Like a lot of people, I have a love-hate relationship with 2024. Here is the scenario: 

Using FSiPanel, I set up an autoland scenario in Phoenix sky harbour and I repeated and recorded the exact same autoland flight within 15 minutes. My first attempt was a stutter fest with an average fps of about 40 and the second attempt showed an average FPS of about 95 and hardly any stutters. The enclosed video shows the results. This is maddening. At any given time, 2024 can be amazing or totally unplayable. 

I realize this is a first world ‘problem’, but still… 😠. Incidentally, I was running with high to ultra settings in 4K and my hardware consists of a 9800 X3d , RTX 4090 and 64 gb DDR5 ram.

Not looking for answers or sympathy, but just letting people know that their hardware is not always the problem when it comes to performance. Sometimes, it is just plain luck whether you have a great experience or whether you are ready to forget about ever flying again. Personally, I have quit about 200 times at least since MSFS 2020 got published. 🤣

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1suGqQ6KjvPUzK8yhPPoiP3G_WgIW083L/view?usp=sharing

6 minutes ago, MauBen said:

Like a lot of people, I have a love-hate relationship with 2024. Here is the scenario: 

Using FSiPanel, I set up an autoland scenario in Phoenix sky harbour and I repeated and recorded the exact same autoland flight within 15 minutes. My first attempt was a stutter fest with an average fps of about 40 and the second attempt showed an average FPS of about 95 and hardly any stutters. The enclosed video shows the results. This is maddening. At any given time, 2024 can be amazing or totally unplayable. 

I realize this is a first world ‘problem’, but still… 😠. Incidentally, I was running with high to ultra settings in 4K and my hardware consists of a 9800 X3d , RTX 4090 and 64 gb DDR5 ram.

Not looking for answers or sympathy, but just letting people know that their hardware is not always the problem when it comes to performance. Sometimes, it is just plain luck whether you have a great experience or whether you are ready to forget about ever flying again. Personally, I have quit about 200 times at least since MSFS 2020 got published. 🤣

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1suGqQ6KjvPUzK8yhPPoiP3G_WgIW083L/view?usp=sharing

Quite agree, I feel your frustration especially when it is so random day to day...   I had the same thing yesterday, Thursday was wonderful, one of those incredible simming days then yesterday was abysmal.  First flight's performance was so bad I shut down right after departure during climbout, rebooted, same exact flight, same departure time and performance was "better" but not as good as Thursday.  By the time I landed which is probably after the EU/UK are done with their simming performance was gain stellar.  

From my perspective the only things that can be causing this variable performance comes down to server load or connection to server but in either end it's not something local to my machine or on this side of my ISP... 

Edited August 16, 2025Aug 16 by psolk
feel not fell

     I'm still using P3D but have plans to switch over to 2024 when my new machine is finished next month. It's pretty much going to have the best components available, including a 5090 GPU. Are you using the new option to install much of the sim into your computer or are you still steaming 100% of the content? I'm curious to see if the reduced reliance on streaming improves sim performance. Thanks.

SU3 update is coming and could be related.

dd

Could the better performance on the second test relate to the fact that you had the scenery in your rolling cache from the first test?

I am, along with quite a few others seeing performance differences in the same areas from time to time which seems to suggest that the poor performance is resulting from the speed of the MS servers, especially as the decrreases seem to come at times when you would expect to see a high demand on them.

4 minutes ago, cianpars said:

Could the better performance on the second test relate to the fact that you had the scenery in your rolling cache from the first test?

I am, along with quite a few others seeing performance differences in the same areas from time to time which seems to suggest that the poor performance is resulting from the speed of the MS servers, especially as the decrreases seem to come at times when you would expect to see a high demand on them.

FlightSim 2024 1.5.26.0  9800X3D  RTX4070S  64GB DDR5 1 Gig Xfinity internet

I takeoff from a highly detailed airport, fly around the pattern twice and then fly five minutes away from the airport.  I then return to the airport and approach to land on same runway as taking off.  FPS varies between 55 and 60 (capped at 30 in sim with FG on) the entire time.

As I cross the threshold to land - FPS drops from 58 to 19 then to 10 then to 3 as I touch down.  

128 GB rolling cache on an NVMe drive dedicated to just that purpose.  CPU time per frame doubles but VRAM usage, including shared, does not change.  My network monitor shows NO network activity during the approach and landing.  NVMe monitor shows almost no activity on any of the three devices used by the sim.  

I shut down the sim and restart it.  This time I see 4 to 8 FPS sitting at the end of the runway waiting to take off.  Fly the same flight and FPS slowly climbs to 55 as I fly away from the airport.  But, this time landing, the FPS never drops below 45 and the CPU time per frame only shows a slight increase.

As the OP says - it is a roll of the dice to determine which performance model shows up when the sim starts.  Frustrating.  But, each BETA update is better than the last.  My flight yesterday in 1.5.26.0  was darn near perfect with only a slight hesitation landing at a very high resolution addon airport. 

26 minutes ago, cianpars said:

Could the better performance on the second test relate to the fact that you had the scenery in your rolling cache from the first test?

