MSFS installers insights.

[Firebird]

Yeah, a second hand 1080TI is what I am looking out for. I think that its the minimum.

[rocket_26_]

Yeah, a second hand 1080TI is what I am looking out for. I think that its the minimum.

Getting hold of cards is joke at the moment. I got mine back in Feb 18 when I had this PC built.


I also found when I went from 16 GB to 32 GB ram last year this made a big difference for P3D , DCS and FS2020.

[Firebird]

Thanks for the info, Ian.
Yes bitcoin miners have a lot to answer for, in regards to the short supply of graphics cards. I was trying to work out whether 32 GB of RAM was worth the money. I shall take what you said on board.

[rocket_26_]

Thanks for the info, Ian.
Yes bitcoin miners have a lot to answer for, in regards to the short supply of graphics cards. I was trying to work out whether 32 GB of RAM was worth the money. I shall take what you said on board.

Upgrading from 16 to 32 is relatively a cheap upgrade. I got CTD in the sim on high settings in some settings prior to the upgrade every now and again. Admittedly there have been a lot of updates since though. Mine are 3200mhz 8 GB sticks and are set to run at 3200mhz.Not sure how much difference that makes.

[Firebird]

I have had a couple of CTDs and my mate has had quite a few more. I have a bit of GPU overclock but he has some overclocking on everything.
Asobo/MS have said that overclock does cause CTDs. Now how much of that is the usual disclaimer and how much is truth I don't know. What I would say is that some overclocked a system that somebody did for me well over a decade ago and it worked perfectly, until I played FS9.
Most of the time it was fine but online flying caused it to CTD big time. I was also able to reproduce it consistently on a test flight in the DSB Hawk going from Brize Norton to Heathrow climbing to FL240 during the flight.

Eventually I de-clocked it and the flight went absolutely fine. So I do take the oc warnings seriously.

[John Young]

I had the same problem with FS9 with my previous PC and had to un-clock it. My new PC was ordered un-clocked.

John

[Firebird]

Not surprised, John.
It does seem to be the case that the FS games really push the envelope and if you have minced around with hardware settings that it can cause problems. I think it is one of those things that people don't think that it could be the case until you experience it yourself.

As I said the total proof for me was that I was able to reproduce the crash every single time I flew one profile. I can't think of a single other app that caused a crash on that PC.

Lesson learned. Never oc'd anything on the motherboard since. I think it boils down to the fact that if you really need to go faster - get a better processor.

[rocket_26_]

Not surprised, John.
It does seem to be the case that the FS games really push the envelope and if you have minced around with hardware settings that it can cause problems. I think it is one of those things that people don't think that it could be the case until you experience it yourself.

As I said the total proof for me was that I was able to reproduce the crash every single time I flew one profile. I can't think of a single other app that caused a crash on that PC.

Lesson learned. Never oc'd anything on the motherboard since. I think it boils down to the fact that if you really need to go faster - get a better processor.

My PC was built by PC Specialists. My Graphics card is stock clock. Ram is running DDR4 @ 3200 but they are 3200 sticks.

My processor was OC by them and I have a I7 8770K running all 6 cores @ 4.9 for the last three and half years no problem. They stress tested this though. I do have water cooling also. Also running a M.2 drive helps.

My CTD from FS2020 when having the FPS counter open, the ram usage was getting near 16GB and when it hit that it CTD. It took high settings and a dense area such as London for that. Now having 32GB it never gets close.

[Firebird]

Once again useful info, Ian.

[Firebird]

OK an update from Asobo on the performance.
Coming at the end of July with SU5 is a graphics performance jump of between 50-60%. This will also come with less CPU usage, more GPU usage and less memory usage. Sounds amazing. I will post here the difference it makes to my system when I get the upgrade.

[Firebird]

Still a couple of days until SU5 is out but I have had a play around with settings and found a couple of things that I think is worth passing on.
Firstly the last two monthly Windows 10 updates have included something that increases the performance of some games. It is not more specific than that but MSFS is definitely one that benefits. My friend now regularly gets around 50 fps with his GTX 1080 Ti.

