Over the past three years I have installed various addons to 'improve' the look of MSFS.  I installed ReShade to get the colours more realistic to me.  I used the Map replacement tool for crisper textures.  I used MSAfterburner/RivaTuner to restrict FPS to 34 for smoothness.

I installed SU14 beta at release, but shortly after MSFS started playing up - wouldn't load, CTDs and freezes in the game.  At the same time my PC started playing up.  I was pretty fed up with it so decided on a complete re-install of everything.  Windows 11 install went smoothly, but MSFS (SU14 beta)  took 24 hours to install.  I still had my community folder intact, so pointed the MSFS install to that.  I did not install any other addons at all.  I did NOT overclock my PC, leaving it at the default 3.7GHz where I had been using 5.1GHz.

Started MSFS and was VERY confused!  By default the ULTRA preset was selected (including terrain LOD at 200). The only thing I changed was to set DLSS at QUALITY setting.  Colours were fantastic on the terrain and in the sky.  Textures were crisp and detailed out to the horizon.  I never used Photogrammety, but it was on by default - it looked amazing over San Diego! Flight was smooth, no stuttering at all.  I was getting occasional pauses of course, but that is expected on my system at Ultra.  The Usercfg.opt file has not been touched - exactly as it was set by default.

I am stunned how the sim looks by default!  Obviously MSFS became cluttered with graphical addons and tweaks over the years.  Even over the UK which has always looked horrible to me with over green textures and tint, now looks very very believable!  I hated default MSFS textures, but they now look amazing!

I am now scared to touch anything!

 

Left-over muscle memory from the FSX / P3D days...(I just HAVE to tweak this to death!) 😁

MSFS has and is continuously improving and that will be a never-ending way of life for flight simmers. I am not sure if SU14 included the sky colour "fix" that has been posted here at AVSIM but that is something that I find to be a must-do. You can also play around with the nVidia game filters. Three presets for you to experiment with and an OFF setting to restore the original look.
Visually MSFS is pretty bloody good out of the box so the less tweaking  of the visuals (apart from the two mentioned above) IMO is probably best.

 

Edited November 9, 20232 yr by speedyTC