4 hours ago, kevinfirth said:

I made the personal decision (with some degree of understanding) to buy a GPU (3090) years ago with 24Gb VRAM.   It served me well.

Yup still chewing threw everything years later with my 3090 STRIX. 

The card is a 24GB VRAM powerhouse!

12 minutes ago, blueshark747 said:

Yup still chewing threw everything years later with my 3090 STRIX. 

The card is a 24GB VRAM powerhouse!

It sure is. I would never contemplate getting a card with less than 24GB for MSFS now. 

17 minutes ago, St Mawgan said:

It sure is. I would never contemplate getting a card with less than 24GB for MSFS now. 

Yet folks insist on going from a 24GB 3090 to a 16GB 5080 chasing clock speeds and AI frame gen in freakin texture/VRAM hungry flight sims and VR apps.

I don't care how fast the new ai frame gen/clock tech is....trying to go into MSFS with only 16GB of VRAM wanting the full visual 4K/VR addon VRAM hogging experience is silly.

Hopefully the future 5080 SUPER/Ti release will be 24GB who knows....🍻

Edited August 3, 2025Aug 3 by blueshark747

The 5080 should have been 24GB VRAM from the start. Oh, wait....that would increase the cost of production by £500. Yeah, good decision, Nvidia 👍

9 hours ago, kevinfirth said:

I wish people would realise that in today's technological landscape, VRAM is NOT in itself a bug, you just need more of it to accommodate all the additional detail Devs are facilitating.  Yes, there may well be memory leaks here and there that do need to be fixed, but this isn't the same.  Flight sim is and has always been extremely demanding on hardware, and thinking you should be able to run ultra settings on low or medium spec GPUs is bordering on deranged.  

Now I understand premium GPU prices are not exactly affordable, we all know that.  But AI isnt going away, and manufacturers aren't going to reduce prices out of charity, so we are left in a position where you either pony up a lot of dosh or make do, because moaning about GPU prices isn't going to change anything.

Just don't rush to bash the devs because your non premium hardware isn't capable of delivering the performance you really want.

I only partially agree with you here. 

I completely get that over time VRAM use is going to increase thats a given. What i do not agree with is the inherent argument that this excessive VRAM usage is the typical increase that was expected. We know they did not fully optimize the textures for the program.. they pretty much admitted that in their Q&A and they admit that they are working on it ... They should have done this before release (but we know how that went). I would have assumed that they had caught on to the increased VRAM requirements as its fairly obvious to observe when switching in MSFS 2020 from DX11 to DX12beta  Further to this .. That laughable specs sheet that was published puts even more blame on the developer as either they were ridiculously off the mark or the VRAM bug is a bigger issue or they assume everyone plays at 1080p.

As for what ASOBO is presently doing to address this issue i have no choice but to give them the space to see how much optimization they and gaya can come up with to fix this. At some point they will get to the point where there are at the limit of VRAM optimization. I do not believe they are at that point as yet but i have no choice but to hope there is more to be found. In the mean time for my resolution i have roughly estimated i will need 24GB of vram if i want to max everything out and install the addons i want to get. 5090 is a non starter for me so im willing to wait for the tech to advance  and asobo to do their thing and work this VRAM issue back to manageable levels.  

Edited August 3, 2025Aug 3 by Maxis

Nvidia has an experimental (for now) technology that promises to significantly reduce texture size and ram consumption. I've been waiting seemingly forever for this tech to appear, but its always seemed to be just over the horizon.

I've even wondered occasionally if Asobo was stalling for time until it became available.

Anyways, the problems are being solved, and if it works out, this could maybe save us all a lot of headaches.

 

14 hours ago, HiFlyer said:

I'm pretty much of two minds on this. Default bespoke airports are often half to a quarter of the size of 3rd party airports with all the bells and whistles, not to mention all the other addons that simmers like to throw into the pot.

I always wonder, as I watch the ram usage at such and such an airport, whether there would be an issue if I was using the more modest default, rather that the $40 dollar extreme-ware version of the facility.

Or if I was using the default planes instead of the shiny but computationally heavier Fenix, or if I was not also running multiple background ATC enhancements or.......

Just wondering idly how much is Asobo, and how much is us, and how much responsibility they should take for 3rd party stuff working efficiently.

I wonder how they feel about it.

