I recently upgraded my system to a 7800x3D (from a 5800x3D) in hopes I could get more performance. It has helped considerably, going from around 50-60FPS to 70-80FPS under my ideal test conditions… no scenery, clear skies preset, mid-day, Kodiak, flight from CYPK to CYVR at around 2000 feet. Graphics settings (4090)… DX12, DLAA, no FG or V-sync, TLOD 300, Object LOD 150, most other settings on Ultra, G-sync enabled,.

I’m still main thread limited most of the time… the 7800x3D is boosting to 5GHz and still not able to feed the 4090 as fast as it would like, most of the time.  

One thing I’ve noticed is that at some point when you’re on final approach to a major airport (CYVR in my case),  the sim takes a major CPU hit. I’m assuming this is when it loads a higher LOD of the airport? The FPS will momentarily take a big hit… e.g from 70 to 40FPS in my case for a second… then bounce back to about 60. This use to create a noticeable stutter for me, now it’s only really noticeable watching the dev mode FPS meter as it briefly goes red as the FPS dips.  

In my testing today, here are some things I tried (separately) and the impact they had on FPS…

- NV Geforce Experience performance overlay - no change

- Lower TLOD to 200 - gain 10 FPS

- Raise TLOD to 400 - lose 10 FPS

- Switch to Cessna 152 - (just to see what impact aircraft choice has) - gain 20FPS and swapped me from CPU limited to GPU limited

- Track IR - no change 

- Added CYPK (Simple) and CYVR (elaborate) scenery - no change 

- Adding FSLTL traffic - lost 10 FPS

- Turning on Real Time Weather - lost 5 FPS

- Flying at night - lost 5 FPS

So you can see, that if I fly the Kodiak, with FSLTL traffic, live weather, at night, I’m loosing 20FPS… so my in flight FPS goes from my peak of 70-80 to around 50-60. And at the Vancouver airport, I get around 40FPS (down from 60FPS). 

It’s really sad how poorly optimized this sim is. Thankfully, there’s Frame Generation to put some lipstick on this pig. 

Edited August 21, 20232 yr by Virtual-Chris

Reading posts like this I always think I must be living in a different universe, enjoying MSFS with my 8700K/1080TI system, never looking at an FPS counter.

 

I enjoy the simulator as it is.

Sometimes 90 fps, sometimes 30 fps. I dont care to be honest, until it would stutter under 30 fps while on final approach. As long as its smooth, there is no need to know how many fps it generates.

TLOD values higher than 200 cause stutters no matter what CPU you have. 

I can play with TLOD 200 / Ultra settings and virtually never see a stutter with my 7800X3D.

For a long time 200 was the maximum TLOD allowed without tampering with the config file, then Asobo increased the slider at 400 because of people request. The aim was to recover what was lost with SU5 in terms of draw distance / graphics, however there were other issues as well (color depth and banding, grainy clouds, TAA degradation) and having SU5 greatly improved performance, the stutters caused by higher TLODs became even more evident, as they are today...

We never got back completely what was lost with the XBox release.

My suggestion is to stick with 200 and forget it.

 

6 minutes ago, MrFuzzy said:

We never got back completely what was lost with the XBox release.

 

Totally agreed. Well said.

37 minutes ago, MrFuzzy said:

TLOD values higher than 200 cause stutters no matter what CPU you have. 

I can play with TLOD 200 / Ultra settings and virtually never see a stutter with my 7800X3D.

For a long time 200 was the maximum TLOD allowed without tampering with the config file, then Asobo increased the slider at 400 because of people request. The aim was to recover what was lost with SU5 in terms of draw distance / graphics, however there were other issues as well (color depth and banding, grainy clouds, TAA degradation) and having SU5 greatly improved performance, the stutters caused by higher TLODs became even more evident, as they are today...

We never got back completely what was lost with the XBox release.

My suggestion is to stick with 200 and forget it.

 

That's interesting.. so you saying that even with literally the best CPU for MSFS, going above 200 TLOD will create stutters ? 

