Summary [HOW-TO] Graphics Settings and Performance Guide (SU12 Update) (7/26/2023) - Microsoft Flight Simulator / Community Guides - Microsoft Flight Simulator Forums forums.flightsimulator.com
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This text provides a comprehensive guide for optimizing graphics settings and analyzing performance in Microsoft Flight Simulator, offering users valuable insights on CPU/GPU impact and recommended system specifications.
Slides
Slide Presentation (13 slides)
Key Points
- Render Scaling controls the internal rendering resolution of the simulator and has no measurable impact on CPU performance.
- DX12 is less stable than DX11 and consumes more RAM and VRAM, but can increase performance in certain hardware combinations.
- Volumetric Clouds settings have no measurable impact on CPU performance and the recommended settings are High or Ultra.
- Adjusting various graphics settings can optimize performance in a GPU bottlenecked scenario.
- Ambient Occlusion settings have no measurable impact on CPU performance and higher settings result in a reduction in FPS.
- The recommended settings for buildings are Medium for low-end systems and Ultra for high-end systems.
- Bloom adds a blur effect to bright areas and motion blur intensity increases with higher settings.
Summaries
27 word summary
A guide for Microsoft Flight Simulator graphics settings and performance analysis, helping users make quality decisions while considering CPU/GPU impact. Includes system specifications and optimal settings recommendations.
43 word summary
This is a graphics settings and performance guide for Microsoft Flight Simulator. It provides an analysis of each graphics setting's visual and performance impact, helping users make decisions on quality versus CPU/GPU impact. The guide includes system specifications and recommendations for optimal settings.
450 word summary
This is a guide that provides a detailed analysis of the graphics settings in Microsoft Flight Simulator and their impact on performance. The guide aims to help users make decisions on visual quality versus CPU/GPU impact. The analysis is based on testing with specific system specifications
Render Scaling controls the internal rendering resolution of the simulator, with higher settings increasing the amount of color samples for each pixel. It has no measurable impact on CPU performance, but under a GPU bottlenecked scenario, the impact on GPU performance varies depending on your
DX12 is less stable than DX11 and consumes more RAM and VRAM. It can increase performance in certain hardware combinations, but the implementation of FSR2 is broken and there is extra performance overhead compared to TAAU. Under a CPU bottleneck
Volumetric Clouds: - Settings: Low, Medium, High, Ultra - Recommended Setting: High (mid range), Ultra (High end) - Performance Impact: No measurable impact on CPU performance - Visual Impact: Controls cloud resolution,
In a GPU bottlenecked scenario, the graphics settings and performance guide for Microsoft Flight Simulator recommends adjusting various settings to optimize performance. For ambient occlusion, turning it off reduces FPS by 2.60%, while higher settings increase the amount of ambient oc
This excerpt is a compilation of various topics related to graphics settings and performance in Microsoft Flight Simulator. The topics discussed include FPS impact, VR performance, limited main thread issues, GPU limitations, CPU bugs, hardware limitations, optimal settings, reflections, resolution distance
This is a summary of a graphics settings and performance guide for Microsoft Flight Simulator. The guide provides an analysis of each graphics setting's visual and performance impact, helping users make decisions on visual quality versus CPU/GPU impact. The guide includes system specifications,
In terms of graphics settings and performance in Microsoft Flight Simulator, the following observations were made under a GPU bottlenecked scenario: Ultra Performance (33% resolution) resulted in 147.1 FPS, Performance (50% resolution) resulted in 128.
Buildings: The recommended settings for buildings are Medium for low-end systems and Ultra for high-end systems. The performance impact is a reduction in FPS, with Low giving the highest FPS and Ultra giving the lowest. Increasing the settings increases the number of visible
Ambient Occlusion settings have no measurable impact on CPU performance. Under a GPU bottlenecked scenario, higher settings result in a reduction in FPS. The visual impact of ambient occlusion increases with higher settings, with more severe ghosting/artifacts on lower
The graphics settings and performance guide for Microsoft Flight Simulator's SU12 update provides recommendations and information on various settings. Bloom adds a blur effect to bright areas, while depth of field is only visible in certain camera views. Motion blur intensity increases with higher settings
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\[HOW-TO\] Graphics Settings and Performance
Guide (SU12 Update) (7/26/2023) - Microsoft Flight Simulator / Community
Guides - Microsoft Flight Simulator Forums
Microsoft Flight Simulator Forums
[HOW-TO] Graphics Settings and Performance Guide (SU12 Update) (7/26/2023)
Microsoft Flight Simulator
Community Guides
advanced-guides
TheOriginalBabu
August 18, 2020, 9:26pm
Here is a detailed analysis of each graphics settings visual and performance impact.
This guide is supposed to help you make decisions on visual impact versus CPU / GPU impact in the simulator.
Note that situational and hardware differences results can result different performance responses to individual settings,
System Specifications:
i9 9900k, @ 4.9 GHZ OC
Hyperthreading Enabled
32GB of 3600MHZ 18-20-20-36 DDR4 RAM
RTX 3080 at 1980 / 10251 MHZ @ 1011v
Windows 11 22H2 build 22621.1992
Nvidia drivers 536.40 with HAGS On.
2560x1440 165hz FreeSync Monitor (G-Sync enabled)
MSFS Client + Packages + Cache installed on SSDs.
Methodology and Scenarios
Testing Methodology:
Tested on Sim Update 12 build 1.33.8.0 with all available World Updates
Overall frametime, GPU usage and VRAM usage are monitored through MSI Afterburner / Rivatuner Statistics Server, and Devmode FPS charts.
If a setting seemingly requires a restart to take effect, a standardized position will be used
CPU / GPU dependency of a setting is determined by contrasting the performance difference across settings in both CPU bottlenecked scenarios and GPU bottlenecked scenarios.
Testing Scenario:
Multiplayer: Off (Group Only)
Air Traffic: Off
Weather & Time: Custom, few clouds 12 PM
Camera angles kept static per each graphic setting
Testing locations vary between graphics settings
Test Settings:
Please note that the settings below are not meant to be copied and are only meant as a point of reference for testing. Scroll down to Settings Analysis for recommended settings.
GPU Bottlenecking Test Settings (Baseline):
GRAPHICS
Display Mode: Fullscreen
Full Screen Resolution: 2560X1440
Anti Aliasing: TAA
Render Scaling: 150 (Render Resolution: 3840x2160)
FidelityFX Sharpening: 100
V-Sync: Off
Nvidia Reflex Low Latency: Off
Frame Rate Limit: Grayed out / disabled
HDR10: Grayed out / disabled
Global Rendering Quality: Custom
DirectX Version: DX11
Advanced Settings
Terrain Level of Detail: 100
Off Screen Terrain Pre-Caching: Ultra
Terrain Vector Data: Ultra
Buildings: Ultra
Trees: Ultra
Grass and Bushes: Ultra
Objects Level of Detail: 100
Volumetric Clouds: Ultra
Texture Resolution: Ultra
Anisotropic Filtering: 16x
Texture Supersampling: 8x8
Texture Synthesis: Ultra
Water Waves: High
Shadow Maps: 2048
Terrain Shadows: 1024
Contact Shadows: Ultra
Windshield Effects: Ultra
Ambient Occlusion: Ultra
Cubemap Reflections: 256
Raymarched Reflections: Ultra
Light Shafts: Ultra
Bloom: On
Depth of Field: Ultra
Motion Blur: Off
Lens Correction: Off
Lens Flare: On
Glass Cockpit Refresh Rate: Medium
TRAFFIC
Aviation Traffic
Aircraft Traffic Type: Off
AI Airliners Traffic Density: 0 (grayed-out)
AI General Aviation Traffic Density: 0 (grayed-out)
Show Traffic Nameplates: On
Airport Life
Airport Vehicle Density: 50
Ground Aircraft Density: 50
Worker Density: 50
Land and Sea Traffic
Leisure Boats: 10
Road Vehicles: 10
Ships and Ferries: 20
Fauna Density: 20
AI & Multiplayer Traffic Detail
Use Generic Plane Models (AI Traffic): On
Use Generic Plane Models (Multiplayer): Off
Show Multiplayer Aircraft in Close Proximity: On
Traffic Variety: Ultra
DATA
Data Connection
Online Functionality: On
Bing Data World Graphics: On
Photogrammetry: On
Live Real-World Air Traffic: On
Live Weather: On
Multiplayer: On
Data Bandwith Usage Limit
Bandwidth: Unlimited
Rolling Cache Settings
Rolling Cache: On
Rolling Cache Limit (GIB): 8
CPU Bottlenecking Test Settings:
Based on GPU limited settings with following changes:
GRAPHICS
Advanced Settings
Render Scaling: 30
Foreword:
Fullscreen typically nets you the lowest performance loss
V-Sync is recommended to be disabled unless you can constantly maintain the same framerate as your display refresh rate, otherwise there will be frame pacing issues.
