Review: Microsoft Flight Simulator (2020): PC graphics performance analysis

If I ever play this I guess I'll have to disable "G-Sync Compatible" if I can't maintain FPS above 48.
This is to prevent jumping from 48 FPS/Hz (VRR min value) to 36 FPS/Hz (VSYNC for 144Hz) all the time. And stick to 36 FPS with VSYNC only.

(My VRR range is from 48Hz to 144Hz. And I tend to cap FPS to 138. When FPS is below 48, everything looks like s****t ).

Or maybe just disable VSYNC and live with tearing.

 

It is a complex simulation, so it must be CPU limited, and DX12 won't resolve this ( maybe some 3 or 4 fps gain in the best case scenario ).

That's what happens when you present an advanced simulation to brainless gamers living on credits, they even started to call the game "badly optimized" whereas it is a miracle that such complex simulation can run in real time with all those advanced graphics features.

Just wait a few years or decades until the CPU techs catch up so it could run this above 60 FPS without sacrificing fidelity.

 

We need a more thorough analysis of memory usage. This says the whole system didn't use more than about 14GB of ram, yet it is using far more than that for those of us in the Steam forums. According to task manager the .exe alone is using 20GB+

 

Wow, the results are just all over the place. In what reality does the RTX 2060 score higher than both the Radeon VII and RX 5700 XT? Also, the GTX 1660 scores higher than the GTX 1070? And finally how the HELL does an R9 Fury lose to an RX 470 (that's especially insane)?! There must be something wrong with the way that FS2020 handles HBM.

Microsoft's (lack of) optimisation strikes again (never be an early adopter for MS products). Ladies and Gentlemen.... I give you....

THE NEW CRYSIS!
(This will also be great for long-term card comparisons, just like Crysis was!)

It's probably because Microsoft started work on it long before DX12 was a thing. A friend of mine who's a pilot and flight simulator fanatic (I'm a pilot too but I don't like simulators all that much) says that FS2020 will be using DX12 at some point. I don't know if it's true but he's one of those FSX/XPlane/Prepar3D nuts who lives and dies by these simulators.

I prefer my flight simulators to be games like Ace Combat and DCS. I'm a kid that way. LOL

It's because they started working on it before DX12 was ready. Remember that DX12 is based on AMD Mantle like Vulkan is.

I expected that because a project of this scale takes a LONG time to develop. If they had taken proper care in their coding, it would've been obsolete before it was ready. Just look at FSX, it's 10x worse!

To be fair, they also look good in Ace Combat 7, Prepar3D and DCS.

Microsoft will have to do something. Seeing the RTX 2060 outperforming your R7 and my RX 5700 XT is just mind-blowing. Mind you, somehow the R9 Fury gets outperformed by the RX 470. That's both hilarious and surreal.

DX12 wasn't ready yet when they started this project. Did you think they started working on this yesterday? A simulation of this scale takes five years or more to produce. DX12 is coming anyway, they'll have it in one of their "This is what you get for being an early adopter!" Service Packs.

There was no DX12 when they started this yet.

Vulkan gang says "Microsoft is a highly illogikal organisation."

I can't wait to hear about "FS2020 SP1".

It'll be so choppy that he'll think that he's flying a whirlybird.

Microsoft will most likely be adding it in one of their "service packs".

A GT 1030? The bare minimum is supposedly a GTX 770. If you get it to run even half-decently on a GT 1030, you deserve a prize!

Yeah, that will never happen. FSX was even less optimised than FS2020 and it still is to this day.

John Travota's backyard has a runway that goes right up to his house. That's the ultimate in cool!

What did you expect? Have you never played FSX? It makes this game look like Overwatch!

Price isn't the reason I didn't get it right away. Microsoft's track record of making millions of early adopters suffer is. I'll get it when they finally add DX12. I like having hair!

I'm going to fly/crash/put down an Antonov An-225 Mriya into mine!

DX12 is coming eventually. Maybe they'll call it "SP1"!

Yeah, I heard the same thing. It's Microsoft, so of course there will be "Service Packs"!

 

We have seen plenty of games that offer both DX11 and DX12. Most of them tend to run better on DX11 because that's what they were developed for, just like this game. The DX12 is slapped on for marketing purposes. Apparently Microsoft didn't bother to do even that, despite being the owner and developer of the DirectX technology. We can only pray that the DX12 update, if such a thing indeed appears in the future, will at least give AMD GPUs a little boost because AMD GPUs haven't been DX11 optimised for many years. You'd think MS was at least capable of that seeing how they developed games specifically for AMD hardware with the Xbox. But it's Microsoft, so you never know.

