[Official] Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 Information & Discussion Thread

[J7SC_Orion]

Here is a quick collage of power consumption and max settings for MS FS 2020 I use w/ dual 2080 Tis. The GPUs can go up to 380 W each but here I'm keeping them below 320 W via PL...GPU utilization in NVL / CFR is very good.  On the CPU front, the 2950X Threadripper is a nice chip re. vCore and IMC and here it is down-clocked just a bit (to 4275 MHz) to keep it below 200 W for the package in this app. With peripherals (including 20x 120mm fans and 4x D5 pumps), the whole system will be just under 1000 W with these settings.

 

BTW, the pic in the back is from a glacier landing at 8000+ feet...part of a future pictorial here. Glacier flying (never mind landing) is not easy, given all the thermals etc.

 

 

  

...and some quick tooling around in my neighborhood at dusk, buzzing some neighbors and commuters  

 

  

  

  

 

 

 

 

 

Edited November 1, 2020 by J7SC_Orion

[ENTERPRISE]

Not surprising the system is pulling around 1000Watts. All those components are power hungry at load, that much is for sure (having owned them). Out of interest what is your max RAM usage when playing ? 

 

Some more nice shots man !

[J7SC_Orion]

11 hours ago, ENTERPRISE said:

Not surprising the system is pulling around 1000Watts. All those components are power hungry at load, that much is for sure (having owned them). Out of interest what is your max RAM usage when playing ? 

 

Some more nice shots man !

 

....System RAM or VRAM usage ? In any case, both depend on the scene complexity et al.

 

For VRAM, with '4K / Ultra' and then some additional extras such as heavy car and boat traffic (density settings beyond 'ultra'), it can exceed a '11 GB VRAM. Then again, MSI AB *VRAM usage* may still be a form of reservation rather than actual usage. What's interesting about the first pic below is the increase in VRAM in the 2nd and 3rd column - it was one flight session but across drastically different scene complexities. Starting out high up over mountains, then a low flight over a large metro area (which sucks back the most). Finally, with GDDR6X (RTX 3K) and INFINITY Cache (AMD Navi 6K), it might not be a straight apples-to-apples comparison with GDDR6. Still, I prefer my oc'ed 11 GB VRAM on the cards 

 

System RAM usage, according to the Developer Tool setting (top right in 2nd pic) in MSFS 2020 is between 7 GB and 11 GB during play (a bit more during loading). That however excludes all other system RAM uses (WIndows 10 !!) and is actual use just for MS FS 2020 at that moment, so even 16 GB system RAM might be a bit tight.  

 

I'll do some more flights with various monitoring software open soon. EDIT - pls see 'part deux' below

 

  

 

Edited November 1, 2020 by J7SC_Orion

[J7SC_Orion]

Further to the above, I just did some low-flying about (as always, 4K ultra / extra dense) over Metro Vancouver before landing at YVR. Pic 1 shows system RAM 'before and after' (plus GPU VRAM *usage* at bottom right for that flight). BTW, main system RAM is currently 32 GB (I run w/ 64 GB, ie when using NUMA instead of UMA).

 

Also, may be the latest patch (typical:  'Microsoft-Mandatory') added humans running around at airports ? Or was it there before ? Anyway, body language and movement of that chap on the tarmac were extremely impressive !

  

   

 

[ENTERPRISE]

Thanks for the info, useful to know actually. Thanks for going in-depth, still looking forward to this one. Actually, never looked into it but is MS 2020 Ray tracing enabled ?

[UltraMega]

48 minutes ago, ENTERPRISE said:

Thanks for the info, useful to know actually. Thanks for going in-depth, still looking forward to this one. Actually, never looked into it but is MS 2020 Ray tracing enabled ?

Not ray traced. They did mention at some point they plan to add it in but I don't really see why they would need to for this game. The GI is already so good, and there aren't really reflective surfaces besides water but SSR works really well for that in a game like this. 

 

Curious if this game can use both cards vram in sli since it's DX12?

 

Sort of a side rant about ray tracing here, I'm starting to think it's pretty overrated. I think the best usage of it so far was in metro where it was used for better global illumination instead of reflections, but to that point I think SVOGI basically achieves the same GI results so even when used for GI, RT feels overly heavy handed. I just started playing WD legion and clearly they wanted that game to have a lot of reflections with or without RT. Since I have a 1080ti I can't do the RT but even without it I can't imagine the reflections being more crisp would really improve the visuals outside of situations where the player stands still just to admire the reflections specifically. Infact I think when the reflections are as crisp as they usually are in RT games, they look unnaturally clean and mirror like. I'm sure things will improve over time but I'm just as excited about things like HBAO+ and SVOGI lighting effects becoming standards, not to mention the UE5 lighting effects yet to come which also are not based on RT hardware effects.

