How to wreck performance in MSFS with a decent rig

[Cpt_Piett 4,801]

Greetings fellow simmers!

There's no lack of discussion and opinions on how to improve stuff to get stellar performance in MSFS. Heck, I've been guilty of that too many times on this forum. I'd like to think that most of us to some extent are chasing that ever-elusive Holy Grail: excellent performance combined with excellent image quality. I'd also like to hope that not too many poor souls find themselves as deep down the rabbit hole as I do. Believe me, that hole goes very deep. A tell-tale sign of this chronic, deteriorating affliction is tampering with Nvidia profile inspector, registry editor, NDU and SysMain. Maybe I should have taken the blue pill?

Contrary to my previous topic, I wanted to take the opportunity to try to wreck havoc on performance in order to identify where the worst bottlenecks can be found. Inspired by a fellow captain (who pleaded the 5th and begged me to maintain anonymity), I booted up the latest beta build at KJFK and threw the following at the poor sim: 

1. Inibuilds KJFK
2. Fenix A320 V2 (as we all know the modelling of cockpit door opening makes it way more performance-heavy than PMDG 737)
3. FSLTL AI Traffic (base and injector)
4. AIG models, flight plans and injector (AIGTC)
5. GSX Pro
6. REX AccuSeason
7. REX Airport Textures
8. We Love VFR by PUF
9. GAIST Ultra v4.0 with North American Caribbean routes enabled
10. Seafront vessels core

(I would have thrown in Samscene3D's New York City Times as well, but didn't feel like cashing out on it)

It's worth noting that most of these apps will not treat the mainthread very gently. Well, that's an understatement, as we shall see. These addons don't enter the sim with silk gloves on. They come armed with sledgehammers. 

Sim settings: 5461x2880 || DLSS ultra quality || FG || DX12 || PG || Shadows 6144 || real weather + other settings ultra/max (except for glass cockpit refresh rate medium)

I used AutoFPS in a desperate attempt to avoid my rig going down in flames. 

Situation: Fenix parked at gate, panel status ready, drone mode, no panning. 

FSLTL off: 

FSLTL on: 

AIGTC on at 100%: 

 

Without FSLTL: avg fps 71.9     smooth 100%   FTV <2ms 99.2%

With FSLTL:       avg fps 70       smooth 100%   FTV <2ms 92.53%

With AIGTC:       avg fps 50.9   smooth 99.8%   FTV <2ms 65.11%

There's a caveat here, and that is that this comparison doesn't do AIG much justice. I had fairly moderate FSLTL settings, besides at the time it was RW night-time in NY (I set MSFS time to noon though), and FSLTL uses "live" flight plans, vs AIG's offline. Also, to show how much of a heavy hitter max AI traffic can be, I chose to add AIG into the mix as it's easier to just set 100% traffic vs. FSLTL's more elaborate settings. 

In this pitiful scenario, there's simply no overhead left as the poor mainthread is working overtime. The 4090 won't save the day heroically in this case (which it normally tends to do - otherwise no one in their right mind would spend their hard-earned cash on it). 

Reset's brilliant app does it's absolute best but falls short as well. No hate whatsoever towards AutoFPS - it's absolutely brilliant and I use it with every flight. Otherwise my 12900KF would have melted long ago with my ridiculously high settings (which I would never have been able to use without AutoFPS). 

In case anyone was wondering: FG won't save the day either. In fact it'll make it worse. Like a blizzard-combined-with-11058G70KT-standing-at-BIRK's-tarmac-in-December-worse. Explanation will follow. 

With a still drone view above the airport, with most of the main terminals in view (packed with AI aircraft on the ground as well as in the sky, as far as the eye can see), the mainthread is red-glowing at 44ms (!), native fps 22 (!!) and FG-fps 45. I'm pretty sure I could both hear and smell the agony of the 12900's P-cores. Some brave ones were in fact coming dangerously close to TjMAX at 100 degrees celcius. 

Panning around makes things worse. Much worse in fact. It's what we would call a real stutter-fest. A real word-not-allowed-storm. The worst enemy of any Serious Simmer™.