 

Just to be clear - Microsoft didn't develop this game. Asobo Studio did.. and while they did develop it in conjunction with Microsoft, the main contribution by Microsoft was the Bing Maps/Azure scaling side. The game was originally designed for Hololense and it runs on the same engine as Fuel/Plague Tale.

That being said I don't really care for the whole "the game was developed before DX12" argument he's taking. Plenty of games were in development before DX12 but shipped with semi-competent DX12 versions - Division, GoW, etc. They could have definitely launched this game on DX12. Asobo either decided it wasn't priority or they simply don't have the engine developers that are familiar enough with the API.

_

As for DX11 vs 12 - again.. people in here seem to be under the assumption that DX12 is a replacement for DX11, it's not. DX11 is going to be simultaneously developed alongside of DX12 for the foreseeable future. 11.4 was released about two years ago and 11.5 is hinted at coming early next year with compatibility for DXGI 1.6.

 

yeah I’ve driven by it a few times when I used to live in Florida.

 

This game could revitalize the PC HW industry. Nvidia, AMD, Intel and other HW makers will likely have a surge in sales from its release as ppl will feel more of a need to upgrade their gear.

 

30FPS is never my option. It caused me to eye-ache and worsened short-sight before. Since I strictly stick to at least 60FPS in-game and 60Hz display and 60cm eye-to-monitor distance my eyesight never worsened again. 30FPS is bad for your health I think.

 

in the reality where Nvidia has a better D3D11 implementation than AMD

which is this one.

AMD's driver is choked up on the CPU most of the time in this, to the point gpu usage tanks along with clocks

 

download the Xbox app sign up for Gampass then download the enormous game. I'm playing it with Gamepass and I've had no issues so far. Some had problems downloading it but you just have to give it time.

 

Performance update: at lowest settings I get between 30- even 50 fps in those landing challanges... I am using the $1 Xbox account just for testing the sim. What I really don´t like is all this "advertising" stuff waiting time before the sim actually starts at least on the Xbox game pass version. My CPU usage is approx. 30-40%. In DevMode, you have a nice OSD feature showing you all CPU and GPU usage, memory usage, incl. thread times and draw calls. I never thought I could fly the game with my old gcard, but I really was surprised, even with a R9 280x everything is pretty smooth (settings: LOW !!) and it even looks not that bad. I am really curious how it will perform on an Xbox? Before buying a new 3090 maybe an Xbox would do it??? Just for fun I switched to ULTRA and....what do you think?...courchevel landing... approx 10- 12 fps. AMD Crossfire setup does not work. Please install the SDK or DevMode and you can test your system performance very well. What I don´t think is that the sim performes well under 4K HDR condition as MS or ASOBO is advertising for.....but that´s something I can not check.....

edit: as well, I was pretty much disappointed about only DX11, but maybe DX12 support will come in a future update, especially because DX12 should scale cpu threads much better as far as I know....!?

edit: seconds ago I noticed a pretty interesting label on the DevMode OSD feature, called "limited by". The label is turning red when it detects a hardware limitaion, on my system it turns allways red showing "limited by GPU".....

 

Microsoft's "Ideal" specs shows CPU of 9800x (HEDT version)... but this wasn't tested. Really curious whether MS just listed this as the best available Intel CPU when the specs were published in April 2020, (prior to launch of 10900) or whether the almost double memory bandwidth and/or AVX- 512 instructions make a significant performance difference to FlightSim.
Do you plan to also test any 9th/10th gen HEDT processors on x299 platform?
Currently not much price difference between z490/10900 and x299/10900x, so could be an important differentiator for people building a PC rig primarily for FlightSim2020 use.

 

So, Linus mentioned this review - yet, did not give out any links to the review in the video description..."...Check out the results at Guru3D..."

 

Seems to be a massive CPU hog too though.

 

Just played this a bit on my laptop I5 8300H 1050Ti and it runs surprisingly well and doesn't look too bad on medium.

 

Why do people even watch him? Makes no sense...

 

This game really would benefit from DirectX 12, which could offload the CPU. This game is CPU bottlenecked heavily and doesn't utilize more than four cores, which I find rather silly. I assume though it's not really possible without tremendous amount of work to really add any new APIs into a released game, but maybe they can figure out something else to utilize more cores.

I agree with those who have said DX12 is not made to replace DX11, this time they will live side by side. There is no reason to use DX12 for games that doesn't push technical limits, like AAA games. First and foremost DX12 is for the new consoles and of course for the following PC ports. DX11 will still live a long time, but DX12 is essential to have or otherwise we really wouldn't see any serious graphical uplift anytime soon. GPUs haven't advanced as much as was generally expected between 2013 - 2020, but finally the adoption of low level APIs will give us awaited performance boost (better utilization of hardware), which in fact is better solution than to just develop more powerful underutilized hardware.