6 minutes ago, Violins77 said:

This scares me a little, as I don't like not knowing if I'm doing something wrong or if it is the sim acting up. How bad is it? Is the autopilote following the flight plan most of the time? I guess I can handle VNAV manually, but I would at least expect the plane to follow LNAV.

Yes, these things mostly work fine nowadays, even on the default airplanes. There's also great mods from Working Title (https://www.workingtitle.aero/) for the Garmin avionics sets adding additional functionality, and there's also a few mods for some of the more complex stock airplanes bringing them up to (almost) study-level standards.

18 minutes ago, Violins77 said:

This scares me a little, as I don't like not knowing if I'm doing something wrong or if it is the sim acting up. How bad is it? Is the autopilote following the flight plan most of the time? I guess I can handle VNAV manually, but I would at least expect the plane to follow LNAV.

Not to worry... the autopilot is much better than it used to be and will follow the flight plan just fine 🙂

24 minutes ago, Der Zeitgeist said:

Yes, these things mostly work fine nowadays, even on the default airplanes. There's also great mods from Working Title (https://www.workingtitle.aero/) for the Garmin avionics sets adding additional functionality, and there's also a few mods for some of the more complex stock airplanes bringing them up to (almost) study-level standards.

Agreed.  WT has really ironed out most of the bugs and they are working directly with Asobo.  Asobo plans to implement their work into the sim.

The easiest way to install and manage the WT GPS mods and a few of the most popular aircraft mods is with the "MSFS Community Downloader".      Makes life painless.

https://flightsim.to/file/15569/msfs-community-downloader

1 hour ago, Waldo Pepper said:

This will place a performance overlay in the top right corner of your monitor.  The overlay will show whether you're limited by CPU, GPU, or Main Thread.   

Let me offer a counter suggestion... Set fps to 30 in the MSFS settings and never check it again. 😉

2 minutes ago, Waldo Pepper said:

Agreed.  WT has really ironed out most of the bugs and they are working directly with Asobo.  Asobo plans to implement their work into the sim.

The easiest way to install and manage the WT GPS mods and a few of the most popular aircraft mods is with the "MSFS Community Downloader".      Makes life painless.

https://flightsim.to/file/15569/msfs-community-downloader

That is super useful, thanks! So far, it seems my journey into MSFS will have less tinkering and third party addons than P3D!  The only thing I know I'll miss for sure is Active Sky historical weather, but I guess the live weather will do fine even if I fly in the past (in exemple to fly in daylight when it is dark outside in real life).

6 minutes ago, Violins77 said:

The only thing I know I'll miss for sure is Active Sky historical weather

That is why you should keep P3D installed.. so you can always go back..

If you are like me, you will be going back less and less, and when you do, you will wonder why you bothered..

The lighting in MSFS is simply much better.. IMHO..

Edited July 4, 20214 yr by Bert Pieke

2 hours ago, Violins77 said:

 Right now, I'm leaning toward giving MSFS a try with my current setup on July 27th.   

My rig is not far from yours and I am flying GA, warbirds and the DC-6. Your conclusion is IMHO  what common sense dictates. The substantial improvement announced by Microsoft has no reality until it is pushed to my computer or yours. It is urgent to wait and see specially that the hardware market is tight and expensive these days but could soften a bit in 2022.

 

Edited July 4, 20214 yr by Dominique_K

1 hour ago, Violins77 said:

This scares me a little, as I don't like not knowing if I'm doing something wrong or if it is the sim acting up. How bad is it? Is the autopilote following the flight plan most of the time? I guess I can handle VNAV manually, but I would at least expect the plane to follow LNAV.

I fly IFR on every flight both with GA aircraft and now the DC6. I use LNAV on all my flights, sometimes up to 15 flights a week. I have never had a problem with LNAV, 

Use your money to buy an XBOX ! 

All I can say is I'm in almost the exact same spot.  I have a 1080 and have been in the market for an upgrade for awhile.

I'm no expert, but personally I'm waiting 6 months and seeing where the prices go.  I'm not in any huge hurry to upgrade, and I feel like right now I'd be "buying high".  Waiting another 6 months or so, I should be able to get a lot more system for the same price. 

I can still get 25-30 fps on the 2nd highest settings with GA planes, which is quite good considering my PC is over 4 years old right now!  Heck, that's better than we used to get in the early FSX days.  I remember FPS in the teens on landing with GA aircraft. 

