22 minutes ago, Ixoye said:

You are out of VRAM, that is your main problem.

No wonder, did you check the render and post resolution he is using? THAT is the problem...

36 minutes ago, AnkH said:

No wonder, did you check the render and post resolution he is using? THAT is the problem...

Yeah! The native monitor res is 1440P but he seems to have it FSR up-scaling (x 2.00) to 5120x2880 and then DLSS down-scaling (x 0.77) to a still very high 3942x2218. The poor system does not know whether it is Arthur or Martha. To fix this, need to remove that FSR upscaling, probably set in NI. Alternatively, the easy way may be to do a clean re-install of the GPU driver to wipe out all NC and NI settings for a clean slate. And then probably best to stay away from FSR, it is not a golden goose. Go with a custom DLSS ultra-quality setting of 0.80 or thereabouts and FG on.

1 hour ago, Ixoye said:

You are out of VRAM, that is your main problem.

He is running out of VRAM because of what he is doing with the Post and Render scaling. It is simply too much to ask of that GPU/CPU combo.

The OP’s initial question (why is the CPU utilization so low?) has been answered I think.

Unfortunately, the NCP screenshots were only from the sim profile. I’m guessing that in the global profile, OP has enabled DLDSR or DSR. The problem with running at 1.78x and 2.25x native is of course the extra load on the GPU and the higher VRAM usage.

I would suggest OP to change settings in order to not put an excessive load on CPU (TLOD, AI traffic, glass cockpit render rate) and GPU (resolutions, clouds etc).

Note: dev mode overlay only shows native FPS. I highly recommend using the RTSS overlay. Also note that whenever MSFS is not in focus, frame gen will be inactive.

I would start by setting the resolution to native (e.g. TAA and render scaling default), then use a TLOD of max 200 initially. At major hubs I always use 50. Managing LODs is much easier using AutoFPS IMO, as it will adjust them according to a target fps that you set.

Edited May 7, 20242 yr by Cpt_Piett

As for the ‘DLSS voodoo” comment… Sigh. Impossible to respond to that as it’s such an over the top blanket statement. Presets matter if DLSS is used, as some presets cause excessive ghosting on speedtapes etc. DLSS quality settings matter, especially at lower resolutions, which can be downscaled too much, making everything blurry.

3 hours ago, Cpt_Piett said:

As for the ‘DLSS voodoo” comment… Sigh. Impossible to respond to that as it’s such an over the top blanket statement. Presets matter if DLSS is used, as some presets cause excessive ghosting on speedtapes etc. DLSS quality settings matter, especially at lower resolutions, which can be downscaled too much, making everything blurry.

Iol I wasn’t making (much of a) dig at you 😉

The broader point remains, though, that you can easily end up down a rabbit hole spending quite a lot of time and changing settings that might be hard to come back from, for - at best - marginal changes.

As well as being marginal, they may also be elusive: what seemed better on Day 1 when you tested it, suddenly isn’t looking so great on Day 2 when the Sim loaded with (eg) scenery differently-fragmented in the RAM, some weather-related difference creating an un-knowable change in performance, etc etc - making it really hard to be sure that there’s a causal relationship between the improvement you thought you saw and the change you know you made.

The newer DLSS versions do seem to offer improved performance and visual quality. But the EXTRA improvements in those vectors that you might gain beyond merely updating the drivers, seem to me to be both marginal and elusive: and not proportionate to the fiddling around which they entail, or the risks they present to an otherwise basically sound/compliant / performant installation. 

5 hours ago, Cpt_Piett said:

Unfortunately, the NCP screenshots were only from the sim profile. 

Good point.  That may explain why I didn't see what I needed to see.

One thing I wonder about with DLSS and DSR Factors etc. in general.  Is there some setting that gets written to the usercfg.opt file related to this?  Because ever since I started experimenting with DLSS Ultra Quality, if I go back to TAA then my Render Scale slider is wonky, even AFTER I have turned off the Preset in NI.  For example I have to drop Render Scale slider to 50 just to achieve my native 4K resolution, whereas before, a Render Scale of 100 always equalled native res.