I also found that having V-sync on in game limited the runaway graphics processing in the main menu but I did read that it reduces fps a little. So I followed a tip and in my Nvidia Control Panel I created a separate Program Settings page and made two two changes to the settings there. I set Low Latency to on - this means that the GPU only prepares one frame in advance of being needed and the second was to set the Max Frame Rate to 20 FPS. I ensured that Vertical Sync was set to Use the 3D application setting and then switched V-Sync off in game.

These changes alongside the MS Windows improvements have meant that I have since been able set the Graphics setting in game to High. You definitely notice the improvement in visuals.
Due to the second windows perf update I was able to set the Max Frame Rate to 24 and most time it stays there. I do get 24fps at my test field Northolt but it does go down to 18fps depending on what is going on at Heathrow when i get airborne for my test circuit.

So in essence I now get 18-24 fps there at High whereas I used to get 12-16 fps at Medium when I first installed. Not bad for quite a low spec card, by todays standards.
I now have set my Max Frame Rate to 30 in preparation for the SU5 update. This will allegedly give up to 60% improvement in fps. If I can get to a constant 30 fps in Ultra with the GTX 970 then I will be happy. Will update with my findings after the update.

[Firebird]

OK whilst i am testing an fde I shall try to pen my findings on the SU5 update.

When you install it you will find that your version number goes to 1.18.13.0. The update on its own is 40GB.
Has it delivered on the performance promise? Well if you answer yes or no then the answer is yes.

I had been mincing around with my set framerate before the update through the Nvidia Control panel and found that if i set it to 24 then Northolt could reach 24fps with basically high settings. It did go down as low as 18 depending on what was happening at Heathrow at the time. but generally kept within 21-24.

After the update I found set the framerate to 30 fps and found that by and large it stayed at 30fps in game throughout. It did occasionally drop a couple but nothing that you would write home about. So in a couple of months I had gone from 14-16 fps in medium to 30 fps in high at Northolt. A bit of a jump I think that most will agree.

Before SU5 fps in cockpit were very noticeably lower than when viewing from outside. Now the fps is higher inside than out. What we think is different is that they used to render the world and then the aircraft in it. When you went inside you had the glass cockpit instruments needing to be rendered as well and this cause the reduction. What we think now is that they render the aircraft and then the part of the world that you can see. So you can see less of the world from inside so better fps.
Probably a bit simplistic but also probably not far from the truth.

Any downsides? Yes, there were a lot of users that were getting CTDs when loading in the menu and in game. I didn't suffer from them myself but then again I don't overclock any more. It was so bad that a hotfix came out the day after that fixed a lot of those. The version is now bumped to 1.18.14.0 .
I read this morning that there is another hotfic due out tomorrow or monday to fix more CTDs, and some graphics bugs introduced to fix issues with trees (including low resolution ground textures).

So everything is better for me? Not quite. A massive bug was introduced, that has not been addressed yet, that seems to manifest itself around major airports. For me I found initially that when i went into game at Northolt the loading screen hung at just over 50%. Couldn't cancel it, couldn't take a screenshot for MS, nothing to do but kill it.
I spent 12 hrs testing various things and eventually found out that the bug centred on Heathrow and Gatwick and the airfields closest to them, so Northolt for Heathrow and Redhill for Gatwick - at least.
I found that London City would load fine. The weird thing is that once you go to EGLC you can then go back to the World Map and go to Northolt etc absolutely fine.

I wondered if it was only those two. i knew that Denver covered a large area so tried there and the same thing happened. I have raised a report with MS. What I found was that when loading the GPU usage went to 100% briefly and then the CPU dropped below 2% and the GPU went to 0% and the memory usage stayed the same.
It can't be the airport scenery itself or you wouldn't be able to load it at all. There seems to be an graphics initialisation procedure which requests more GPU memory than there is available and it then sits and waits for the request to be fulfilled. I am summising but it fits what i see.
Also my friend has the same spec PC to me but has a GTX 1080 ti with 11GB of GPU memory and does not get the issue at all.

Before anybody asks yes, I did a complete uninstall and reinstall and the problem did not improve.

For anybody that is interested in installing the game the current clean installation and applying all the updates took 7hrs. The speed is determined by your internet download speed. I have 72MB/s and the download routinely ran at 70MB/s+.
On the day of the update the 40GB took me 9hrs as at times the download speed fell to 0.09MB/s.

