Smoothness all day long.

What I love about this sim is that I can have most settings on ultra locked at 30 with butter smooth performance with the same rig I've had for the past 5 years, didn't have to spend a penny. Kudos to Asobo for getting me what I always wanted in a sim, the entire planet  with its eye-candy along with performance.

 

Smoothness first - in all flight sims.  I then adjust image quality to a point where it may start to affect it in a worse case scenario (such as London), then dial the settings back if I have to.
A minimum of 30 fps v-sync is sacred.

The funny thing is, my setup with the new 3080Ti can handle everything at ultra on 4k native (100% scaling), handles it with ease actually, but I still come across those problem areas occasionally where things start to stutter, and not just a little bit, but jumps from 30 down to 15 or 20 etc.  So this may be down to streaming being slow or some other kind of lag in the system.  Sometimes it comes back on its own, and sometimes I clear or reset certain settings (escape key out - alter settings - escape key back in).  The AI traffic can be one of these.

Edited October 29, 20214 yr by bobcat999

17 minutes ago, bobcat999 said:

The funny thing is, my setup with the new 3080Ti can handle everything at ultra on 4k native (100% scaling), handles it with ease actually, but I still come across those problem areas occasionally where things start to stutter, and not just a little bit, but jumps from 30 down to 15 or 20 etc.  So this may be down to streaming being slow or some other kind of lag in the system.  Sometimes it comes back on its own, and sometimes I clear or reset certain settings (escape key out - alter settings - escape key back in).  The AI traffic can be one of these.

So far now, since fine-tuning LOD-Terrain, I've had none of what you're describing, and I used to have it happen somewhat regularly.  It's tempting to leave LOD-Terrain at 300-400 because all seems well 99% of the time.  What I have also learned is that my tried and true RTSS On Screen Display of GPU/CPU loading does not really equate to actual performance.  Sometime when you are at a really hard to process area in a complex plane, when frames drop down from 30, stop the sim and open Dev Mode's Display FPS monitor.  Dial back LOD-Terrain until the sim is no longer Main Thread limited or is otherwise able to maintain that critical 30fps, and see if you can find the spot where perf no longer dumps below 30.  Thus far for me in the most complex settings LOD-T of 210 to 220 is what it takes, and truthfully I can hardly see any difference between that and LOD-T of 300-400.

I know there are other sources of FPS drops as you mention including AI traffic (still, as this was somewhat addressed in SU6), or server/streaming issues.  But overall, I've had nothing but flawless landings now in the most complex airports, in the 787 HD, so I'm becoming convinced it's doable by adjusting settings a bit more conservatively than is required to seemingly 'handle everything with ease...'

16 minutes ago, Noel said:

It's tempting to leave LOD-Terrain at 300-400 because all seems well 99% of the time.... 

Thus far for me in the most complex settings LOD-T of 210 to 220 is what it takes, and truthfully I can hardly see any difference between that and LOD-T of 300-400.

I run at 400/400 currently (one is set in the user config obviously), but although the stuttering is a fairly irregular occurrence for me, I may try 300/300 at the weekend and see if it stops it.  As you say, I might not even notice the difference.

The problem with increasing settings like I did (4k 100% scaling on a decent 4k monitor) is that you notice things more (or notice the lack of things more in the distance) at a higher resolution, so it gets tempting to turn all of the other settings up, and this is the trap I have fallen into.  1st world problems hey!  

Edited October 29, 20214 yr by bobcat999

1 hour ago, psolk said:

Was it a pre-built?  Starting to hear more and more stories of pre-built systems with great components but horrible cooling... 

Yes, it was a pre-built. Funnily enough the cooling was fine on this one. It seemed the issue was to do with current limitations in the motherboard imposed by the bios that underpowered the CPU and appeared to cause the CPU to throttle back underload. So basically it never had the chance to risk over heating.

2 hours ago, Noel said:

That's a terrible story!  I guess you never found out where the weird perf came from.  Yes a new 12700 will help but even then it shouldn't have been the 3080/10700K that was the source of those woes.  Good luck on your next upgrade you will love it when you get it working correctly!

Thanks Noel. I will be very careful if I have to buy another pre-built. The more I read from others on the web it seems they often have basic design flaws which cause the systems with the more expensive components to function similar to systems with cheaper components or worse with severe stuttering as well like mine had. Kind of makes buying the more expensive systems redundant if we can't use the parts inside we're actually paying the extra for to their proper potential.

I hope manufacturers will have some better pre-builds for Alder Lake but I won't hold my breath.

Edited October 29, 20214 yr by steve310002

good frame times and well north of 30fps - locked at 48fps feels good to me on my rig.