I am no stranger to tech but I do feel to some extent that I am a noob when it comes to these sorts of things, and they are complex enough that I could indeed fall into a rabbit hole with no way to pull myself out of it -- short of nuking the driver install or worse.

1 hour ago, tfm said:

Iol I wasn’t making (much of a) dig at you 😉

The broader point remains, though, that you can easily end up down a rabbit hole spending quite a lot of time and changing settings that might be hard to come back from, for - at best - marginal changes.

...and I didn't interpret it that way either 🙂 Believe me, I've been deep down many rabbit holes (barely got out of the ReShade hole haha). I 100% agree that it can be risky to experiment too much, as I've been there (too many times!). 

Example: DLDSR seemed very bright and shiny at first. But eventually I realized that the performance hit was not worth it. Although it can be exciting to run at 6K, it's not fun when the mighty 4090 is screaming in agony. Which is btw the only time I've been able to max it out fully at a constant 100% load. 

My preferred settings for the last couple of weeks have been DLSS (preset F to avoid ghosting) + DLAA. I.e. no downscaling, but IMO a bit better antialiasing and image quality than TAA. With an RTX40 GPU it's probably not necessary to run downscaled DLSS-resolutions for performance, as the CPU will be the bottleneck most of the time. 

1 hour ago, tfm said:

The newer DLSS versions do seem to offer improved performance and visual quality. But the EXTRA improvements in those vectors that you might gain beyond merely updating the drivers, seem to me to be both marginal and elusive: and not proportionate to the fiddling around which they entail, or the risks they present to an otherwise basically sound/compliant / performant installation. 

I think that's a fair point. To some extent at least. Since I'm an inveterate tinkerer, I don't mind spending an excessive (and often unreasonable) amount of time testing things out, comparing various settings. I think the main point is to know what you're doing, and when to stop. Many times I've reverted back to my previous settings after a few days as I realized I had gone down (yet another) futile rabbit-hole. 

If I knew what the default preset setting is, I might argue that changing it to F can be worthwhile, to get rid of most of the ghosting. At least I would argue that it could be worth it changing to preset F if you experience excessive ghosting, as many people report they do. 

Edited May 7, 20242 yr by Cpt_Piett

2 minutes ago, Mace said:

One thing I wonder about with DLSS and DSR Factors etc. in general.  Is there some setting that gets written to the usercfg.opt file related to this?  Because ever since I started experimenting with DLSS Ultra Quality, if I go back to TAA then my Render Scale slider is wonky, even AFTER I have turned off the Preset in NI.  For example I have to drop Render Scale slider to 50 just to achieve my native 4K resolution, whereas before, a Render Scale of 100 always equalled native res.

I am no stranger to tech but I do feel to some extent that I am a noob when it comes to these sorts of things, and they are complex enough that I could indeed fall into a rabbit hole with no way to pull myself out of it -- short of nuking the driver install or worse.

AFAIK nothing (DL)DSR related is saved in the .opt file. Don't think I've had the same issue with RS. I just checked, and it stays at 100 when switching between DLSS and TAA. 

I think DLDSR is much more relevant at lower resolutions though - 1080p and 1440p. For me it doesn't really make sense at 4K. Especially if the image is blurry - cockpit instruments in particular - it might be a good idea at least checking it out. If it doesn't improve things, or if the extra load on the GPU is too high, it's not difficult going back to native resolution. 

I guess changing the render scale is similar. But the advantage with DL (deep learning - just like with DLSS) DSR is supposedly that the performance impact is 50% of legacy DSR. 

Of course if one find oneself in the situation that everything is a hot mess, a driver install is probably a good idea. When reinstalling the driver it's important to choose the "clean install" option - only then will the NCP settings go back to default. 

Other options:

• delete usercfg.opt (will reset MSFS graphics settings to default)
• when using nvidia profile inspector, export the profile before making any changes. If things get messy, just import that profile to go back to default. That includes re-setting the NCP settings, as they are included in inspector. Also useful to export a profile before a driver update, just in case the settings are overwritten.