40 minutes ago, Virtual-Chris said:

In my testing today, here are some things I tried (separately) and the impact they had on FPS…

- NV Geforce Experience performance overlay - no change
- Lower TLOD to 200 - gain 10 FPS
- Raise TLOD to 400 - lose 10 FPS
- Switch to Cessna 152 - (just to see what impact aircraft choice has) - gain 20FPS and swapped me from CPU limited to GPU limited
- Track IR - no change 
- Added CYPK (Simple) and CYVR (elaborate) scenery - no change 
- Adding FSLTL traffic - lost 10 FPS
- Turning on Real Time Weather - lost 5 FPS
- Flying at night - lost 5 FPS

Thanks for taking the time to do this Chris.  Ignore the negative comments.  If they are fine with their performance then good luck to them.  We all have different expectations.

I have never seen the LODs quantified before in terms of effect on FPS, so that is useful, but I have heard object LOD isn't so bad, it is mainly terrain LOD that causes the drop.
I don't suppose you had time to separate them?

And just to say the 10 FPS drop with FSLTL would be expected, although once again it can depend on how many aircraft you generate, as this can be reduced (I take it you were on default settings?).

At the moment I am getting 'skipping' every 20-30 seconds or so, probably due to scenery loading I think, but my FPS isn't too bad. 
4k Ultra just holding 60 FPS.  SU13 beta.  As others have said, smoothness is the key, and we aren't quite there yet. 
Not sure if it is ever going to be possible with this sim architecture.  2024 sound more promising.

A lot of things will impact FPS (and smoothness) but TLOD is the biggest.  Ultra clouds and traffic settings are big ones too and I too have noticed FSLTL having a fairly high impact (4k textures being a big culprit for me) but turning up or down alnost any setting has a cumulative impact as does addon scenery and aircraft.

Off screen terrain pre caching has quite an impact.  I was ok using low/medium until I got trackIR but I look around a lot more now so need high/ultra here.

Edit: Lowering AA and AF settings both have a big impact and are needed less if you are using higher resolutions.

Edited August 21, 20232 yr by cianpars

Cut the upper FPS border and stuttering will be reduced.

Great testing info @Virtual-Chris, thanks!

The problem with TLOD is that there are too many items bound to this parameter. Terrain mesh, PG, ground tile resolution, autogen, etc. The amount, quality and draw distance are all linked, that's why TLOD 400 is so harsh on performance.

What we need are separate sliders like in FSX and P3D so that people can choose how their sim looks vs. what performance they find acceptable.

 

A big problem is that 3d party airport developers make their airports in such high quality that even the fastest cpu can't handle them, I also have a 7800X3D and experience the same problem.

16 minutes ago, F737MAX said:

What we need are separate sliders like in FSX and P3D so that people can choose how their sim looks vs. what performance they find acceptable.

I find these to be confusing, the less knobs, the better. What should happen is, MSFS should automatically adjust itself based on the the capabilities of your system and the last x hours running hours based on your activity. They can easily train a machine learning model that can do this given they have a good datapoints.

4 minutes ago, omarsmak30 said:

I find these to be confusing, the less knobs, the better. What should happen is, MSFS should automatically adjust itself based on the the capabilities of your system and the last x hours running hours based on your activity. They can easily train a machine learning model that can do this given they have a good datapoints.

What we would need is a dynamic T-Lod, we don't need more than T-Lod 50 on the ground.

1 hour ago, roi1862 said:

That's interesting.. so you saying that even with literally the best CPU for MSFS, going above 200 TLOD will create stutters ? 

Yes. A stutter is observed when the framerate drops to very low values for a brief moment or even to zero, as it happened in the early builds above large US cities. In that case the hiccup could last 1-2 seconds.

You will continue to see them regardless of the CPU because even with a 50-60% upgrade in speed, instead of dropping from 40 to 5-10 fps it would drop from 60 to 7-15.

You can have 60 fps on average - measured second by second - but 10 fps drops when the frametime suddenly spikes at 100 ms for whatever reason.

The only way to avoid that is put the system (PC + software) in a condition in which stuttering does not occur at all: ideally GPU limited conditions all the time. And with TLOD @ 300-400 this is not possible.

Edited August 21, 20232 yr by MrFuzzy

1 hour ago, bobcat999 said:

I have never seen the LODs quantified before in terms of effect on FPS, so that is useful, but I have heard object LOD isn't so bad, it is mainly terrain LOD that causes the drop.
I don't suppose you had time to separate them?

I did this in 2021 and I have to say that the results are still valid today... yes BTW, TLOD is the worst offender.