Suggested to force V-Sync via graphics driver instead of using sim implementation
Some settings were benchmarked at larger increments to save time.
Always set Full Screen Resolution to your native monitor resolution, and tweak rendering resolution with the Render Scaling slider. This ensures lowest input lag, and the UI will be as sharp as possible.
Settings Analysis
(right click > view image in new tab, in order to full screen and see effects in full detail)
* - indicates that testing is incomplete
Graphics
Anti Aliasing
Off
Off
19201080 159 KB
FXAA
FXAA
19201080 153 KB
DLAA
DLAA
19201080 151 KB
TAA
TAA
19201080 151 KB
Recommended Setting: TAA
Performance Impact:
No measurable impact on CPU performance.
Under a GPU bottlenecked scenario,
Off gives 59.9 FPS
FXAA gives 59.1 FPS (1.34% reduction)
DLAA gives 58.5 FPS (2.34% reduction)
TAA gives 58.3 FPS (2.67% reduction)
Visual Impact:
Geometry aliasing is visible in motion on Off, FXAA, and DLAA, which is not present in TAA.
TAA helps denoise Ambient Occlusion, Volumetric Clouds, and Raymarched Reflections, but blurs the image slightly and can add motion artifacts.
Running <100 Render Scaling with TAA enabled reconstructs the image to native resolution, netting the performance impact that would come with a lower resolution but the image quality similar to a higher resolution. This can be considered visually similar to FSR2.
Render Scaling
50
50
19201080 132 KB
75
75
19201080 145 KB
100
100
19201080 151 KB
125
125
19201080 154 KB
150
150
19201080 156 KB
175
175
19201080 156 KB
200
200
19201080 156 KB
Recommended Setting: >=100
Performance Impact:
No measurable impact on CPU performance.
Under a GPU bottlenecked scenario,
Impact to GPU performance is highly subjective to your own graphics cards scaling behaviour.
50 gave 135.1 FPS
75 gave 109.9 FPS (18.65% reduction)
100 gave 88.5 FPS (34.49% reduction)
125 gave 66.7 FPS (50.63% reduction)
150 gave 51.3 FPS (62.03% reduction)
175 gave 40.7 FPS (69.87% reduction)
200 gave 32.8 FPS (75.72% reduction)
Visual Impact:
Controls the internal rendering resolution of the sim. Higher settings increases the amount of color samples for each final pixel.
Reflections, Ambient Occlusion, and Contact Shadows also scale with resolution.
Nvidia DLSS Upscaling
Ultra Performance
Ultraperf
19201080 131 KB
Performance
Perf
19201080 139 KB
Balanced
Balanced
19201080 143 KB
Quality
Quality
19201080 145 KB
DLAA
DLAA
19201080 151 KB
TAA
TAA
19201080 149 KB
Recommended Setting: Disabled
Performance Impact:
No measurable impact on CPU performance.
Under a GPU bottlenecked scenario,
Ultra Performance (33% resolution) gave 147.1 FPS
Performance (50% resolution) gave 128.2 FPS (12.85% reduction)
Balanced (58% resolution) gave 120.5 FPS (18.08% reduction)
Quality (67% resolution) gave 111.1 FPS (24.47% reduction)
DLAA (100% resolution) gave 84.8 FPS (42.35% reduction)
TAA (100% resolution) gave 87.7 FPS (40.38% reduction)
Visual Impact:
Higher DLSS options increases the internal rendering resolution of the sim that DLSS upscales from.
DLSS does not properly mask glass cockpit instruments and causes them to be unusable in many cases. The same is also true for FSR2.
AMD FidelityFX Sharpening
19201080 87 KB
100
100
19201080 97.3 KB
200
200
19201080 102 KB
Recommended setting: User Preference
Performance Impact:
No measurable impact on CPU performance.
Under a GPU bottlenecked scenario,
Off gave 51.5 FPS
On (100) gave 51.3 FPS (0.39% reduction)
Visual Impact:
Sharpens textures without inducing as much edge aliasing or sharpening halos as a traditional sharpening algorithm.
Nvidia Reflex Low Latency
Recommended Setting: On
Performance Impact:
No measurable impact when CPU bottlenecked
Under a GPU bottlenecked scenario,
Off gave 58.4 FPS
On gave 56.8 FPS (2.74% reduction)
Whenever GPU bottlenecked in a 3d application, input lag increases tremendously regardless of framerate (minimum of one frame).
Nvidia Reflex Low Latency simply forces the CPU to always be
ever
so slightly slower at processing a frame than the GPU, artifically introducing a slight CPU bottleneck. It can be interpreted as a dynamic FPS cap that engages slightly below your GPUs potential FPS.
Ensures consistent input latency regardless of GPU load, but can induce slight stuttering.
Has no effect when CPU bottlenecked.
Visual Impact:
No visual impact
DirectX Version
Do you need DX12?
Credit to
@avaritiax4034
for the flowchart.
DX11
DX11
19201080 111 KB
DX12
dx12
19201080 117 KB
Recommended Setting: DX11
Performance Impact:
DX12 is less stable than DX11, and also consumes more RAM and VRAM.
DX12
can
increase performance in certain hardware combinations - though Ive yet to see any (maybe Intel ARC?)
DX12 facilitates and enables use of FSR2 (though implementation is broken, and has extra performance overhead of both DX12 and upscaling compared to TAAU).
DX12 facilitates and enables use of DLSS Frame Generation (though this doesnt work great at lower framerates).
Under a CPU bottlenecked scenario,
DX11 gave 49 FPS
DX12 gave 47.5 FPS (3.06% reduction)
Under a GPU bottlenecked scenario,
DX11 gave 56.2 FPS
DX12 gave 50.3 FPS (10.5% reduction)
Visual Impact:
None
Terrain Level Of Detail
Photogrammetry:
10
10
19201080 299 KB
50
50
19201080 320 KB
100
100
19201080 326 KB
200
200
19201080 331 KB
300
300
19201080 333 KB
400
400
19201080 333 KB
Autogen
10
10
19201080 311 KB
50
50
19201080 323 KB
100
100
19201080 327 KB
200
200
19201080 328 KB
300
300
19201080 329 KB
400
400
19201080 329 KB
Recommended Setting: 100
Performance Impact:
This setting impacts both CPU and GPU performance as it is increased. It also increase RAM usage.
Under a CPU bottlenecked scenario,
10 gave 145.8 FPS
50 gave 124.5 FPS (14.61% reduction)
100 gave 107.2 FPS (26.47% reduction)
200 gave 81.3 FPS (44.24% reduction)
300 gave 68.2 FPS (53.22% reduction)
400 gave 57.8 FPS (60.36% reduction)
Under a GPU bottlenecked scenario,
10 gave 71.4 FPS
50 gave 65.8 FPS (7.84% reduction)
100 gave 62.5 FPS (12.46% reduction)
200 gave 58.8 FPS (17.65% reduction)
300 gave 54.9 FPS (23.11% reduction)
400 gave 52.6 FPS (26.33% reduction)
Visual Impact:
Increases draw distance and LOD of trees, terrain, autogen, and photogrammetry.
Linear quality increase up to 100, but going past 100 leads to lower framerates with smaller visual impact.
Off Screen Terrain Pre-Caching
Off
Off
19201080 104 KB
Ultra
Ultra
43201440 354 KB
Recommended Setting: User Preference
Performance Impact:
This setting reduces the average CPU framerate, but reduces stutters by pre-caching terrain that is not visible on screen yet.
Results in a smooother and more consistent experience.
No measurable impact on GPU performance.
Under a CPU bottlenecked scenario,
Low gave 119.4 FPS
Medium gave 114.7 FPS (3.94% reduction)
High gave 112.7 FPS (5.61% reduction)
Ultra gave 109.2 FPS (8.54% reduction)
Visual Impact:
No visual impact
Terrain Vector Data*
Recommended Setting: Ultra
No measurable visual impact, in a variety of different test scenarios.
No measurable performance impact to CPU or GPU, in a variety of different test scenarios.
Unsure what this does.
