What settings do you use to reach the 'Holy Grail' of MSFS

[tra1245 7]

Hi all, first system specs: i9900k (4.8Ghz), 2080 ti, 32 gigs of ram ddr4 2600, 1TB M.2 nvme ssd.

Next, what I consider the 'Holy Grail' of flight simming: To be able to fly any aircraft at any speed at any altitude at any location at any time of day with any kind of weather with any addon and to always have a smooth and stutter free flight experience.(30fps or better) Easy right?

Before MSFS 2020 I owned FSX,P3D, Xplane 9,10,11. Like many of you I have spent many thousands of dollars on computer and monitor upgrades plus many addons to try to achieve a realistic flight experience.

MSFS 2020 I am running version #1.24.50. I find myself always fiddling with the graphics options to find that sweet spot to fulfill that holy grail setting: Going thru parts of North Dakota on a clear day in the Cessna, Max out those graphic settings!!! Taking the F18 into Paris at night during a thunderstorm, back everything off! Way off!!! You get the idea.

So I'm just wondering if anyone has been able to achieve that 'Holy Grail'  of MSFS 2020 with decent graphic setting , you know, set it and forget it.

Thanks in advance for any responses

Terry

 

 

 

[MrBitstFlyer 3,877]

8 minutes ago, tra1245 said:

Hi all, first system specs: i9900k (4.8Ghz), 2080 ti, 32 gigs of ram ddr4 2600, 1TB M.2 nvme ssd.

Next, what I consider the 'Holy Grail' of flight simming: To be able to fly any aircraft at any speed at any altitude at any location at any time of day with any kind of weather with any addon and to always have a smooth and stutter free flight experience.(30fps or better) Easy right?

Before MSFS 2020 I owned FSX,P3D, Xplane 9,10,11. Like many of you I have spent many thousands of dollars on computer and monitor upgrades plus many addons to try to achieve a realistic flight experience.

MSFS 2020 I am running version #1.24.50. I find myself always fiddling with the graphics options to find that sweet spot to fulfill that holy grail setting: Going thru parts of North Dakota on a clear day in the Cessna, Max out those graphic settings!!! Taking the F18 into Paris at night during a thunderstorm, back everything off! Way off!!! You get the idea.

So I'm just wondering if anyone has been able to achieve that 'Holy Grail'  of MSFS 2020 with decent graphic setting , you know, set it and forget it.

Thanks in advance for any responses

Terry

 

 

 

Your PC is similar to mine. I have most settings at Ultra, a few at high and FPS locked at 40.  Mostly smooth performance with the odd stutter around large cities, but rather that than completely smooth everywhere with graphics turned down.

[ryanbatc 12,860]

I basically use ULTRA at 1440P - with select settings at HIGH.  Motion blur and bloom are off.  AI traffic is sometimes disabled.  Get about 30 locked everywhere.

[Ixoye 1,822]

Your PC is similar to mine. I run at 3440x1440p and have all settings at Ultra except clouds at "High" + Live traffic and FPS locked at 37.

Edited April 21, 2022 by Ixoye

[RaptyrOne 1,425]

4 minutes ago, Ixoye said:

except clouds at "High"

I find clouds at high don’t look great, at least not in SU8 and a few previous versions too. There are odd pixelated, grainy edges. Going Ultra makes a big difference and adds to immersion. It is one of the heavier hitters on FPS though but I can still maintain smooth FPS most of the time in A32NX on an average system. So I prefer to rather trade off some other settings and run clouds at Ultra.

 

[Fiorentoni 4,252]

1 hour ago, tra1245 said:

Next, what I consider the 'Holy Grail' of flight simming: To be able to fly any aircraft at any speed at any altitude at any location at any time of day with any kind of weather with any addon and to always have a smooth and stutter free flight experience.(30fps or better) Easy right?

 

Sure, that's possible, if you turn down every setting to low, because you want to have 30 FPS at Paris (your example), but not in the F18 but in the A32NX and with full AIG traffic (about 200-300 airplanes above and around Paris during busy times).
This can be hardly your aim to have the lowest common divisor, only to not have to change graphics settings.
I'd rather recommend the opposite approach: Choose graphics settings you really like (visually), and see how low the FPS get in the above mentioned situation. If it's still acceptable for you (like 18 FPS is okay for me in the worst case), you choose those graphics settings and stay with them forever.

At least for me the visual aspect of MSFS is so important, that I can live with lower FPS. Sooner or later you forget about FPS and just enjoy the scenery.

EDIT: To add some technical detail - for any CPU-bound system (which will be most non-4k systems in MSFS) the most important FPS-influencing setting is a) Terrain LOD and b) Photogrammetry (in PG cities only, of course). Every other setting hardly changes anything (even clouds!) in regards to FPS, maybe 1 or 2%. That's not worth it for the visual downgrade e.g. for clouds or buildings.

Edited April 21, 2022 by Fiorentoni

[tup61 1,581]

My holy grail was an official (!) 1440p G-Sync monitor. Ultra settings with a middle of the road CPU and GPU and simming life has never been so good. Okay, in the FBW A320 on an addon airport performance may drop a bit but usually my flights are seriously smooth. Don't ask me the fps: I have never checked it. Why should I when everything looks so good. I never expected to experience this back in my P3D days. 