Edited November 3, 2020 by UltraMega

[Diffident]

Unless there's been a major update since release, it's only DX11.

[J7SC_Orion]

...currently, MS FS 2020 is on DX11. But they have confirmed a 'future' engine upgrade to DX12 Ultimate, which includes ray tracing. I can hardly wait - though in fairness, with the right video settings, MS FS 2020 is already pretty impressive visually with DX11. 

 

Of course, having Vulkan enabled would also be very pleasing (more paths to mGPU and all), but I somehow doubt that Microsoft is rushing to do that  

[J7SC_Orion]

Mt. Waddington & Glacier flying fun

 

After multiple test flights landing on ice, I finally did 'the trip' I was planning to Mount Waddington and its glacier valleys, one of which runs down from 13,000 feet or so to the sea (Knight's Inlet) with not interruption - an awesome sight. I just love the area around Knight's Inlet.

 

Low-level lacier flying is far trickier than I first thought - a lot of shaking due to thermals and temp differences, not to mention winds in the glacier valley. As to landing on a glacier, I found some hard-frozen but smooth stretches at a slight incline to help slow down quickly works best...

 

Per map below, the red dots depict the approach from Knight's Inlet, flying high up over the mountains to Mt. Waddington and almost hitting the service ceiling of the Icon A5...the purple dots show the route down via the glacier valley...

  

 

 

...leaving Knight's Inlet (lower right)

 

  

...gaining altitude (slowly)...

  

  

Mt. Waddington in the distance...

  

  

  

Glacier below...

 

  

Checking out the conditions for landing...

  

  

Yup...

  

   

After departing on zeroing in on the glacier run, I noticed another nice smooth ice field for landing across..

 

  

...on the way there, looking back at Mt. Waddington...

 

  

Now it's time for the low 'flight down' to Knight's Inlet...

 

  

...a lot of shaking due to thermals and wind 'tunnel'...

  

  

...almost there...

 

  

Back at the inlet, ready for a water landing

  

 

 

 

[J7SC_Orion]

...a quick heads-up re. 'Rolling Cache': MS FS 2020 had two big patches last week...one of them changes your rolling cache path back to the original default location by mistake...I ended up with a '0' GB rolling cache, to my great horror.

 

Fortunately, the 200 GB rolling cache I had built up on another M.2 drive was still there. After fixing the path in MS FS / Options / Data and saving the changes, everything got finally back to normal, even after rebooting. 

 

...given various problems other users also have had with Microsoft patches for this sim, you would think they would make these (often giant download) patches NOT mandatory before you can even start up the sim and play again...

  

  

Edited November 11, 2020 by J7SC_Orion

[J7SC_Orion]

...some brief flying in the snow around the neighborhood...after a while, wings etc really do ice up in MS FS 2020 

  

  

  

[ENTERPRISE]

Those be some nice shots bud. Looking forward to when they release DX12 Ultimate for this. Aside from adding the obvious features, would be interesting to see the FPS difference as DX12 Api is a tad more efficient.

 

Also what is the rolling cache ? Is this where the game caches its scenes etc ?

[Andrew]

22 minutes ago, ENTERPRISE said:

Those be some nice shots bud. Looking forward to when they release DX12 Ultimate for this. Aside from adding the obvious features, would be interesting to see the FPS difference as DX12 Api is a tad more efficient.

 

Also what is the rolling cache ? Is this where the game caches its scenes etc ?

Yeah, the entire "map" is 2 petabytes. This is one of the reasons why loading into a new area takes so long the first time. It stores the areas loaded locally for a while, if you don't visit them again it automatically deletes the data downloaded.

Edited November 22, 2020 by Andrew

[schuck6566]

On 10/20/2020 at 3:08 PM, Sir Beregond said:

 

Hmm maybe I'll try it. I wasn't so much concerned about the 4790k as much as I am about the GTX 980.

Reading this thread made me want to know more about the whole minimum/maximum/actual requirements for it. I dug around a bit on line to see what I could find. Went here found some interesting results,https://www.game-debate.com/games/index.php?g_id=35975&game=Microsoft Flight Simulator&p_make=Intel&p_deriv=Core+i7-4770K+4-Core+3.5GHz&gc_make=Nvidia&gc_deriv=GeForce+GTX+980+Gigabyte+XTREME+4GB+Edition&ram=16&screenRes_width_FPS=1920&screenRes_height_FPS=1080&checkSubmit=#systemRequirements

Then from the comments there I took the included screenshot.