Buildings
Low
Low
19201080 286 KB
Medium
Medium
19201080 296 KB
High
High
19201080 297 KB
Ultra
Ultra
19201080 297 KB
Recommended Setting: Medium (low end), Ultra (high end)
Performance Impact:
Under a CPU bottlenecked scenario,
Low gave 108.7 FPS
Medium gave 105.8 FPS (2.67% reduction)
High gave 102.8 FPS (5.43% reduction)
Ultra gave 100.1 FPS (7.91% reduction)
Under a GPU bottlenecked scenario,
Low gave 54.6 FPS
Medium gave 53.3 FPS (2.38% reduction)
High gave 51.8 FPS (5.13% reduction)
Ultra gave 48.8 FPS (10.62% reduction)
Visual Impact:
Main impact on synthesized buildings.
Increases LOD and complexity of buildings
More buildings visible at distance at higher settings
Trees
Low
Low
19201080 305 KB
Medium
Medium
19201080 266 KB
High
High
19201080 265 KB
Ultra
Ultra
19201080 264 KB
Recommended Setting: Ultra
Performance Impact:
No impact on CPU performance
Under a GPU bottlenecked scenario,
Low gave 52.6 FPS
Medium gave 50 FPS (4.94% reduction)
High gave 49.3 FPS (6.27% reduction)
Ultra gave 48.8 FPS (7.22% reduction)
Visual Impact:
Higher settings increase draw distance
Higher settings increases density and shading quality
Will have a larger impact in more forested areas
Grass and Bushes
Off
Off
19201080 243 KB
Low
Low
19201080 254 KB
Medium
Medium
19201080 255 KB
High
High
19201080 252 KB
Ultra
Ultra
19201080 246 KB
Recommended Setting: High
Performance Impact:
No measurable impact to CPU performance
Under a GPU bottlenecked scenario,
Off gave 69.4 FPS,
Low gave 68.5 FPS (1.30% reduction)
Medium gave 67.7 FPS (2.45% reduction)
High gave 66.7 FPS (3.89% reduction)
Ultra gave 64.5 FPS (7.06% reduction)
Visual Impact:
Controls density and draw distance of 2d grass sprites.
Objects Level of Detail
10
10
19201080 227 KB
50
50
19201080 232 KB
100
100
19201080 232 KB
150
150
19201080 232 KB
200
200
19201080 232 KB
Recommended Setting: 100
Performance Impact:
Increases RAM usage with higher settings
Under a CPU bottlenecked scenario,
10 gave 92.5 FPS
50 gave 89.9 FPS (2.81% reduction)
100 gave 89.5 FPS (3.24% reduction)
150 gave 88.5 FPS (4.32% reduction)
200 gave 86.8 FPS (6.16% reduction)
Under a GPU bottlenecked scenario,
10 gave 65.8 FPS
50 gave 65.4 FPS (0.61% reduction)
100 gave 65.3 FPS (0.76% reduction)
150 gave 65.3 FPS (0.76% reduction)
200 gave 65.3 FPS (0.76% reduction)
Visual Impact:
Controls render distance of the LODS of various objects in the world, such as traffic cars, airport buildings, and planes.
Volumetric Clouds
Low
Low
19201080 59.8 KB
Medium
Medium
19201080 118 KB
High
High
19201080 154 KB
Ultra
Ultra
19201080 164 KB
Recommended Setting: High (mid range), Ultra (High end)
Performance Impact:
No measurable impact to CPU performance.
Under a GPU bottlenecked scenario,
Low gave 69.4 FPS
Medium gave 64.1 FPS (7.64% reduction)
High gave 58.5 FPS (15.75% reduction)
Ultra gave 51.3 FPS (26.08% reduction)
Visual Impact:
Controls cloud resolution
Anything below high looks like mashed potatoes
Texture Resolution
Low
Low
19201080 120 KB
Medium
Medium
19201080 130 KB
High
High
19201080 138 KB
Ultra
Ultra
19201080 149 KB
Recommended Setting: Ultra
Performance Impact:
No measurable impact to CPU performance
Under a GPU bottlenecked scenario,
Low gave 62.5 FPS and consumed 4251MB of VRAM
Ultra gave 61.7 FPS (1.28% reduction) and consumed 5127MB of VRAM (+876MB)
Visual Impact:
Controls resolution of loaded textures.
Also adjusts resolution of PBR textures accordingly (AO Maps, Normal maps, etc)
Anisotropic Filtering
Off
Off
19201080 94 KB
2x
2x
19201080 94.9 KB
4x
4x
19201080 96.5 KB
8x
8x
19201080 98.8 KB
16x
16x
19201080 101 KB
Recommended Setting: 16x
Performance Impact:
No measurable impact to CPU performance
Under a GPU bottlenecked scenario,
Off gave 62.2 FPS
2x gave 61.7 FPS (0.8% reduction)
4x gave 61.3 FPS (1.45% reduction)
8x gave 60.2 FPS (3.22% reduction)
16x gave 59.5 FPS (4.34% reduction)
Performance impact will lessen with higher GPU memory bandwidth.
Visual Impact:
Removes some of the texture blur caused by mipmapping.
Provides noticeable increases to quality up to 16x
Texture Supersampling
Off
Off
19201080 106 KB
2x2
2x2
19201080 105 KB
4x4
4x4
19201080 106 KB
6x6
6x6
19201080 106 KB
8x8
8x8
19201080 105 KB
Recommended Setting: 6x6
Performance Impact:
No measurable impact to CPU performance
Under a GPU bottlenecked scenario,
Off gave 60.8 FPS
2X2 gave 60.8 FPS (0% reduction)
4X4 gave 60.6 FPS (0.33% reduction)
6X6 gave 60.2 FPS (0.99% reduction)
8X8 gave 59.5 FPS (2.14% reduction)
Visual Impact:
Decreases blurriness of textures when viewed at a distance and at extreme angles.
Similar to anisotropic filtering.
Texture Synthesis*
Recommended Setting: Ultra
Controls quality of texture synthesis in areas without Bing data.
Irrelevant for most flights as Bing coverage is plentiful
Water Waves
Low
Low
19201080 37.8 KB
Medium
Medium
19201080 52.9 KB
High
High
19201080 119 KB
Recommended Setting: Medium
Performance Impact:
No measurable impact to CPU performance
Under a GPU bottlenecked scenario,
Low gave 66.7 FPS
Medium gave 65.8 FPS (1.35% reduction)
High gave 61.7 FPS (7.5% reduction)
Visual Impact:
Waves become more detailed as setting is increased
Shadow Maps
768
768
19201080 129 KB
1024
1024
19201080 130 KB
1536
1536
19201080 130 KB
2048
2048
19201080 129 KB
768
768
19201080 103 KB
1024
1024
19201080 102 KB
1536
1536
19201080 101 KB
2048
2048
19201080 101 KB
Recommended Setting: 2048
Performance Impact:
No measurable impact to CPU performance
Under a GPU bottlenecked scenario,
768, 1024 and 1536 gave 59.5FPS
2048 gave 59 FPS (0.84% reduction)
Visual Impact:
Shadows get sharper and cover more details as setting increases
Even the maximum option of 2048 seems rather low compared to shadowmaps in most other modern games
Terrain Shadows
Off
Off
19201080 266 KB
128
128
19201080 259 KB
256
256
19201080 248 KB
512
512
19201080 237 KB
1024
1024
19201080 229 KB
2048
2048
19201080 224 KB
Recommended Setting: 1024
Performance Impact:
No impact on CPU performance.
Under a GPU bottlenecked scenario,
Off gave 61 FPS
128 gave 60.8 FPS (0.33% reduction)
256 gave 60.6 FPS (0.66% reduction)
512 gave 60.2 FPS (1.31% reduction)
1024 gave 59.5 FPS (2.46% reduction)
2048 gave 55.2 FPS (9.51% reduction)
Visual Impact:
The shadow sharpness and accuracy increases as the setting increases.
(The screenshots were taken with very similar sun positions)
Contact Shadows
Off
Off
19201080 329 KB
Low
Low
19201080 362 KB
Medium
Medium
19201080 359 KB
High
High
19201080 355 KB
Ultra
Ultra
19201080 353 KB
Recommended Setting: Ultra
Performance Impact:
No measurable impact on CPU performance
Under a GPU bottlenecked scenario,
Off gave 62.5 FPS
Low gave 60.6 FPS (3.04% reduction)
Medium gave 60.3 FPS (3.52% reduction)
High gave 60.2 FPS (3.68% reduction)
Ultra gave 59.9 FPS (4.16% reduction)
Visual Impact:
Trees and grass get 2D SSRT shadowing when enabled
Quality / Amount of shadowing increases with higher settings
Windshield Effects
Low
Low
19201080 100 KB
Medium
Medium
19201080 101 KB
High
High
19201080 111 KB
Ultra
Ultra
19201080 112 KB
Recommended Setting: High
Performance Impact:
No impact on CPU performance.