 

 

1 hour ago, bobcat999 said:

Smoothness first - in all flight sims.  I then adjust image quality to a point where it may start to affect it in a worse case scenario (such as London), then dial the settings back if I have to.
A minimum of 30 fps v-sync is sacred.

The funny thing is, my setup with the new 3080Ti can handle everything at ultra on 4k native (100% scaling), handles it with ease actually, but I still come across those problem areas occasionally where things start to stutter, and not just a little bit, but jumps from 30 down to 15 or 20 etc.  So this may be down to streaming being slow or some other kind of lag in the system.  Sometimes it comes back on its own, and sometimes I clear or reset certain settings (escape key out - alter settings - escape key back in).  The AI traffic can be one of these.

imo data streaming - be it AI traffic, MP or world data etc is a big factor in the frame time spikes we see - hopefully they will sort this out in time. 

1 hour ago, bobcat999 said:

I run at 400/400 currently (one is set in the user config obviously), but although the stuttering is a fairly irregular occurrence for me, I may try 300/300 at the weekend and see if it stops it.  As you say, I might not even notice the difference.

The problem with increasing settings like I did (4k 100% scaling on a decent 4k monitor) is that you notice things more (or notice the lack of things more in the distance) at a higher resolution, so it gets tempting to turn all of the other settings up, and this is the trap I have fallen into.  1st world problems hey!  

Yes I did 400/400 too when my 3080Ti arrived, and sure enough it was fine most of the time, but now I'm really enjoying having flawless landings which started to become more important to me having to stop and adjust just before or after landing at certain airports.  It matters too what plane I'm in:  the Citation L is much more perf-friendly than is the 787 HD.  I can tell you again in case you missed it--go to that spot where frames start to drop, stop and look at Dev Mode's frame counter.  What I found at KSFO in weather was it took all the way to LOD-T of 220 to change from Main Thread limited to GPU limited (which it really wasn't!), and with that resumption of steady 30fps all the way to the gate.  I know what you mean about noticing more things in the distance.  I'm hoping Asobo tweaks the LOD-T setting so that on the ground this is dynamically reduced which *should/could* change this behavior such that you can retain the higher LOD settings and get away with it in complex airports in complex planes.  After all, when you're just short of landing and on the ground you can't see the distance detail anyway, so this is low hanging fruit for Asobo to go after, and I will Zendesk the idea in case it hasn't occurred to them yet, if possible that is to dynamically reduce LOD-Terrain.  Also, I only o/c my 9900K to 4.8Ghz as it runs so cool w/ only 1.15v.  At 5.0Ghz requires 1.215v for stability, but that unfortunately will take that FPS at KSFO of 26 only to 28 or so which doesn't solve the issue.  I suppose it would let me change from LOD-Terrain of 220 to 240 or so, but quite frankly I would not be able to see the difference anyway so not worth it really.  I use Render Scale of 130 which does give me some more detail in the distance.  

3 hours ago, Noel said:

Thus far for me in the most complex settings LOD-T of 210 to 220 is what it takes, and truthfully I can hardly see any difference between that and LOD-T of 300-400.

It maybe because I fly GA/Twins only that I see a huge difference between LOD 220 and 400.  I go slightly the other way by not worrying about the odd stutter, but buildings/trees as far out as possible.  Lowering LOD absolutely breaks immersion for me by having a distinct line where ground features end and flat textures start.

Of course by flying singles/twins, I don't visit large cities often, so LOD 400 suits my style of flying and gives all the visuals.  My monitor runs at 100hz so I have G-SYNC on in NVCP, FPS limited to 97, VSYNC on in MSFS with 60FPS set.  99 percent of the time smooth as butter.

Okay, I'll be that guy. What's "IQ"?

What is IQ?

2 hours ago, Noel said:

I suppose it would let me change from LOD-Terrain of 220 to 240 or so, but quite frankly I would not be able to see the difference anyway so not worth it really.  I use Render Scale of 130 which does give me some more detail in the distance. 

I decided to try your settings by limiting my FPS to 30 with Vsync on in MSFS (G-SYNC on in NVCP).  I raised the render scale to 130, reduced terrain LOD to 220 and turned every shadow option up to ultra.  I must admit the extra sharpness in the distance from an increased Render Scale overcomes the terrain LOD reduction.  

FPS is a steady and smooth 33fps over Los Angeles, so should be no problem elsewhere.  Both Shadow maps and Terrain shadows to 2048 gives a very realistic scene indeed.  Dev mode shows me GPU limited.

40 minutes ago, MarkDH said:

Okay, I'll be that guy. What's "IQ"?

 

13 minutes ago, hansb57 said:

What is IQ?

Image Quality