Time to rather lock this thread before it derails.
While I wish I had 60 fps I know I am monetary and thus hardware bound and focus on a smooth perception, too. But 30 vs 140 fps to me is like MSFS vs Yplane or game vs simulator or PMDG vs Carenado or real weather vs too much gust or green vs red jelly beans …., well we have too many of these recently. People just like it differently 

Edited October 15, 20223 yr by DAD

And i bet if you would see a 200fps on your screen you still get small stutters here and there that is a normal behavior of a Flightsimulator and you never get rid of sutch sort of issues..

This can have to do with so many things, for example the connection of servers, optimization of MSFS, the 100+ addons that are installed and constantly gets updated and much more.. I personally believe that you will never get a flight simulator stutter-free - IMO !

cheers 😉

Edited October 15, 20223 yr by pmplayer

Imho :

Fixed views are smooth at 30 fps already for subsonic flying. Flying faster and you will need a higher framerate.

When panning you need 40+ depending on panning speed and plane speed 
 

Also : the larger you screen the more stutters/jitters will be seen.

1 hour ago, ryanbatc said:

Locking at 30 vs locking at 60 is a huge difference if you use any type of head tracking, like Track IR.  If you just fly around without that, or maybe use a home cockpit it's less noticeable.

I don't lock at all, nor do I use vsync.  Things are generally smooth unless I'm cranking the LOD and flying big cities with cloud layers, AI traffic and payware sceneries.

This. 

@Sunshine13, camera movement is not just about frames or smoothness, but also about input lag. Which you get way worse if you cap yourself to 30 FPS. Will you take this into account when you start another FPS thread next month?

 

 

I lock at 50 with a TLOD of 275 and only find 30 fps acceptable if i am on final approach in the PMDG at an airport such as KORD with aig running at 90%. I do somewhat agree that after a certain number you may as well lock the frames but for me 30 is not that number and i have taken great pains to ensure my PCs hardware is balanced enough to run the frame rate range from 30 to 50 with good enough frame pacing ... no hard stutters .. actually no stutters to speak of so when it does momentarily fall to those lower frames the sim does so smoothly and i don't notice. Otherwise i need higher than 30fps so what your suggesting doesn't work for me and if my PC has to work harder to achieve it that's why i had carefully selected quality components and configured it with all my knowledge of building and working with PC's. So in a nutshell rather than locking the sim at thirty in order not to hear the pc spool up like what some people do or recommend  i don't lock at thirty and i totally run  PBO with a HEAVY negative curve so i can achieve 5ghz or higher\ tightened memory timings to the ninth degree\ overclock the daylights out of my graphics card and ensure pretty much only the BARE ESSENTIALS run on my windows installation to ensure that when i start the sim it is giving me the visuals + the performance that i will enjoy. Does it spool up a little? sure ... Does it sound like a banshee ? absolutely not ... (again quality components).

Everyone does their own thing differently and are willing to compromise in different aspects to achieve their INDIVIDUAL desired result .. Absolutely nothing wrong with that.

I'm happy I bought a gsync monitor some years ago. It runs at the refresh rate my GPU achieves to provide, which is usually plenty above 30 fps. As others have stated, using head tracking, 30 fps is not desirable (for me at least). Panning quickly at 30 fps is not what I call smooth.

I'm pretty sure most everyone will agree the first priority, provided you have a bare minimum frame rate of maybe 24 to 30 depending on who you ask, is to have stutter-free performance.  Why?  Because it's very easy to SEE stutters, whereas frame-rate dependent issues, perhaps as some state "panning quickly" or what have you is a little more subjective, hence the ongoing discussion.  My system generates high frame rates in low demand settings like most of our systems do, but it's the most demanding scenarios I try to tune for as I really don't like stopping the sim to make adjustments.  We really need a dynamic optimizer that for example reduces T-LOD the closer you get to the ground since by the time you're about to touch down you can't see a whole lot of detail out to the horizon anyway because it's often obscured w/ various objects.

This is the perfect thread to ask this question as many of you are Vsyncing to 30 as I do.  If you have a moment enable Dev Mode and tell me how often you see these spikes of sudden FPS drop.  Pardon the too-short video--just focus on the FPS counter and notice the sudden RED appearance which is the frame rate dropping below 30 and with it a prominent pause or long stutter:

Red Devil 2 - YouTube

I'm finding DX12 is very very different (as to what you see in Dev Mode), but ultimately does seem more free of these brief pauses/stutters than DX11.

 

Edited October 16, 20223 yr by Noel

Have mine locked at 30 for years. Smooth as silk. 

On 10/14/2022 at 6:55 PM, Sunshine13 said:

It just turns me off, where so many topics people are talking about frame rates,  Isn.t this a simulator, and we are flying, not in a race car, or one person shooter.  

I believe a lot of peoples ultimate goal is to run at max settings, max supported resolution at the refresh rate their displays are capable of.

My display is capable of 4k@60hz so, 60fps at max settings would be the victory point.  I use VR with my hp g2 which is struggling big time on the ground taxing using a lot of AI.  I need much more graphics power and asobo to continue optimizing to solve the main thread issue. 

If you are happy running locked at 30fps, thats fine.  But I know that running maxed settings at your displays resolution and refresh rate would be the best experience. I'm no where close to achieving that myself. 

5 minutes ago, Brandon01110 said:

I need much more graphics power and asobo to continue optimizing to solve the main thread issue. 

That's just it isn't it?  So, we settle for solid 30FPS, stutter-free, until such time the hardware can do the same at 60FPS.  Or if you have effective Gsync you can apparently get smooth at variable frame rates.  Right now I can't even do 30FPS 100% stutter-free in the PMDG 738 at the most complex areas but fortunately most of the time it's very smooth and stutter-free.

In the P3D days dialing back Autogen/Vegetation Density was easy to visualize/notice.  I swear in MSFS the difference between T-LOD of 100 and even 200 or 300 is hardly noticible.  And even putting various settings down to High from all Ultra hardly matters visually.  Kind of odd scaling.

I don't lock anything but use g-sync and DX12 and see frames from 20 up to 45 but gotta say,  its smooth almost all the time.   

 

Fortunately i don’t get the micro stutters anymore, but true smoothness while looking around with TrackIR only really happens at 60 fps.  It is livable at 35-40 fps but once you’ve experienced 60 it is tough to unsee it. After spending several hours testing yesterday i can get everything i want visually (completely smooth 60 fps locked, sharp gauges, detailed terrain, etc.), but to do so i have to lose traffic and real-time weather. 

Ugh. 

3 minutes ago, RobJC said:

Fortunately i don’t get the micro stutters anymore, but true smoothness while looking around with TrackIR only really happens at 60 fps.  It is livable at 35-40 fps but once you’ve experienced 60 it is tough to unsee it. After spending several hours testing yesterday i can get everything i want visually (completely smooth 60 fps locked, sharp gauges, detailed terrain, etc.), but to do so i have to lose traffic and real-time weather. 

Ugh. 

This is where a new modern cpu could come In. Should (hopefully!) Push  it to locked 60. 
 

As a side note, this thread seems to come up quite regularly. Normally it only ends one way. 
 

Panning looks like trash at 30 fps, I lower Lod to 150 and lock at 38 fps instead, much smoother experience IMO.

My monitor can only do 60fps period.  MSFS cooks along at 55 to 70 fps usually with DX12 so why limit to 60fps if MSFS can mostly stay ahead of the game?  Seems its a good thing to avoid pauses.

sp

Edited October 17, 20223 yr by Sky_Pilot071