Under a GPU bottlenecked scenario,
Low gave 58.1 FPS
Medium gave 57.1 FPS (1.72% reduction)
High gave 56.8 FPS (2.24% reduction)
Ultra gave 54.1 FPS (6.88% reduction)
Visual Impact:
Raindrops become more dense and smaller at higher settings.
Low seemingly renders no raindrops on windshield.
Ultra adds SSRT reflections to windshield.
Ambient Occlusion
Off
Off
19201080 213 KB
Low
Low
19201080 212 KB
Medium
Medium
19201080 212 KB
High
High
19201080 212 KB
Ultra
Ultra
19201080 212 KB
Off
Off
19201080 144 KB
Low
Low
19201080 145 KB
Medium
Medium
19201080 144 KB
High
High
19201080 143 KB
Ultra
Ultra
19201080 143 KB
Recommended Setting: High
Performance Impact:
No measurable impact on CPU performance.
Under a GPU bottlenecked scenario,
Off gave 65.4 FPS
Low gave 63.7 FPS (2.60% reduction)
Medium gave 63.3 FPS (3.21% reduction)
High gave 62.1 FPS (5.05% reduction)
Ultra gave 59.9 FPS (8.41% reduction)
Visual Impact:
No ambient occlusion is present at off setting.
Resolution increases at higher settings.
The amount of ambient occlusion increases at higher settings.
Ghosting / Artifacts more severe on lower settings.
Ghosting / Artifacts decreased with TAA.
Scales with rendering resolution.
Cubemap Reflections
96
96
19201080 63.1 KB
128
128
19201080 64.5 KB
192
192
19201080 65.8 KB
256
256
19201080 66.5 KB
Recommended Setting: 256
Performance Impact:
No measurable impact on CPU performance
Under a GPU bottlenecked scenario,
96 gave 70.4 FPS
128 gave 70.2 FPS (0.28% reduction)
192 gave 69.7 FPS (0.99% reduction)
256 gave 69.4 FPS (1.42% reduction)
Visual Impact:
Resolution of cubemap reflections increases with higher settings.
Cubemap reflections are used for reflections of objects that are not on screen.
Raymarched Reflections
Off
Off
19201080 87 KB
Low
Low
19201080 93.1 KB
Medium
Medium
19201080 94.4 KB
High
High
19201080 95.4 KB
Ultra
Ultra
19201080 96.1 KB
Recommended Setting: High
Performance Impact:
No measurable impact to CPU performance
Under a GPU bottlenecked scenario,
Off gave 73.5 FPS
Low gave 68.5 FPS (6.8% reduction)
Medium gave 67.6 FPS (8.03% reduction)
High gave 64.9 FPS (11.7% reduction)
Ultra gave 61 FPS (17.01% reduction)
Visual Impact:
No screen-space reflections are visible when setting is turned off.
Reflections artifact at lower settings.
Resolution increases with higher settings.
Reflection length also increases with higher settings.
Reflection resolution / quality scales with rendering resolution.
Light Shafts
Off
Off
19201080 48.7 KB
Low
Low
19201080 40.5 KB
Medium
Medium
19201080 40.4 KB
High
High
19201080 40.5 KB
Ultra
Ultra
19201080 40.5 KB
Recommended Setting: Ultra
Performance Impact:
No impact to CPU performance.
Under a GPU bottlenecked scenario,
Off gave 57.8 FPS
Low, Medium, High, Ultra gave 56.9 FPS (1.56% reduction)
Visual Impact:
No light rays when turned off.
Bloom
Off
Off
19201080 93.5 KB
On
On
19201080 88.3 KB
Recommended Setting: On
Performance Impact:
Off gave 58.8 FPS
On gave 58.3 FPS (0.85% reduction)
Visual Impact:
Adds a blur / bleed effect to exceptionally bright areas
Employed to emphasize bright light beyond a monitors peak brightness
Depth of Field
Off
Off
19201080 187 KB
Low
Low
19201080 162 KB
Medium
Medium
19201080 150 KB
High
High
19201080 127 KB
Ultra
Ultra
19201080 120 KB
Recommended Setting: Ultra
Performance Impact:
No impact on CPU performance.
Under a GPU bottlenecked scenario,
Off gave 57.8 FPS
Low gave 55.6 FPS (3.81% reduction)
Medium gave 55.3 FPS (4.33% reduction)
High gave 55.1 FPS (4.67% reduction)
Ultra gave 54.6 FPS (5.54% reduction)
Visual Impact:
Depth of field seems to only be visible in drone camera and in main menu hangar
Depth of field is not present when setting is off
Higher settings increase the qualtiy and amount of blur
Motion Blur
Off
- YouTube
Low
- YouTube
Medium
- YouTube
High
- YouTube
Ultra
- YouTube
Recommended Setting: User Preference
Performance Impact:
No effect on CPU performance
Under a GPU bottlenecked scenario,
Off gave 57.5 FPS
On (Ultra) gave 57 FPS (0.87% reduction)
Visual Impact:
Intensity of motion blur increases at higher setting
Quality of motion blur remains the same at every setting
Lens Correction
Off
Off
19201080 122 KB
On
On
19201080 118 KB
Recommended Setting: Off
Performance Impact:
No measurable impact to CPU or GPU performance
Visual Impact:
Broken when devmode enabled
Corrects fisheye distortion at higher FOVs however makes image much blurrier.
Also misaligns clickspots for cockpit interaction.
Lens Flare
Off
Off
25601440 35.4 KB
On
On
19201080 21.4 KB
Recommended Setting: On
Performance Impact:
No measurable impact to CPU performance
Under a GPU bottlenecked scenario,
Off gave 95.7 FPS
On game 95.2 FPS (0.52% reduction)
Visual Impact:
Simulates a camera lens artifact when looking at bright objects such as the sun.
Glass Cockpit Refresh Rate
Low
- YouTube
Medium
- YouTube
High
- YouTube
Recommended Setting: High
Performance Impact:
No measurable impact to CPU or GPU performance.
This is because although the load on the CPU is increased, its calculated on a different thread which doesnt usually bottleneck the mainthread or the GPU thread.
This setting had a large impact on older versions of the sim, however this is no longer the case
Visual Impact:
Refresh rate of glass cockpit instruments increases with higher settings.
Higher refresh rate is not always more accurate to the actual refresh rate of real life instruments.
Wishlist to Asobo:
Cubemap reflections to further complement raymarched reflections.
Comparison images between Low and Ultra built directly into the sim (see Ghost Recon Wildlands, Watch Dogs 2)
More descriptive advanced settings
Ability to adjust post process shaders currently applied in the sim (such as
sharpening
, eye adaptation, bloom strength, film grain. Currently only possible by editing configuration files.)
Higher than ultra settings (shadows, reflections)
Loose tips on potential CPU / GPU impact on performance (see Forza Horizon 4)
Made possible by help from:
@OddSobriquet
- Thread formatting
@DeferredGull247
- Light Rays implementation
@Speed1994
- Texture Synthesis + Terrain Vector Data implementation
@avaritiax4034
- DX12 flowchart graphic
@appleuk1230
- DX12 error message screenshot
@nxtherLOL
@Papa4332
- Quality assurance
To learn more about how you can support my projects, and download lossless videos + screenshots;
click here
741 Likes
Poor FPS Good Setup
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Controlling GPU Temperature - Checklist of Things To Do on GPU Settings, PC Case Modification?
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28 fps rtx2080 Limited by gpu?
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To be or not to be : CPU limited Or GPU limited, that is the question
Rtx3090 1440p vs 4K
(NDU registry change) Increase performance immediately! AMAZING!
About sim performance
Performance settings with 3 monitors RTX3090. Any advice?
Reflections look grainy, even if reflections are on ultra
After 15hr tinker my lowly GTX 1080 and HP Reverb performs and looks OK (now) - settings
[Walkthrough] Avoiding CTDs - Community Troubleshooting Guide
Solution for Stutters & Pauses (updated for SU5)
Overclocking... is it time?
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Which Setting to Adjust
Your configuration with Hp reverb g1
Official Discussion: Upcoming Hotfix Announcement
Difference between ULTRA and HIGHEND
Visual difference between High and Ultra clouds?
Latest Update: What Parts of the Sim use CPU and What Parts use GPU
Discussion + Poll: Hotfix 1.18.14.0
TnT Quest 2 Settings - Sharp and SMOOOOTH!
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Goes from 80-90 FPS taxing to 2-5 FPS/stutter fest EVERY TIME after hitting ~60 knots during take off sequence
FPS Lenovo y540 1660ti 16GB Ram
Low fps caused by limited mainthread
Please advise pc upgrade mb and processor
I want to love FS 2020 but I hate it
X570 Aorus Master
VR Beta help
Very low fps on top hardware
Texture supersampling bugged
[FIXED] Random CTDs due to internet and hardware issues
LOD problems - Trees & Water
Allow to refund the game on PC after update 5 graphical downgrade
Please fix the large blurry lights when viewed on ultra wide
DX12 performs better for me (improved?)