[Ixoye 1,822]

33 minutes ago, RaptyrOne said:

I find clouds at high don’t look great, at least not in SU8 and a few previous versions too. There are odd pixelated, grainy edges. Going Ultra makes a big difference and adds to immersion. It is one of the heavier hitters on FPS though but I can still maintain smooth FPS most of the time in A32NX on an average system. So I prefer to rather trade off some other settings and run clouds at Ultra.

 

Personally, I do not see any major difference, but there may be a bigger difference in 4K, but I can run clouds in Ultra if it is not foggy, fog takes a lot of performance for me.

[Jokka83 14]

It should be mandatory to also mention what resolution the game is running at. And 1440p doesn't really tell much since it can be 2560x1440, 3440x1440 or 5120x1440.

I run at 3440x1440, high setting with 80% rendering. Seeing about 30-45 fps with some dips below 30. I haven't done much tweaking, though. 

5900X, GTX 1070, 32GB RAM.

[Victoroos 205]

2 hours ago, MrBitstFlyer said:

Your PC is similar to mine. I have most settings at Ultra, a few at high and FPS locked at 40.  Mostly smooth performance with the odd stutter around large cities, but rather that than completely smooth everywhere with graphics turned down.

How do you "lock" your frames! In the aim settings? NVI? 

[Sunshine13 234]

your setting similar to mine, most settings are set to ultra few to high, frames locked 30, and finally u always get the occassional stutter a high density cities.

[MrBitstFlyer 3,877]

56 minutes ago, Victoroos said:

How do you "lock" your frames! In the aim settings? NVI? 

In MSFS you turn V-SYNC on and set the Frame Rate Limit thus...

If your monitor is set at 100Hz...
Fps Limit at 20 will give you locked 33.3fps - a third of 100Hz.
Fps Limit at 30 will give you locked 50fps - a half of 100Hz
Fps Limit at 60 will try and run the sim at 100fps - full speed.

If your monitor is set at 120Hz...
Fps Limit at 20 will give you locked 40fps - a third of 120Hz.
Fps Limit at 30 will give you locked 60fps - a half of 120Hz
Fps Limit at 60 will try and run the sim at 120fps - full speed.

You could try the Nvidia Control Panel to limit the frames as desired, or use a third party app to limit the frames.  On my PC, using V-Sync on and setting the Fps Limit as above, has yielded the smoothest experience - my monitor is set to 120Hz with the Fps Limit at 20, giving me a locked 40fps.  40fps is achievable in most places, but in busy areas it will drop as low as 33, but for the most part it remains pretty smooth.

 

Edited April 21, 2022 by MrBitstFlyer

[YMMB 234]

Purely as a counter situation....I run a I7-7700K with GTX1080Ti, 4K monitor and run 100% rendering, 120 LOD and terrain....most things on Ultra, AIG traffic...I decided a while back to not even bother looking at FPS unless the image became a slide show...which it hasn't yet.... as on an approach this completely destroys the landing like the very early days of FSX

When the PMDG 737 comes out this will be my real test however once again I've decided to focus on enjoying the sim and not worry about tweaking anything in any config file simply because I lost so many hours of flying time in other sims constantly tweaking and reading very post on tweakng rather than flying.....and now that I'm closer to 60 than 50 years of age, time is too precious after a month of too many funerals....

As a matter of interest if I could find a PC that ran at 6GHz in "base" form and could swallow buying a GTX3090 (or two) would MSFS have the code to use these resources fully?

Edited April 21, 2022 by YMMB

[Victoroos 205]

7 hours ago, MrBitstFlyer said:

In MSFS you turn V-SYNC on and set the Frame Rate Limit thus...

If your monitor is set at 100Hz...
Fps Limit at 20 will give you locked 33.3fps - a third of 100Hz.
Fps Limit at 30 will give you locked 50fps - a half of 100Hz
Fps Limit at 60 will try and run the sim at 100fps - full speed.

If your monitor is set at 120Hz...
Fps Limit at 20 will give you locked 40fps - a third of 120Hz.
Fps Limit at 30 will give you locked 60fps - a half of 120Hz
Fps Limit at 60 will try and run the sim at 120fps - full speed.

You could try the Nvidia Control Panel to limit the frames as desired, or use a third party app to limit the frames.  On my PC, using V-Sync on and setting the Fps Limit as above, has yielded the smoothest experience - my monitor is set to 120Hz with the Fps Limit at 20, giving me a locked 40fps.  40fps is achievable in most places, but in busy areas it will drop as low as 33, but for the most part it remains pretty smooth.

 

Hmmm. Thanks for the explanation! 

What I don't get is when I have a gsynch monitor.. I shouldn't need vsynch right? 

[MrBitstFlyer 3,877]

2 hours ago, Victoroos said:

Hmmm. Thanks for the explanation! 

What I don't get is when I have a gsynch monitor.. I shouldn't need vsynch right? 

You should have v-sync on with g-sync.  Take a look at BlurbBusters G-Sync