The safety tip here is do not install, re-install or even update within 24hrs of an upgrade coming out - if you are time conscious.

Hope all this helps.

Oh yes. One final thought. Aerosoft do not understand the phrase 'patch'. They have made an airfield available for free in game. It is for Paderborn (EDLP). The issue is that the download is just over 17GB in size! When I was watching the re-install packages come down is that the airfield is actually 3.5GB on disk. What I found is that that they have patched it 4x since the original release. Trouble is that the original and each patch is 3.5GB! So you are basically loading a complete version over the top rather than a patch to amend what you have installed.
It is bad enough for me with a 72MB download speed but what a senseless waste of bandwidth for others with less than mine.

[TimC340]

I had that with Paderborn too! In fact, the entire update to SU5 and associated addons was over 120Gb! I noticed absolutely no difference in performance afterwards, but I haven't been measuring it and I use MSFS so rarely that it's a bit moot.

[Firebird]

Tim, your system must be pretty high performance if you didn't notice any difference.

In total over those 3 days, I downloaded 40GB initially plus 31GB in updates. Then for the reinstall I downloaded 128Gb plus the 31GB again. How anybody operating on a non-unlimited data contract is supposed to survive this is a complete mystery.

As there is no news this morning I am guessing that hotfix 2 will be Monday now.

[Firebird]

OK hotfix 2, 1.18.15.0 came out without any announcement late last night.
It didn't fix my hanging issue, but I would not have been that lucky, but there is definitely some extra grunt on the graphics as in my test flight this a.m. the fps dropped a bit and the GPU use percentage increased.

London City reached 25 fps and Northolt did hit 30 fps on the ground but could not hold that in the air - between 25-30.

So I would say that they have improved the graphics for a small drop in fps which most people will go with.

[TimC340]

Well, that was a faff. Start MSFS - 'go to Microsoft Store for an update'. It takes forever to find out how to download an update from the store. Download and install (it's only a couple hundred Mb), restart the program - now it wants to install another update (just 304kb!!). WTF? Why can't updates be simple? Anyway, again no discernible difference. I'm on very high graphics settings with about 60fps, so no complaints there. I don't like the HDR graphics on MSFS any more than I do on P3D; I think it makes the world look like a cartoon.

[Firebird]

For me the thing I don't like about the updates is that they can be in 3 areas.
One, game updates in MS Store. Two, In game Marketplace for addons and scenery. Three, Content Manager (under your Profile!?) for updates to addons.

This is the simplest and most streamlined way that they could think of?

[TimC340]

I discovered that the last major update somehow invalidated the content from three of the previous updates - or there's been a significant change that demanded a reload - so they had to be updated again, which is why my SU5 update download total was so large. It does feel like the size of the program is getting away from them.

[Firebird]

Not really about the game itself but useful info nonetheless for readers here.

Two days ago, Sony announced that the release date of the Top Gun 2 movie was put back until May 22 - due to the dramatic rise of COVID cases in the US. It occurred to me that the MSFS Top Gun add-on with Hornets and Carriers and the like would also get delayed as there had to be a tie-up.

This morning it has been confirmed by MS that the Top Gun add-on is delayed TFN.

[Firebird]

OK today I got some comms from the MSFS Support team about my issue of the game hanging when you select some airfields as start points.
It has taken two months but somebody has finally read what I wrote that the issue was and not assumed what it was. I suggested that the issue seemed to be either an graphics initialization problem or that the minimum spec for the GPU had been raised.

It seems that I was right. According to the MS Store, today, the minimum spec is a GTX770 and the recommended is a GTX 970 (which is what I have got).
What was relayed to me is that the minimum spec is a GTX 1050 Ti. That is a hell of a leap and I said that this needs to be published. Not least for them to avoid investigating issues that are related to GPUs below minimum.

So if you were leaning towards getting the game this what you now need. The thing is that the 970 is actually almost 50% better in performance so it must be that you need to have GeForce 10 series architecture at least.
They didn't say what the recommended was but I would say that a GTX 1080 ti really must be the min for that.