Help to optimize graphics
LOD > 2.0 + true Ultra Setting - is it possible after the ultra setting bug?
Just install my RTX 4090 but very poor FPS - Looking for support
MSFS Performance settings
Nvidia Settings!
Which graphics settings affect the aircraft (as opposed to terrain and weather)?
Low CPU usage/Low GPU usage extremely low frames
My 2070 SUPER VR settings and suggestion (Reverb G2 - WMR)
CPU Loads, have I got the wrong setup?
This is how I have "fixed" the brutal fps loss from SU11
This is how I have "fixed" the brutal fps loss from SU11
What's the issue here? Bottleneck? Bug? Very disappointed
CPU vs GPU Settings
Low GPU/CPU Usage
Whats your best working fix for low FPS on big airports?
Definitive GUIDE to Improve Performance & Understand Each Setting?
DX12 Issues - Weird Graphics Glitches, Stutters in Panning
Frame Rate Queston
Reducing MSFS **CPU** load (Limited by CPU)
Vegetation render distance slider (separated from terrain/objects LOD) for performance
Discussion + Poll: Sim Update VIII (1.23.12.0)
Which Sim Settings are CPU intensive?
Comon Microsoft what the...?
Please! Some guidance
KDTW-Detroit Metro Airport-Developer Version
Limited by mainthread but mainthread only at 60-80% (UPDATED)
Struggeling with my settings on a RTX4080 with a Gaming Laptop
What are the graphic settings that have the most impact in FPS?
Can we have a graphics settings optimiser? Sick of fiddling with settings I don't understand
Low performance on High end
Performance with AMD 5800X and 3070 8GB?
[HOW-TO] Graphics Settings and Performance Guide - Discussion Thread
Sim performs great in VR with OXR update
Cloud Lighting VIDEO comparison, August 2020 build vs Simupdate 5
Allow to refund the game on PC after update 5 graphical downgrade
Is Render Scale in game cpu or gpu demanding?
CPU issues
Rtx 3080 ryzen 7 3700x bad fps
Low fps when doing bush trips
Very Low FPS with 3070ti
[HOW-TO] Graphics Settings and Performance Guide - Discussion Thread
RTX 3050 ti
Sim Update 5 performance before and after
CPU problem
Paying 10-12 fps to see clouds
Texture Supersampling ? What is it?
Low FPS problems
Pieter2427
Pinned
August 18, 2020, 9:28pm
Pieter2427
August 24, 2020, 7:06pm
Discussion thread
here
6 Likes
TheOriginalBabu
October 30, 2020, 11:28am
Thread Changelog:
7/26/2023
Updated all screenshots and benchmark data using SU12
Added new graphics settings introduced since SU5 and old settings not previously analyzed;
Render Scaling
Nvidia DLSS Upscaling
AMD FidelityFX Sharpening
Nvidia Reflex Low Latency
DirectX Version
Off Screen Terrain Pre-Caching
Texture Supersampling
Cubemap Reflections
Glass Cockpit Refresh Rate
Hardware Configuration Changed
GTX 1080 > RTX 3080
8/2/2021
Complete retest of performance with Sim Update 5
Retook all screenshots in Sim Update 5
Hardware configuration changed
i7 6700 > i9 9900k
HDD install > full NVME install
Minor formatting changes
3/16/2021
Added AI traffic benchmarks
Updated wishlist
Sim + cache now installed on NVME SSD and community folder on SATA SSD, Nvidia drivers updated to 461.72
1/08/2021
Updated wishlist
Added description to terrain vector data
Added forewarning to different hardware behaviour
10/28/2020
Updated for new TAA (new benchmarks + screenshots)
Tested newly introduced Motion Blur setting from update 5
Retested Lens Correction + Depth of Field
71 Likes
tamalien
Closed
July 29, 2021, 1:22am
Jummivana
Unpinned
June 1, 2023, 9:49pm
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TheOriginalBabu
27
Aug '20
Here is a detailed analysis of each graphics settings visual and performance impact.
This guide is supposed to help you make decisions on visual impact versus CPU / GPU impact in the simulator.
Note that situational and hardware differences results can result different performance responses to individual settings,
System Specifications:
i9 9900k, @ 4.9 GHZ OC
Hyperthreading Enabled
32GB of 3600MHZ 18-20-20-36 DDR4 RAM
RTX 3080 at 1980 / 10251 MHZ @ 1011v
Windows 11 22H2 build 22621.1992
Nvidia drivers 536.40 with HAGS On.
2560x1440 165hz FreeSync Monitor (G-Sync enabled)
MSFS Client + Packages + Cache installed on SSDs.
Methodology and Scenarios
Testing Methodology:
Tested on Sim Update 12 build 1.33.8.0 with all available World Updates
Overall frametime, GPU usage and VRAM usage are monitored through MSI Afterburner / Rivatuner Statistics Server, and Devmode FPS charts.
If a setting seemingly requires a restart to take effect, a standardized position will be used
CPU / GPU dependency of a setting is determined by contrasting the performance difference across settings in both CPU bottlenecked scenarios and GPU bottlenecked scenarios.
Testing Scenario:
Multiplayer: Off (Group Only)
Air Traffic: Off
Weather & Time: Custom, few clouds 12 PM
Camera angles kept static per each graphic setting
Testing locations vary between graphics settings
Test Settings:
Please note that the settings below are not meant to be copied and are only meant as a point of reference for testing. Scroll down to Settings Analysis for recommended settings.
GPU Bottlenecking Test Settings (Baseline):
GRAPHICS
Display Mode: Fullscreen
Full Screen Resolution: 2560X1440
Anti Aliasing: TAA
Render Scaling: 150 (Render Resolution: 3840x2160)
FidelityFX Sharpening: 100
V-Sync: Off
Nvidia Reflex Low Latency: Off
Frame Rate Limit: Grayed out / disabled
HDR10: Grayed out / disabled
Global Rendering Quality: Custom
DirectX Version: DX11
Advanced Settings
Terrain Level of Detail: 100
Off Screen Terrain Pre-Caching: Ultra
Terrain Vector Data: Ultra
Buildings: Ultra
Trees: Ultra
Grass and Bushes: Ultra
Objects Level of Detail: 100
Volumetric Clouds: Ultra
Texture Resolution: Ultra
Anisotropic Filtering: 16x
Texture Supersampling: 8x8
Texture Synthesis: Ultra
Water Waves: High
Shadow Maps: 2048
Terrain Shadows: 1024
Contact Shadows: Ultra
Windshield Effects: Ultra
Ambient Occlusion: Ultra
Cubemap Reflections: 256
Raymarched Reflections: Ultra
Light Shafts: Ultra
Bloom: On
Depth of Field: Ultra
Motion Blur: Off
Lens Correction: Off
Lens Flare: On
Glass Cockpit Refresh Rate: Medium
TRAFFIC
Aviation Traffic
Aircraft Traffic Type: Off
AI Airliners Traffic Density: 0 (grayed-out)
AI General Aviation Traffic Density: 0 (grayed-out)
Show Traffic Nameplates: On
Airport Life
Airport Vehicle Density: 50
Ground Aircraft Density: 50
Worker Density: 50
Land and Sea Traffic
Leisure Boats: 10
Road Vehicles: 10
Ships and Ferries: 20
Fauna Density: 20
AI & Multiplayer Traffic Detail
Use Generic Plane Models (AI Traffic): On
Use Generic Plane Models (Multiplayer): Off
Show Multiplayer Aircraft in Close Proximity: On
Traffic Variety: Ultra
DATA
Data Connection
Online Functionality: On
Bing Data World Graphics: On
Photogrammetry: On
Live Real-World Air Traffic: On
Live Weather: On
Multiplayer: On
Data Bandwith Usage Limit
Bandwidth: Unlimited
Rolling Cache Settings
Rolling Cache: On
Rolling Cache Limit (GIB): 8
CPU Bottlenecking Test Settings:
Based on GPU limited settings with following changes:
GRAPHICS
Advanced Settings
Render Scaling: 30
Foreword:
Fullscreen typically nets you the lowest performance loss
V-Sync is recommended to be disabled unless you can constantly maintain the same framerate as your display refresh rate, otherwise there will be frame pacing issues.
Suggested to force V-Sync via graphics driver instead of using sim implementation
Some settings were benchmarked at larger increments to save time.