EDIT: There are a number of addons/utilities I have left on the table because of concerns of overloading the sim.

When I test performance, I use only default assets. Default EGLL, EDDF with the default A320 v2.

I am not silly enough to criticize Asobo for the performance of add-ons, even more so during a beta test...

VRAM is only an issue if you insist on running the sim with settings beyond your hardwares capabilities. In the past it was accepted that, with flight simulation especially, only those with with a top end and very expensive system would be able to max out their settings. And even then, future tech was needed for top performance. Now, everyone expects to run the sim maxed out no matter what they are trying to run it on. If you have issues the solution is simple: Turn down your settings.

Edited August 4, 2025Aug 4 by jarmstro

26 minutes ago, jarmstro said:

VRAM is only an issue if you insist on running the sim with settings beyond your hardwares capabilities. In the past it was accepted that, with flight simulation especially, only those with with a top end and very expensive system would be able to max out their settings. And even then, future tech was needed for top performance. Now, everyone expects to run the sim maxed out no matter what they are trying to run it on. If you have issues the solution is simple: Turn down your settings.

Well said! I’m running a 4090 and I don’t max out all of the settings even with it. 

32 minutes ago, jarmstro said:

Now, everyone expects to run the sim maxed out no matter what they are trying to run it on.

As well as running countless other 'essential' apps and programs in the background. 

I continue to say that by far and all taken into consideration, FS 2024 is simply the most optimized and stable/smooth civil flightsim I have used without hammering the hw components of my sim rig.

FS 2020 was already very good but it seems to me FS 2024 webt further abead in optimization.

 

Edited August 4, 2025Aug 4 by jcomm

1 hour ago, jarmstro said:

And even then, future tech was needed for top performance.

This myth originates from FSX, where it was so poorly optimised at release that it took a full ten years before it could be run 'maxed out'; even then, technology surpassed it, as it was simply not well optimised, including its implementation of DX10. 

It should also be noted that FSX was not consistently developed. Rather, it was abandoned. I believe it had only one update. 

MSFS by Asobo is in constant development. They should be developing it to run on today's high-end hardware, not tomorrow's. Develop it to work on tomorrow's, tomorrow. 

FS9 did not have this issue. 

 

Edited August 4, 2025Aug 4 by Ianrivaldosmith

2 hours ago, jarmstro said:

VRAM is only an issue if you insist on running the sim with settings beyond your hardwares capabilities. In the past it was accepted that, with flight simulation especially, only those with with a top end and very expensive system would be able to max out their settings. And even then, future tech was needed for top performance. Now, everyone expects to run the sim maxed out no matter what they are trying to run it on. If you have issues the solution is simple: Turn down your settings.

So when people do turn down their settings and still get VRAM through the roof what then? You need to realise this is an Asobo issue, constantly passing it off as users at fault isn't going to get us anywhere. 

Remember pre launch we were sold, by Seb and Jorg, that the system specs should be the same as 2020, that the optimisation of the CPU cores will help performance - yet here we still are, now with promises of more CPU optimisation in SU4 whilst people are still struggling with excessive VRAM usage.

Go read the official forums, Reddit, discord, there's still very clearly major issues with VRAM and poor optimisation of the code currently with the SU3 beta, it's clear as day.

Edited August 4, 2025Aug 4 by MarcG

52 minutes ago, Ianrivaldosmith said:

This myth originates from FSX, where it was so poorly optimised at release that it took a full ten years before it could be run 'maxed out'; even then, technology surpassed it, as it was simply not well optimised, including its implementation of DX10. 

It should also be noted that FSX was not consistently developed. Rather, it was abandoned. I believe it had only one update. 

MSFS by Asobo is in constant development. They should be developing it to run on today's high-end hardware, not tomorrow's. Develop it to work on tomorrow's, tomorrow. 

FS9 did not have this issue. 

 

Well, go back to FS9 then?  I'm happy with what I've got running, if you aren't, not much I can do about it sorry!

21 minutes ago, kevinfirth said:

Well, go back to FS9 then?  I'm happy with what I've got running, if you aren't, not much I can do about it sorry!

That isn't the point I was making, and you know it. I never said I still used FS9 either. I also didn't ask you for help, so I'm not sure why you'd say there isn't much you can do about it. 🤷‍♂️ I am happy for you that you are happy.