On 5/7/2024 at 12:39 AM, captainbluesky said:

I am not sure if the built in windows FPS counter I use can capture frame generated FPS.

I have included 2 x screenshots below to show windowed mode FPS and full screen FPS, using both the built in windows FPS counter (i.e. press Windows key and G then select Performance button) and the dev mode FPS counter within MSFS. Not sure what is going on here.

I tried the Nvidia overlay as another FPS comparison but the FPS using the overlay display just displays N/A all the time.

I'm confused by your resolution settings.

Screen: 2560x1440
Post: 5120x2880
Render: 3942x2218

This suggests you have a 1440p monitor, your rendering the game at 4k, and upscaling it to 5k.

Also, in both screenshots, it's showing you as being well over your available VRAM - which is the liekly cause for such poor fps.

But why it's so different between full and windowed mode, I do not know.
 

EDIT: Woops, forgot to check the other 2 pages of responses lol.

Edited May 7, 20242 yr by s0cks

On 5/7/2024 at 12:05 PM, Cpt_Piett said:

My preferred settings for the last couple of weeks have been DLSS (preset F to avoid ghosting) + DLAA. I.e. no downscaling, but IMO a bit better antialiasing and image quality than TAA. With an RTX40 GPU it's probably not necessary to run downscaled DLSS-resolutions for performance, as the CPU will be the bottleneck most of the time.

Can you tell me where, in ProfileInspector presumably? to find presets for DLSS w/ DLAA?  I couldn't help but notice the flickering I won't put up with when I use Frame Generation was much better when I went to DLSS + DLAA, but didn't stay for loss of detail with the high render scale I'm using, 160.  I understand the RS slider doesn't appear when you turn TAA off but is there evidence it still is functioning at the setting used w/ TAA, when DLSS w/ DLAA are used?

15 hours ago, Noel said:

Can you tell me where, in ProfileInspector presumably?

Timestamped link to my settings video: https://youtu.be/1ldDZNtYmPE?si=eWBe9faHy87AF1Vn&t=1615

15 hours ago, Noel said:

I couldn't help but notice the flickering I won't put up with when I use Frame Generation was much better when I went to DLSS + DLAA, but didn't stay for loss of detail with the high render scale I'm using, 160.  I understand the RS slider doesn't appear when you turn TAA off but is there evidence it still is functioning at the setting used w/ TAA, when DLSS w/ DLAA are used?

You could try with upscaled DLDSR at 1.78x native. The 4090 should be able to handle it. Activate in NCP global profile, set resolution (NCP), then set resolution in the sim.

Edited May 10, 20242 yr by Cpt_Piett

Maybe there's nothing to calculate... I mean.. the flight is nearly over!?!?

Hi flyers

After reading your helpful comments and making changes to my UserCfg.opt, Nvidia Control Panel, Nvidia Inspector and the 'in sim' graphics settings, the images below show the results of those changes. The performance is very smooth. I believe these FPS are much closer to expectation with the resolutions displayed below with an AMD 7800 X3D processor, Gigabyte 4070 Super Gaming OC 12 Gb graphics card and GSkill 32 Gb DDR5 6000 Ram.

The first 4 images show take off and landing performance at Sydney runway 16R.

The last 4 images show take off and landing performance at Basel runway 15.

The sim FPS counter is still showing half of the built in windows FPS counter and I will consider using RTSS soon to obtain a 'true' FPS taking into account frame generation being on.

If anyone has any further quality and/or performance tips please let me know, especially whether I can apply further tweaks within my UserCfg.opt file.

16 hours ago, captainbluesky said:

The sim FPS counter is still showing half of the built in windows FPS counter and I will consider using RTSS soon to obtain a 'true' FPS taking into account frame generation being on.

If anyone has any further quality and/or performance tips please let me know, especially whether I can apply further tweaks within my UserCfg.opt file.

I’m sure you’ll find RTSS useful, give it a try. As for the .opt file, what I do is increase shadows size to 6144 (6K), and disable most settings in post-processing (sharpen, film grain, fringe). I just think the sim looks better without these.