Always set Full Screen Resolution to your native monitor resolution, and tweak rendering resolution with the Render Scaling slider. This ensures lowest input lag, and the UI will be as sharp as possible.
Settings Analysis
(right click > view image in new tab, in order to full screen and see effects in full detail)
* - indicates that testing is incomplete
Graphics
Anti Aliasing
Off
Off
19201080 159 KB
FXAA
FXAA
19201080 153 KB
DLAA
DLAA
19201080 151 KB
TAA
TAA
19201080 151 KB
Recommended Setting: TAA
Performance Impact:
No measurable impact on CPU performance.
Under a GPU bottlenecked scenario,
Off gives 59.9 FPS
FXAA gives 59.1 FPS (1.34% reduction)
DLAA gives 58.5 FPS (2.34% reduction)
TAA gives 58.3 FPS (2.67% reduction)
Visual Impact:
Geometry aliasing is visible in motion on Off, FXAA, and DLAA, which is not present in TAA.
TAA helps denoise Ambient Occlusion, Volumetric Clouds, and Raymarched Reflections, but blurs the image slightly and can add motion artifacts.
Running <100 Render Scaling with TAA enabled reconstructs the image to native resolution, netting the performance impact that would come with a lower resolution but the image quality similar to a higher resolution. This can be considered visually similar to FSR2.
Render Scaling
50
50
19201080 132 KB
75
75
19201080 145 KB
100
100
19201080 151 KB
125
125
19201080 154 KB
150
150
19201080 156 KB
175
175
19201080 156 KB
200
200
19201080 156 KB
Recommended Setting: >=100
Performance Impact:
No measurable impact on CPU performance.
Under a GPU bottlenecked scenario,
Impact to GPU performance is highly subjective to your own graphics cards scaling behaviour.
50 gave 135.1 FPS
75 gave 109.9 FPS (18.65% reduction)
100 gave 88.5 FPS (34.49% reduction)
125 gave 66.7 FPS (50.63% reduction)
150 gave 51.3 FPS (62.03% reduction)
175 gave 40.7 FPS (69.87% reduction)
200 gave 32.8 FPS (75.72% reduction)
Visual Impact:
Controls the internal rendering resolution of the sim. Higher settings increases the amount of color samples for each final pixel.
Reflections, Ambient Occlusion, and Contact Shadows also scale with resolution.
Nvidia DLSS Upscaling
Ultra Performance
Ultraperf
19201080 131 KB
Performance
Perf
19201080 139 KB
Balanced
Balanced
19201080 143 KB
Quality
Quality
19201080 145 KB
DLAA
DLAA
19201080 151 KB
TAA
TAA
19201080 149 KB
Recommended Setting: Disabled
Performance Impact:
No measurable impact on CPU performance.
Under a GPU bottlenecked scenario,
Ultra Performance (33% resolution) gave 147.1 FPS
Performance (50% resolution) gave 128.2 FPS (12.85% reduction)
Balanced (58% resolution) gave 120.5 FPS (18.08% reduction)
Quality (67% resolution) gave 111.1 FPS (24.47% reduction)
DLAA (100% resolution) gave 84.8 FPS (42.35% reduction)
TAA (100% resolution) gave 87.7 FPS (40.38% reduction)
Visual Impact:
Higher DLSS options increases the internal rendering resolution of the sim that DLSS upscales from.
DLSS does not properly mask glass cockpit instruments and causes them to be unusable in many cases. The same is also true for FSR2.
AMD FidelityFX Sharpening
19201080 87 KB
100
100
19201080 97.3 KB
200
200
19201080 102 KB
Recommended setting: User Preference
Performance Impact:
No measurable impact on CPU performance.
Under a GPU bottlenecked scenario,
Off gave 51.5 FPS
On (100) gave 51.3 FPS (0.39% reduction)
Visual Impact:
Sharpens textures without inducing as much edge aliasing or sharpening halos as a traditional sharpening algorithm.
Nvidia Reflex Low Latency
Recommended Setting: On
Performance Impact:
No measurable impact when CPU bottlenecked
Under a GPU bottlenecked scenario,
Off gave 58.4 FPS
On gave 56.8 FPS (2.74% reduction)
Whenever GPU bottlenecked in a 3d application, input lag increases tremendously regardless of framerate (minimum of one frame).
Nvidia Reflex Low Latency simply forces the CPU to always be
ever
so slightly slower at processing a frame than the GPU, artifically introducing a slight CPU bottleneck. It can be interpreted as a dynamic FPS cap that engages slightly below your GPUs potential FPS.
Ensures consistent input latency regardless of GPU load, but can induce slight stuttering.
Has no effect when CPU bottlenecked.
Visual Impact:
No visual impact
DirectX Version
Do you need DX12?
Credit to
@avaritiax4034
for the flowchart.
DX11
DX11
19201080 111 KB
DX12
dx12
19201080 117 KB
Recommended Setting: DX11
Performance Impact:
DX12 is less stable than DX11, and also consumes more RAM and VRAM.
DX12
can
increase performance in certain hardware combinations - though Ive yet to see any (maybe Intel ARC?)
DX12 facilitates and enables use of FSR2 (though implementation is broken, and has extra performance overhead of both DX12 and upscaling compared to TAAU).
DX12 facilitates and enables use of DLSS Frame Generation (though this doesnt work great at lower framerates).
Under a CPU bottlenecked scenario,
DX11 gave 49 FPS
DX12 gave 47.5 FPS (3.06% reduction)
Under a GPU bottlenecked scenario,
DX11 gave 56.2 FPS
DX12 gave 50.3 FPS (10.5% reduction)
Visual Impact:
None
Terrain Level Of Detail
Photogrammetry:
10
10
19201080 299 KB
50
50
19201080 320 KB
100
100
19201080 326 KB
200
200
19201080 331 KB
300
300
19201080 333 KB
400
400
19201080 333 KB
Autogen
10
10
19201080 311 KB
50
50
19201080 323 KB
100
100
19201080 327 KB
200
200
19201080 328 KB
300
300
19201080 329 KB
400
400
19201080 329 KB
Recommended Setting: 100
Performance Impact:
This setting impacts both CPU and GPU performance as it is increased. It also increase RAM usage.
Under a CPU bottlenecked scenario,
10 gave 145.8 FPS
50 gave 124.5 FPS (14.61% reduction)
100 gave 107.2 FPS (26.47% reduction)
200 gave 81.3 FPS (44.24% reduction)
300 gave 68.2 FPS (53.22% reduction)
400 gave 57.8 FPS (60.36% reduction)
Under a GPU bottlenecked scenario,
10 gave 71.4 FPS
50 gave 65.8 FPS (7.84% reduction)
100 gave 62.5 FPS (12.46% reduction)
200 gave 58.8 FPS (17.65% reduction)
300 gave 54.9 FPS (23.11% reduction)
400 gave 52.6 FPS (26.33% reduction)
Visual Impact:
Increases draw distance and LOD of trees, terrain, autogen, and photogrammetry.
Linear quality increase up to 100, but going past 100 leads to lower framerates with smaller visual impact.
Off Screen Terrain Pre-Caching
Off
Off
19201080 104 KB
Ultra
Ultra
43201440 354 KB
Recommended Setting: User Preference
Performance Impact:
This setting reduces the average CPU framerate, but reduces stutters by pre-caching terrain that is not visible on screen yet.
Results in a smooother and more consistent experience.
No measurable impact on GPU performance.
Under a CPU bottlenecked scenario,
Low gave 119.4 FPS
Medium gave 114.7 FPS (3.94% reduction)
High gave 112.7 FPS (5.61% reduction)
Ultra gave 109.2 FPS (8.54% reduction)
Visual Impact:
No visual impact
Terrain Vector Data*
Recommended Setting: Ultra
No measurable visual impact, in a variety of different test scenarios.
No measurable performance impact to CPU or GPU, in a variety of different test scenarios.
Unsure what this does.
Buildings
Low
Low
19201080 286 KB
Medium
Medium
19201080 296 KB
High
High
19201080 297 KB
Ultra
Ultra
19201080 297 KB
Recommended Setting: Medium (low end), Ultra (high end)
Performance Impact:
Under a CPU bottlenecked scenario,
Low gave 108.7 FPS
Medium gave 105.8 FPS (2.67% reduction)
High gave 102.8 FPS (5.43% reduction)
Ultra gave 100.1 FPS (7.91% reduction)
Under a GPU bottlenecked scenario,
Low gave 54.6 FPS
Medium gave 53.3 FPS (2.38% reduction)
High gave 51.8 FPS (5.13% reduction)
Ultra gave 48.8 FPS (10.62% reduction)
Visual Impact:
Main impact on synthesized buildings.