I am, along with quite a few others seeing performance differences in the same areas from time to time which seems to suggest that the poor performance is resulting from the speed of the MS servers, especially as the decrreases seem to come at times when you would expect to see a high demand on them.

Not likely. I had same the thought, but I had flown in same airport several times shortly before I did this test, so rolling cache would already have been updated before these 2 tests. 

36 minutes ago, Sky_Pilot071 said:

SU3 update is coming and could be related.

dd

Actually, the latest beta 3 update loaded today just before these flights.

14 minutes ago, TacomaSailor said:

My flight yesterday in 1.5.26.0  was darn near perfect with only a slight hesitation landing at a very high resolution addon airport. 

My flights today were after the latest Beta 3 update loaded today ☺️

28 minutes ago, TacomaSailor said:

FlightSim 2024 1.5.26.0  9800X3D  RTX4070S  64GB DDR5 1 Gig Xfinity internet

I takeoff from a highly detailed airport, fly around the pattern twice and then fly five minutes away from the airport.  I then return to the airport and approach to land on same runway as taking off.  FPS varies between 55 and 60 (capped at 30 in sim with FG on) the entire time.

As I cross the threshold to land - FPS drops from 58 to 19 then to 10 then to 3 as I touch down.  

128 GB rolling cache on an NVMe drive dedicated to just that purpose.  CPU time per frame doubles but VRAM usage, including shared, does not change.  My network monitor shows NO network activity during the approach and landing.  NVMe monitor shows almost no activity on any of the three devices used by the sim.  

I shut down the sim and restart it.  This time I see 4 to 8 FPS sitting at the end of the runway waiting to take off.  Fly the same flight and FPS slowly climbs to 55 as I fly away from the airport.  But, this time landing, the FPS never drops below 45 and the CPU time per frame only shows a slight increase.

As the OP says - it is a roll of the dice to determine which performance model shows up when the sim starts.  Frustrating.  But, each BETA update is better than the last.  My flight yesterday in 1.5.26.0  was darn near perfect with only a slight hesitation landing at a very high resolution addon airport. 

I'm sure you've tried already but delete the nvidia shader cache, set your '24 rolling cache to 0 save and apply then reset it to whatever you like.  

Those two things "seemed" to have cured that single digit FPS especially when on final to land for me personally... 

But that doesn't mean each flight won't be a cr*p shoot

Like you said frustrating indeed

5 hours ago, MauBen said:

Sometimes, it is just plain luck whether you have a great experience or whether you are ready to forget about ever flying again.

Can't relate to the extremes you're portraying.  I agree there is some variability but it's never that nasty at all.  I wonder why such a different experience.  I'm all Ultra but at 3440x and TLOD is often at 100 on the ground.  SU2 here and lately I've seen some performance fall off by about 15% which means I can drop below my preferred FPS-native of 50 down as low as 40 on rare occasion.  That didn't happen until VRAM was re-worked near as I can tell in the past few months.  Maybe SU3 improves this some I hope.  The Gsync display helps when that happens.  I may have a slight stutter as scenery loads around touchdown but the frame rate stays very steady even if below 50 in demanding scenarios in the most demanding planes.  

Edited August 17, 2025Aug 17 by Noel

7 hours ago, psolk said:

First flight's performance was so bad I shut down right after departure during climbout, rebooted

Are you using any USB controllers (throttle quad, flight yoke/stick, etc.)?

In the interest of balance and for anyone new to MSFS who might be put off by such tabloid headlines - MSFS 2024 is not infuriating and performance is actually remarkably stable and predictable for a such a predominantly streamed game. 

It has moments but those are extremely rare, in my full fibre experience. 

5 hours ago, St Mawgan said:

In the interest of balance and for anyone new to MSFS who might be put off by such tabloid headlines - MSFS 2024 is not infuriating and performance is actually remarkably stable and predictable for a such a predominantly streamed game. 

It has moments but those are extremely rare, in my full fibre experience. 

I concur. These emotional topic titles should have appended something like "for me" or "on my system".

Edited August 17, 2025Aug 17 by DavidP

14 hours ago, MauBen said:

Sometimes, it is just plain luck whether you have a great experience or whether you are ready to forget about ever flying again.

I’d never give up flight simming, but my once “love, love, love” relationship with MSFS 2024 has been tested enough that I’ve shifted to XP12 as my main sim. I still check in with MSFS regularly, but my patience with 2024 ran thin.

One of the main frustrations has been that I tried using autofps to improve LODs, since ground features were being culled far too close to the aircraft. On top of that, many developers haven’t fully embraced the new 2024 LOD system yet, which means aircraft models themselves sometimes get culled much too soon. Combined with ongoing sound crackling issues that often end in crashes, it became too much to overlook.

By contrast, XP12 has been running very smoothly for me — usually between 60–100 fps, with no sound problems at all. Autogen and airborne traffic also remain visible at any distance, which makes for a much more consistent experience.

What makes it frustrating is that plenty of others aren’t running into these issues in MSFS. Has anyone here had similar experiences, and if so, have you found any reliable workarounds?