Not only does low native fps facilitate a catastrophically bad simming experience, but FG actually adds fuel to the fire. Nvidia recommends native 60 and above fps for optimal results. Here we've got feeble 22 native fps. This is an excellent example of the appearance of the dreaded FG-related flickering (which I like to call FG-inherent artifacts), and it's quite distracting. Well, distracting is an understatement. So we find ourselves in the perfect storm: absolutely horrendous stuttering-galore combined with FG-induced flickering-artifacts. 

The 4090 basically meets it's greatest nemesis in this scenario: a wrecked mainthread which is completely overworked, overwhelmed (and probably underpaid!). Perhaps the much praised 7800X3D would have saved the day? I might be going out on a limb here, but I'd venture to guess it wouldn't have. I challenge 7800X3D + 4090 owners to prove me wrong. 

Could we make it even worse? Well we could increase TLOD to 600 and OLOD to 1000 (it's possible, I've tried). But there's really no point in doing so, as we don't want to throw our Xbox controllers at our overpriced OLED panels. 

Well, that's it for now. Comments? Can we make it worse? Do we really want to? Is FSLabs better than Fenix? May the Force be with you all. 

Please don’t bother to get up, I’ll show myself out. Cpt signing off.

Edited March 8 by Cpt_Piett

[RJC68 823]

I can smell the melting silicone from Canada 🤣

I have a headache now from just reading that post !!, for your PC's sake I think you should be banned from using MSFS and be given a ZX Spectrum or even a ZX81 LOL (Curious to see who remembers and owned those 😀)

And looking at that FTV, I'd say your PC was having a Heart Attack !!

Edited March 8 by RJC68

[cianpars 1,174]

I would agree that almost every addon knocks a little off performance with the overall affect being cumulative, strangely Samscenes New York is nowhere near as bad for me as I might have expected.  I'm only using freeware for Laguardia and Newark and the default JFK.  The payware airports are all performance killers.

Whilst I like GAIST, I've had to uninstall it, though do put some of the routes back 8n from time to time.

I'm not sure about weloveVFR, but my sim would be nowhere near as nice without it and I will just have to take any performance hit that comes with it, although I have noticed a huge impact.

I do use the FG and autoFPS mods on my RTX3080, though I have a pretty decent 5800X3D processor which still results in a CPU bound sim at 1440 rez.  MSFS2024 sounds very promising though in terms of optimization as a result of more modern coding.

A lot of airports hit FPS badly.  Honolulu, Gatwick (freeware) and Salzburg spring to mind and possibly Glasgow, though I think the freeware photogrammetry addons I use in these areas has a much worse effect 

Whilst my TLOD is controlled by the AutoFPS mod, I find turning down the OLED in some of these areas helps.

[cianpars 1,174]

8 minutes ago, RJC68 said:

I can smell the melting silicone from Canada 🤣

I have a headache now from just reading that post !!, for your PC's sake I think you should be banned from using MSFS and be given a ZX Spectrum or even a ZX81 LOL (Curious to see who remembers and owned those 😀)

Even worse, I had a ZX80.

[abrams_tank 7,453]

So the takeway I get is, even with a decent rig, if you load MSFS with popular add-ons that are known to kill your FPS, after you load in all the FPS killing add-ons, you still get 22 FPS or so, in the worst case scenario.

Isn't that a testament to how well MSFS runs? Like if you had a decent rig, and if you load some of the other civilian flight sims with multiple popular add-ons that are known to kill your FPS, will you still get 22 FPS?

PS. 22 FPS was satisfactory back when FSX came out in 2006. I wasn't complaining much about 22 FPS back then, with an above average computer 🤣. Heck, even when MSFS released back in 2020, most people were happy with 30 FPS.

Edited March 8 by abrams_tank

[threexgreen 3,156]

4 minutes ago, abrams_tank said:

So the takeway I get is, even with a decent rig, if you load MSFS with popular add-ons that are known to kill your FPS, after you load in all the FPS killing add-ons, you still get 22 FPS or so, in the worst case scenario.

I was actually just wondering what the point of the post ultimately is, other than crank up your settings and addons and performance suffers, because 22 isn't even bad. I expected worse.