Increases LOD and complexity of buildings
More buildings visible at distance at higher settings
Trees
Low
Low
19201080 305 KB
Medium
Medium
19201080 266 KB
High
High
19201080 265 KB
Ultra
Ultra
19201080 264 KB
Recommended Setting: Ultra
Performance Impact:
No impact on CPU performance
Under a GPU bottlenecked scenario,
Low gave 52.6 FPS
Medium gave 50 FPS (4.94% reduction)
High gave 49.3 FPS (6.27% reduction)
Ultra gave 48.8 FPS (7.22% reduction)
Visual Impact:
Higher settings increase draw distance
Higher settings increases density and shading quality
Will have a larger impact in more forested areas
Grass and Bushes
Off
Off
19201080 243 KB
Low
Low
19201080 254 KB
Medium
Medium
19201080 255 KB
High
High
19201080 252 KB
Ultra
Ultra
19201080 246 KB
Recommended Setting: High
Performance Impact:
No measurable impact to CPU performance
Under a GPU bottlenecked scenario,
Off gave 69.4 FPS,
Low gave 68.5 FPS (1.30% reduction)
Medium gave 67.7 FPS (2.45% reduction)
High gave 66.7 FPS (3.89% reduction)
Ultra gave 64.5 FPS (7.06% reduction)
Visual Impact:
Controls density and draw distance of 2d grass sprites.
Objects Level of Detail
10
10
19201080 227 KB
50
50
19201080 232 KB
100
100
19201080 232 KB
150
150
19201080 232 KB
200
200
19201080 232 KB
Recommended Setting: 100
Performance Impact:
Increases RAM usage with higher settings
Under a CPU bottlenecked scenario,
10 gave 92.5 FPS
50 gave 89.9 FPS (2.81% reduction)
100 gave 89.5 FPS (3.24% reduction)
150 gave 88.5 FPS (4.32% reduction)
200 gave 86.8 FPS (6.16% reduction)
Under a GPU bottlenecked scenario,
10 gave 65.8 FPS
50 gave 65.4 FPS (0.61% reduction)
100 gave 65.3 FPS (0.76% reduction)
150 gave 65.3 FPS (0.76% reduction)
200 gave 65.3 FPS (0.76% reduction)
Visual Impact:
Controls render distance of the LODS of various objects in the world, such as traffic cars, airport buildings, and planes.
Volumetric Clouds
Low
Low
19201080 59.8 KB
Medium
Medium
19201080 118 KB
High
High
19201080 154 KB
Ultra
Ultra
19201080 164 KB
Recommended Setting: High (mid range), Ultra (High end)
Performance Impact:
No measurable impact to CPU performance.
Under a GPU bottlenecked scenario,
Low gave 69.4 FPS
Medium gave 64.1 FPS (7.64% reduction)
High gave 58.5 FPS (15.75% reduction)
Ultra gave 51.3 FPS (26.08% reduction)
Visual Impact:
Controls cloud resolution
Anything below high looks like mashed potatoes
Texture Resolution
Low
Low
19201080 120 KB
Medium
Medium
19201080 130 KB
High
High
19201080 138 KB
Ultra
Ultra
19201080 149 KB
Recommended Setting: Ultra
Performance Impact:
No measurable impact to CPU performance
Under a GPU bottlenecked scenario,
Low gave 62.5 FPS and consumed 4251MB of VRAM
Ultra gave 61.7 FPS (1.28% reduction) and consumed 5127MB of VRAM (+876MB)
Visual Impact:
Controls resolution of loaded textures.
Also adjusts resolution of PBR textures accordingly (AO Maps, Normal maps, etc)
Anisotropic Filtering
Off
Off
19201080 94 KB
2x
2x
19201080 94.9 KB
4x
4x
19201080 96.5 KB
8x
8x
19201080 98.8 KB
16x
16x
19201080 101 KB
Recommended Setting: 16x
Performance Impact:
No measurable impact to CPU performance
Under a GPU bottlenecked scenario,
Off gave 62.2 FPS
2x gave 61.7 FPS (0.8% reduction)
4x gave 61.3 FPS (1.45% reduction)
8x gave 60.2 FPS (3.22% reduction)
16x gave 59.5 FPS (4.34% reduction)
Performance impact will lessen with higher GPU memory bandwidth.
Visual Impact:
Removes some of the texture blur caused by mipmapping.
Provides noticeable increases to quality up to 16x
Texture Supersampling
Off
Off
19201080 106 KB
2x2
2x2
19201080 105 KB
4x4
4x4
19201080 106 KB
6x6
6x6
19201080 106 KB
8x8
8x8
19201080 105 KB
Recommended Setting: 6x6
Performance Impact:
No measurable impact to CPU performance
Under a GPU bottlenecked scenario,
Off gave 60.8 FPS
2X2 gave 60.8 FPS (0% reduction)
4X4 gave 60.6 FPS (0.33% reduction)
6X6 gave 60.2 FPS (0.99% reduction)
8X8 gave 59.5 FPS (2.14% reduction)
Visual Impact:
Decreases blurriness of textures when viewed at a distance and at extreme angles.
Similar to anisotropic filtering.
Texture Synthesis*
Recommended Setting: Ultra
Controls quality of texture synthesis in areas without Bing data.
Irrelevant for most flights as Bing coverage is plentiful
Water Waves
Low
Low
19201080 37.8 KB
Medium
Medium
19201080 52.9 KB
High
High
19201080 119 KB
Recommended Setting: Medium
Performance Impact:
No measurable impact to CPU performance
Under a GPU bottlenecked scenario,
Low gave 66.7 FPS
Medium gave 65.8 FPS (1.35% reduction)
High gave 61.7 FPS (7.5% reduction)
Visual Impact:
Waves become more detailed as setting is increased
Shadow Maps
768
768
19201080 129 KB
1024
1024
19201080 130 KB
1536
1536
19201080 130 KB
2048
2048
19201080 129 KB
768
768
19201080 103 KB
1024
1024
19201080 102 KB
1536
1536
19201080 101 KB
2048
2048
19201080 101 KB
Recommended Setting: 2048
Performance Impact:
No measurable impact to CPU performance
Under a GPU bottlenecked scenario,
768, 1024 and 1536 gave 59.5FPS
2048 gave 59 FPS (0.84% reduction)
Visual Impact:
Shadows get sharper and cover more details as setting increases
Even the maximum option of 2048 seems rather low compared to shadowmaps in most other modern games
Terrain Shadows
Off
Off
19201080 266 KB
128
128
19201080 259 KB
256
256
19201080 248 KB
512
512
19201080 237 KB
1024
1024
19201080 229 KB
2048
2048
19201080 224 KB
Recommended Setting: 1024
Performance Impact:
No impact on CPU performance.
Under a GPU bottlenecked scenario,
Off gave 61 FPS
128 gave 60.8 FPS (0.33% reduction)
256 gave 60.6 FPS (0.66% reduction)
512 gave 60.2 FPS (1.31% reduction)
1024 gave 59.5 FPS (2.46% reduction)
2048 gave 55.2 FPS (9.51% reduction)
Visual Impact:
The shadow sharpness and accuracy increases as the setting increases.
(The screenshots were taken with very similar sun positions)
Contact Shadows
Off
Off
19201080 329 KB
Low
Low
19201080 362 KB
Medium
Medium
19201080 359 KB
High
High
19201080 355 KB
Ultra
Ultra
19201080 353 KB
Recommended Setting: Ultra
Performance Impact:
No measurable impact on CPU performance
Under a GPU bottlenecked scenario,
Off gave 62.5 FPS
Low gave 60.6 FPS (3.04% reduction)
Medium gave 60.3 FPS (3.52% reduction)
High gave 60.2 FPS (3.68% reduction)
Ultra gave 59.9 FPS (4.16% reduction)
Visual Impact:
Trees and grass get 2D SSRT shadowing when enabled
Quality / Amount of shadowing increases with higher settings
Windshield Effects
Low
Low
19201080 100 KB
Medium
Medium
19201080 101 KB
High
High
19201080 111 KB
Ultra
Ultra
19201080 112 KB
Recommended Setting: High
Performance Impact:
No impact on CPU performance.
Under a GPU bottlenecked scenario,
Low gave 58.1 FPS
Medium gave 57.1 FPS (1.72% reduction)
High gave 56.8 FPS (2.24% reduction)
Ultra gave 54.1 FPS (6.88% reduction)
Visual Impact:
Raindrops become more dense and smaller at higher settings.
Low seemingly renders no raindrops on windshield.
Ultra adds SSRT reflections to windshield.
