I know this has been discussed before, but I have been away from MSFS for the past couple of months due to work, etc. In the MSFS settings, which are the most critical to adjust down, in order to get the best frame rates? I assume traffic is one, but I am not overly familiar with what some of the other settings do.

Thanks in advance!

Cheers, Pete

1.Terrain Level of Detail

2. Traffic density

3. Clouds.

28 minutes ago, Ixoye said:

1.Terrain Level of Detail

2. Traffic density

3. Clouds.

Agree with this though Object LOD has a fair impact too.  If you are using TAA rather than DLSS then the render scaling makes a pretty big difference as well.

1 hour ago, PilotPete99 said:

which are the most critical to adjust down

None if you use the frame generation mod and dynamic LOD mod, I could actually increase my settings. Now, if you already own an Nvidia series 4 card then this may not help…

14 minutes ago, DAD said:

None if you use the frame generation mod and dynamic LOD mod, I could actually increase my settings. Now, if you already own an Nvidia series 4 card then this may not help…

I don't yet have a Series 4 card, so this may help. Where would I find this mod? Thanks!

Cheers, Pete

30 minutes ago, PilotPete99 said:

I don't yet have a Series 4 card, so this may help. Where would I find this mod? Thanks!

Cheers, Pete

Since weeks here on the first page, start here:

There are some (graphics)  issues coming with that mod in the GUI and when eg opening the ATC window during flight but the smoothness with my 3series is immense

for the dynamic LOD see here, start with the default settings:

 

Both mods combined give me a huge quality of simming, any plans to upgrade CPU or GPU were postponed. Wish they had these mods also for shoes and handbags so my wife could also postpone her next upgrades 🙂

Edited January 24, 20242 yr by DAD

Don't forget smoothness is the key rather than frame rate Pete.  So if you are 60FPS and smooth, that will be fine.  Pushing for higher FPS isn't necessarily much better, and can make it a bit 'lumpy' or inconsistent.

I have mine locked at 60 FPS now, and I am very happy with it.  I never thought I would get to see 4k, 60 fps in a sim.  It has taken me good hardware and DLSS to get there though. 

I still use DX11 at the moment so no FG mod for me (it DX12 only).  If performance drops due to a bad sim update, or an unoptimised scenery, I might have to consider it, but at the moment, anything that spoils my smoothness gets thrown out.
The only thing I had that did this was Chicago landmarks from Drzewiecki, but they found the problem and fixed it.   Most large cities or airports will cause a bit of chugging of course.  

All the things mentioned above will help anyway, nobody has told you wrong, and you might have to make some compromises on detail, but my point is try make sure your frame rate is limited to just below what you can achieve in general. 
If you let framerate run unlimited I found is is lumpy unless you are using a Gsync / Freesync monitor.

As you say, traffic is a killer, and even the road traffic set on high won't help.  I have mine set on 5% to just to see a bit of movement, and airport vehicle traffic right down as well.  You might as well, as they only charge at you down the taxiways!  

Out of interest, what is your hardware (just CPU / GPU details) and what are you getting at the moment?  When set up well, MSFS can run like a dream.

 

Edited January 24, 20242 yr by bobcat999

15 minutes ago, bobcat999 said:

Don't forget smoothness is the key rather than frame rate Pete.  So if you are 60FPS and smooth, that will be fine.  Pushing for higher FPS isn't necessarily much better, and can make it a bit 'lumpy' or inconsistent.

I have mine locked at 60 FPS now, and I am very happy with it.  I never thought I would get to see 4k, 60 fps in a sim.  It has taken me good hardware and DLSS to get there though. 

I still use DX11 at the moment so no FG mod for me (it DX12 only).  If performance drops due to a bad sim update, or an unoptimised scenery, I might have to consider it, but at the moment, anything that spoils my smoothness gets thrown out.
The only thing I had that did this was Chicago landmarks from Drzewiecki, but they found the problem and fixed it.   Most large cities or airports will cause a bit of chugging of course.  

All the things mentioned above will help anyway, nobody has told you wrong, and you might have to make some compromises on detail, but my point is try make sure your frame rate is limited to just below what you can achieve in general. 
If you let framerate run unlimited I found is is lumpy unless you are using a Gsync / Freesync monitor.

As you say, traffic is a killer, and even the road traffic set on high won't help.  I have mine set on 5% to just to see a bit of movement, and airport vehicle traffic right down as well.  You might as well, as they only charge at you down the taxiways!  

Out of interest, what is your hardware (just CPU / GPU details) and what are you getting at the moment?  When set up well, MSFS can run like a dream.

 

Thanks! I'm at only 30 fps, and I have very good hardware. But I agree, no stutters and I am good to go. 

Cheers, Pete

29 minutes ago, DAD said:

Since weeks here on the first page, start here:

There are some (graphics)  issues coming with that mod in the GUI and when eg opening the ATC window during flight but the smoothness with my 3series is immense

for the dynamic LOD see here, start with the default settings:

 

Both mods combined give me a huge quality of simming, any plans to upgrade CPU or GPU were postponed. Wish they had these mods also for shoes and handbags so my wife could also postpone her next upgrades 🙂

Thanks!

Cheers, Pete

1 hour ago, DAD said:

None if you use the frame generation mod and dynamic LOD mod, I could actually increase my settings. Now, if you already own an Nvidia series 4 card then this may not help…

I'll second this for RTX 20 and 30 series. These two mods made a major difference on my system effectively doubling my frame rate. It also made my TrackIR panning so much smoother.

Dynamic mode makes sense and works well if you need it. You may not depending on your hardware. Very safe and works very well.

Frame generation is hit and miss. Some people love it for the smoothness  you get. Others find the analomies to hard to bear. It's very safe to try though and you should give it a go. Made me get a new gpu and cpu instead and now I use neither.

 

Ron

Edited January 25, 20242 yr by Ron Lefebvre

I am on RTX 3050 and the FG gives me 60-70with stutters especially when panning, and it pushes my GPU to 98% load most of the time (via Gefore Performance).

Going back to DX11 and steady 32-44 with smoothness, GPU load is 55-72% depending on the area and cloud occurrence.

There was a time in FSX years where I spent more time in tweaking than flying, longing for highest fps possible which ended up in frustration. Learned my lesson 

Edited January 25, 20242 yr by History

For that matter since AMD released the new driver with AFMF (fluid motion frames, ie AMD's frame generation tech) I get a nice x2 boost in apparent framerate with my 7900 XT in DX12.

21 minutes ago, iborg1979 said:

For that matter since AMD released the new driver with AFMF (fluid motion frames, ie AMD's frame generation tech) I get a nice x2 boost in apparent framerate with my 7900 XT in DX12.

Is there full support for AMD's FG in MFSFS now? I'm keen to upgrade to a 7900XTX if it works well in MSFS.

4 minutes ago, Ixoye said:

Is there full support for AMD's FG in MFSFS now? I'm keen to upgrade to a 7900XTX if it works well in MSFS.

AMD released their AFMF on stable drivers, which is a driver-level FG that works on pretty much all games. It's not like DLSS3 which is software level and requires Asobo to implement it (FSR3 equivelant). Personally I've used AFMF which more or less doubled my frames on their beta driver but it caused me several CTDs so I've shelved it for now. I can't comment how it functions on the stable driver.