The post does show however again that FG makes good performance better rather than make bad performance good because of artifacts.

Edited March 8 by threexgreen

[abrams_tank 7,453]

10 minutes ago, threexgreen said:

 because 22 isn't even bad. I expected worse.

Haha, yeah. 22 FPS was acceptable just 4 years ago when MSFS came out in 2020. Now we want more 🤣

BTW, this is the opposite of this thread, but here is an example of MSFS giving 200 FPS at 4K (yeah, you read that right, 4K resolution) with most settings at Ultra, but I don't think any add-ons are used:

This shows how good MSFS is when you use the best hardware that is available these days. 200 FPS at 4K, with that level of graphics, the MSFS rendering engine is just amazing.

Edited March 8 by abrams_tank

[sonny147 582]

i got a 7800X3D and a 4090 , what do you want me try i am game got nothing else to do lol?

[abrams_tank 7,453]

2 minutes ago, sonny147 said:

i got a 7800X3D and a 4090 , what do you want me try i am game got nothing else to do lol?

Just out of curiosity, what's the max FPS you have gotten for 4K? Can you get 200 FPS like the above video in 4K, with most settings set to Ultra (except a few settings are not Utlra in that video)?

[Cpt_Piett 4,801]

I’d like to point out that most of this post was written tongue-in-cheek before the hounds smell more blood. There was a somewhat serious undertone though - that even with the best hardware, we won’t get stellar performance if we hit the sim with all bells and whistles. For me this little experiment was a learning experience, and a reminder not to have unrealistic expectations.

I have to agree with Abrams though - MSFS is the best in the flight simming genre - better than sliced bread in fact. 10 years ago I wouldn’t have dreamt of so much goodness.

17 minutes ago, sonny147 said:

i got a 7800X3D and a 4090 , what do you want me try i am game got nothing else to do lol?

I think I’m out of ideas, I tried my best to bring the sim to a crawl. I guess I could have done better. 

27 minutes ago, threexgreen said:

I was actually just wondering what the point of the post ultimately is

I dunno. Perhaps to exercise my 1st amendment rights and bring a sliver of humor into this forum?

Edited March 8 by Cpt_Piett

[Steve Dra 7,604]

10 minutes ago, Cpt_Piett said:

I think I’m out of ideas, I tried my best to bring the sim to a crawl. I guess I could have done better. 

You know...if you aspired to be just like your boss and took the time to learn the ways of the force, you could have just did what his master did (Obi Wan of course) and waved your hand at us and said "These are not the FPS rates you're looking for", and we'd all see this post as someone who gets 100 FPS at 8k with all settings max'd at KJFK and AI Traffic maxed with 4k texture maps on them. To which we'd say (in our best, static'y Storm Trooper voice) "These are not the FPS rates we're looking for, move along, move along" 

[Cpt_Piett 4,801]

Steve, please stop! 🤣💯 ROFL

[Steve Dra 7,604]

Just now, Cpt_Piett said:

Steve, please stop! 🤣💯 ROFL

I'm Rebel Scum...I'll NEVER join you!

 

And as to the small lettered caption at the bottom of your sig...I reply :TOO LATE!!

 

[Cpt_Piett 4,801]

Very soon I’m likely to be hospitalized due to heart failure brought on by your genius humor!

[sonny147 582]

33 minutes ago, abrams_tank said:

Just out of curiosity, what's the max FPS you have gotten for 4K? Can you get 200 FPS like the above video in 4K, with most settings set to Ultra (except a few settings are not Utlra in that video)?

my 4k tv is only 60hz ( a 120hz LGC2 OLED ) is on the list . So the max FPS i have seen is 64 FG off and 122 with FG on, thats with vsync off in sim and Fast set in the NV app.  right now sat at EGLL (payware) in the fenix B2 with FSTL traffic at 50% FSRealistic REX seasons and i am at 90FPS with FG on with TAA most settings Ultra/High and a few turned off ,  CPU slightly undervolted and GPU at stock

pretty happy , a few stutters there but you know what i gave up on perfection sometime ago

Edited March 8 by sonny147
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