Ambient Occlusion
Off
Off
19201080 213 KB
Low
Low
19201080 212 KB
Medium
Medium
19201080 212 KB
High
High
19201080 212 KB
Ultra
Ultra
19201080 212 KB
Off
Off
19201080 144 KB
Low
Low
19201080 145 KB
Medium
Medium
19201080 144 KB
High
High
19201080 143 KB
Ultra
Ultra
19201080 143 KB
Recommended Setting: High
Performance Impact:
No measurable impact on CPU performance.
Under a GPU bottlenecked scenario,
Off gave 65.4 FPS
Low gave 63.7 FPS (2.60% reduction)
Medium gave 63.3 FPS (3.21% reduction)
High gave 62.1 FPS (5.05% reduction)
Ultra gave 59.9 FPS (8.41% reduction)
Visual Impact:
No ambient occlusion is present at off setting.
Resolution increases at higher settings.
The amount of ambient occlusion increases at higher settings.
Ghosting / Artifacts more severe on lower settings.
Ghosting / Artifacts decreased with TAA.
Scales with rendering resolution.
Cubemap Reflections
96
96
19201080 63.1 KB
128
128
19201080 64.5 KB
192
192
19201080 65.8 KB
256
256
19201080 66.5 KB
Recommended Setting: 256
Performance Impact:
No measurable impact on CPU performance
Under a GPU bottlenecked scenario,
96 gave 70.4 FPS
128 gave 70.2 FPS (0.28% reduction)
192 gave 69.7 FPS (0.99% reduction)
256 gave 69.4 FPS (1.42% reduction)
Visual Impact:
Resolution of cubemap reflections increases with higher settings.
Cubemap reflections are used for reflections of objects that are not on screen.
Raymarched Reflections
Off
Off
19201080 87 KB
Low
Low
19201080 93.1 KB
Medium
Medium
19201080 94.4 KB
High
High
19201080 95.4 KB
Ultra
Ultra
19201080 96.1 KB
Recommended Setting: High
Performance Impact:
No measurable impact to CPU performance
Under a GPU bottlenecked scenario,
Off gave 73.5 FPS
Low gave 68.5 FPS (6.8% reduction)
Medium gave 67.6 FPS (8.03% reduction)
High gave 64.9 FPS (11.7% reduction)
Ultra gave 61 FPS (17.01% reduction)
Visual Impact:
No screen-space reflections are visible when setting is turned off.
Reflections artifact at lower settings.
Resolution increases with higher settings.
Reflection length also increases with higher settings.
Reflection resolution / quality scales with rendering resolution.
Light Shafts
Off
Off
19201080 48.7 KB
Low
Low
19201080 40.5 KB
Medium
Medium
19201080 40.4 KB
High
High
19201080 40.5 KB
Ultra
Ultra
19201080 40.5 KB
Recommended Setting: Ultra
Performance Impact:
No impact to CPU performance.
Under a GPU bottlenecked scenario,
Off gave 57.8 FPS
Low, Medium, High, Ultra gave 56.9 FPS (1.56% reduction)
Visual Impact:
No light rays when turned off.
Bloom
Off
Off
19201080 93.5 KB
On
On
19201080 88.3 KB
Recommended Setting: On
Performance Impact:
Off gave 58.8 FPS
On gave 58.3 FPS (0.85% reduction)
Visual Impact:
Adds a blur / bleed effect to exceptionally bright areas
Employed to emphasize bright light beyond a monitors peak brightness
Depth of Field
Off
Off
19201080 187 KB
Low
Low
19201080 162 KB
Medium
Medium
19201080 150 KB
High
High
19201080 127 KB
Ultra
Ultra
19201080 120 KB
Recommended Setting: Ultra
Performance Impact:
No impact on CPU performance.
Under a GPU bottlenecked scenario,
Off gave 57.8 FPS
Low gave 55.6 FPS (3.81% reduction)
Medium gave 55.3 FPS (4.33% reduction)
High gave 55.1 FPS (4.67% reduction)
Ultra gave 54.6 FPS (5.54% reduction)
Visual Impact:
Depth of field seems to only be visible in drone camera and in main menu hangar
Depth of field is not present when setting is off
Higher settings increase the qualtiy and amount of blur
Motion Blur
Off
- YouTube
56
Low
- YouTube
12
Medium
- YouTube
High
- YouTube
11
Ultra
- YouTube
57
Recommended Setting: User Preference
Performance Impact:
No effect on CPU performance
Under a GPU bottlenecked scenario,
Off gave 57.5 FPS
On (Ultra) gave 57 FPS (0.87% reduction)
Visual Impact:
Intensity of motion blur increases at higher setting
Quality of motion blur remains the same at every setting
Lens Correction
Off
Off
19201080 122 KB
On
On
19201080 118 KB
Recommended Setting: Off
Performance Impact:
No measurable impact to CPU or GPU performance
Visual Impact:
Broken when devmode enabled
Corrects fisheye distortion at higher FOVs however makes image much blurrier.
Also misaligns clickspots for cockpit interaction.
Lens Flare
Off
Off
25601440 35.4 KB
On
On
19201080 21.4 KB
Recommended Setting: On
Performance Impact:
No measurable impact to CPU performance
Under a GPU bottlenecked scenario,
Off gave 95.7 FPS
On game 95.2 FPS (0.52% reduction)
Visual Impact:
Simulates a camera lens artifact when looking at bright objects such as the sun.
Glass Cockpit Refresh Rate
Low
- YouTube
42
Medium
- YouTube
15
High
- YouTube
39
Recommended Setting: High
Performance Impact:
No measurable impact to CPU or GPU performance.
This is because although the load on the CPU is increased, its calculated on a different thread which doesnt usually bottleneck the mainthread or the GPU thread.
This setting had a large impact on older versions of the sim, however this is no longer the case
Visual Impact:
Refresh rate of glass cockpit instruments increases with higher settings.
Higher refresh rate is not always more accurate to the actual refresh rate of real life instruments.
Wishlist to Asobo:
Cubemap reflections to further complement raymarched reflections.
Comparison images between Low and Ultra built directly into the sim (see Ghost Recon Wildlands, Watch Dogs 2)
More descriptive advanced settings
Ability to adjust post process shaders currently applied in the sim (such as
sharpening
, eye adaptation, bloom strength, film grain. Currently only possible by editing configuration files.)
Higher than ultra settings (shadows, reflections)
Loose tips on potential CPU / GPU impact on performance (see Forza Horizon 4)
Made possible by help from:
@OddSobriquet
- Thread formatting
@DeferredGull247
- Light Rays implementation
@Speed1994
- Texture Synthesis + Terrain Vector Data implementation
@avaritiax4034
- DX12 flowchart graphic
@appleuk1230
- DX12 error message screenshot
@nxtherLOL
@Papa4332
- Quality assurance
To learn more about how you can support my projects, and download lossless videos + screenshots;
click here
43
741
Poor FPS Good Setup
1790
[HOW-TO] Graphics Settings and Performance Guide - Discussion Thread
855
Controlling GPU Temperature - Checklist of Things To Do on GPU Settings, PC Case Modification?
542
Edinburgh to Heathrow - A320 - so immersive!
396
FPS impact guide for each graphic setting
388
87 more
created
Aug '20
last reply
Jun 1
replies
362k
views
users
818
likes
39
links
Pinned
on Aug 18, '20
Pieter2427
Discord Team
Aug '20
Discussion thread
here
6.7k
2 months later
TheOriginalBabu
Oct '20
Thread Changelog:
7/26/2023
Updated all screenshots and benchmark data using SU12
Added new graphics settings introduced since SU5 and old settings not previously analyzed;
Render Scaling
Nvidia DLSS Upscaling
AMD FidelityFX Sharpening
Nvidia Reflex Low Latency
DirectX Version
Off Screen Terrain Pre-Caching
Texture Supersampling
Cubemap Reflections
Glass Cockpit Refresh Rate
Hardware Configuration Changed
GTX 1080 > RTX 3080
8/2/2021
Complete retest of performance with Sim Update 5
Retook all screenshots in Sim Update 5
Hardware configuration changed
i7 6700 > i9 9900k
HDD install > full NVME install
Minor formatting changes
3/16/2021
Added AI traffic benchmarks
Updated wishlist
Sim + cache now installed on NVME SSD and community folder on SATA SSD, Nvidia drivers updated to 461.72
1/08/2021
Updated wishlist
Added description to terrain vector data
Added forewarning to different hardware behaviour
10/28/2020
Updated for new TAA (new benchmarks + screenshots)
Tested newly introduced Motion Blur setting from update 5
Retested Lens Correction + Depth of Field
71
9 months later
Closed
on Jul 29, '21
2 years later
Unpinned
on Jun 1
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