avionics means it has a very light system overhead, leaving you room to up the visuals a bit and the fact that it has no turn and slip indicator makes it an interesting thing to fly too, so it is good as a testbed for fine-tuning your controllers. Well worth a look if low-level VFR is your bag.

[LRBS 947]

4 hours ago, spacedyemeerkat said:

I agree. 

Now, where do I change processor affinity? 😁

Follow this please:

Open task manager

Right click on MSFS 1.15.10.0 and select "go to details"

Find "FlightSimulator.exe"

Right click again and choose from the menu "Set Affinity".

Please, let us know if you have any issues.

[Bobsk8 12,726]

I enjoy not having to screw around with settings like I had to do with  FSX and P3D. I just fly, and it looks good to me. 

[styckx 1,871]

5 hours ago, spacedyemeerkat said:

I agree. 

Now, where do I change processor affinity? 😁

Remember there used be threads 10's of pages and longer of people arguing about how to calculate the correct AF numbers.. People were literally almost virtual fist fighting over a line in a CFG file.

Thank god those days are gone