I'm probably going to jump on a new PC after the new year, or at least see where prices are then.  Again, I'm no expert.  The prices of everything seems to be going through the roof.  I've put off most major purchases until things settle down.  Hopefully this fall starts to get back to some sort of normal, at least when it comes to supply. 

I run the game on a 13.8 yr old PC (see my specs). The only thing I have upgraded is the gfx card. 

None of my settings are on Low. Everything is med-high-ultra. I get 30-40FPS. However this is only over rural areas and only in small GA planes. The Caravan and TBM are my limits.

I cannot fly airliners and neither can I fly over large cities, it becomes a slideshow. This is where my system shows its weakness.

As others have said a performance enhancement update is also coming end of this month. See the links below that compare your GPU and CPU with mine. 

What I am getting at is that my ancient system can run the game - so your much more capable system will not have any issues - and you can save money for perhaps a more powerful Window11-ready system in the future. Hope this helps with your decision! Happy flights 😀
 

Your GPU vs mine
https://gpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Nvidia-GTX-1070-vs-Nvidia-GTX-1060-6GB/3609vs3639

Your CPU vs mine
https://cpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Intel-Core-i7-920-vs-Intel-Core-i5-4690K/1981vs2432

 

Edited July 4, 20214 yr by ThrottleUp

11 hours ago, Violins77 said:

This scares me a little, as I don't like not knowing if I'm doing something wrong or if it is the sim acting up. How bad is it? Is the autopilote following the flight plan most of the time? I guess I can handle VNAV manually, but I would at least expect the plane to follow LNAV.

There is absolutely nothing to be scared about. Download the Workint Title CJ4 mod, and you'll be a happy camper. Also, the WT team is working on a GG 1000 nxi version. 

19 hours ago, Violins77 said:

To be honest, I don't think my GPU will be the limiting factor here, at 1080P with a couple settings turned down, it should holp up at 35 FPS, but it's my CPU that was absolutely murdered last time I tried, and it seems the performance patch is targeting exactly that, with things like threading for glass cockpits.

Any reason you're seeking 35 fps, generally people target 30 or 60 fps with Vsync on a 60 Hz monitor?

As others have said, just try it out post July update and see how you get on, you have nothing to lose except a few weeks waiting.

Edited July 5, 20214 yr by ckyliu

I'm another poster recommending for you to wait until the 27th of July, and install MSFS after the update on your old PC, you'll still have a blast. Remember that by delaying your new rig that, the longer you wait, all this nonsense with the increased price of PC components well end fairly soon and you should get a better bang for your buck. 

2 hours ago, ckyliu said:

Any reason you're seeking 35 fps, generally people target 30 or 60 fps with Vsync on a 60 Hz monitor?

As others have said, just try it out post July update and see how you get on, you have nothing to lose except a few weeks waiting.

This is an interesting question that I was prepared (no pun intended) to answer.

First, just some context, I've been playing on PC for 30+ years now, and I also work in IT. What I mean by that is that I don't do things unknowingly when it comes to PCs.

The reason for 35FPS dates back to 2009. Before that year, I almost always targeted 60FPS in all games. Grand Theft Auto 4 was released a year prior on PC, and after upgrading to a then brand new (I do mean brand new as this was the first i5 processor ever) Core i5, I still couldn't play GTA 4 at 60FPS. It was hovering between 40-60 FPS and it was not fun. So after hours of tweaking and researching, I came up with 35FPS as the sweet spot and that has been a magic number for me ever since. You see, 35FPS gives almost a 20% boost over 30FPS in latency and smoothness. Sure, it is out of synch with the refresh rate, but the benefit was always worth it for me.

But even weirder, is that I actually like the look of 35FPS for third person games. It looks more like a TV Show or Movie, and less like a "video game". This is the same reasons why I prefer watching The Hobbit at 24FPS vs 48FPS. It removes the cinematic feel. It also has another big advantages, by limiting the FPS in game that would otherwise run much higher (like The Witcher 3), I can use the spare resources and increase DSR or other settings to get the most out of my hardware. This is also why I'm running RDR2 and AC Valhalla without issue on my midrange hardware, as I'm just targeting 35 FPS. It still gives me a much better experience than (most) consoles with improved visuals. 

Now for the input latency, I know double capped Vsync nowadays can help greatly reduce it, but I sitll feel 35 FPS is the sweet spot for me. That is why I love the PC as a platform, it's all about options.