[J7SC_Orion]

11 hours ago, ENTERPRISE said:

Those be some nice shots bud. Looking forward to when they release DX12 Ultimate for this. Aside from adding the obvious features, would be interesting to see the FPS difference as DX12 Api is a tad more efficient.

 

Also what is the rolling cache ? Is this where the game caches its scenes etc ?

 

11 hours ago, Andrew said:

Yeah, the entire "map" is 2 petabytes. This is one of the reasons why loading into a new area takes so long the first time. It stores the areas loaded locally for a while, if you don't visit them again it automatically deletes the data downloaded.

 

8 hours ago, schuck6566 said:

Reading this thread made me want to know more about the whole minimum/maximum/actual requirements for it. I dug around a bit on line to see what I could find. Went here found some interesting results,https://www.game-debate.com/games/index.php?g_id=35975&game=Microsoft Flight Simulator&p_make=Intel&p_deriv=Core+i7-4770K+4-Core+3.5GHz&gc_make=Nvidia&gc_deriv=GeForce+GTX+980+Gigabyte+XTREME+4GB+Edition&ram=16&screenRes_width_FPS=1920&screenRes_height_FPS=1080&checkSubmit=#systemRequirements

Then from the comments there I took the included screenshot.

  

Yeah, 'rolling cache' (set to 200GB on my setup) is 'first-in, first-out' for storing scenery etc, and 200 GB is reasonably generous to hold quite a lot. There's also a 'manual cache' which is supposed to be more permanent, and with it you can pre-select areas on a map (with differing levels of details as an option) to load and store on your system locally. However, manual cache had some well-publicized issues early on - and using a big enough rolling cache should suffice / come out to almost the same thing - my 'local flights' are very swift due to the information stored in the rolling cache. Still, after various recent patches by MS for FS 2020, I should revisit the manual cache option as well.

 

As to DX12 vs DX11; I do not expect the visual differences to be overly dramatic (given the superb graphics w/ DX11 already, at 4K/Ultra), but ray tracing could be interesting w/ DX12. Another benefit of DX12 is supposed to be the CPU cores utilization...currently with DX11, a 4C-8T is probably good enough as long as it clocks high, even better: a 6C physical cores high-clock CPU. But beyond that core count, not much to gain. However, I've read that with DX12,  even 8C+ procs will have much better utilization and load distribution. 

 

...and a bit of Arctic flying: Asgard mountain (also of James Bond fame) on Baffin Island

  

  

 

  

  

 

Edited November 23, 2020 by J7SC_Orion

[ENTERPRISE]

12 hours ago, Andrew said:

Yeah, the entire "map" is 2 petabytes. This is one of the reasons why loading into a new area takes so long the first time. It stores the areas loaded locally for a while, if you don't visit them again it automatically deletes the data downloaded.

 

4 hours ago, J7SC_Orion said:

 

 

  

Yeah, 'rolling cache' (set to 200GB on my setup) is 'first-in, first-out' for storing scenery etc, and 200 GB is reasonably generous to hold quite a lot. There's also a 'manual cache' which is supposed to be more permanent, and with it you can pre-select areas on a map (with differing levels of details as an option) to load and store on your system locally. However, manual cache had some well-publicized issues early on - and using a big enough rolling cache should suffice / come out to almost the same thing - my 'local flights' are very swift due to the information stored in the rolling cache. Still, after various recent patches by MS for FS 2020, I should revisit the manual cache option as well.

 

As to DX12 vs DX11; I do not expect the visual differences to be overly dramatic (given the superb graphics w/ DX11 already, at 4K/Ultra), but ray tracing could be interesting w/ DX12. Another benefit of DX12 is supposed to be the CPU cores utilization...currently with DX11, a 4C-8T is probably good enough as long as it clocks high, even better: a 6C physical cores high-clock CPU. But beyond that core count, not much to gain. However, I've read that with DX12,  even 8C+ procs will have much better utilization and load distribution. 

 

...and a bit of Arctic flying: Asgard mountain (also of James Bond fame) on Baffin Island

  

  

 

  

  

 

 

Good info, cheers guys. Figured it had to be something to do with the insane scenery lol.

[J7SC_Orion]

...the caches are really, really helpful, but there are (rarer) limitations at the Azure MS FS 2020 server side. For example, if you fly around a really remote area with structures such as mountains that has very little air traffic, you'll notice a lot more 'tiles filling in' as you go compared to a new flight to a new region (for your system), but one which other folks seem to have crossed multiple times already. 

 

I'm speculating, but figure it must be Azure servers looking for less-often called-up bits from their multi-petabyte global map. I noticed this when I flew to the South Pole, as well as the Arctic...

[schuck6566]

11 hours ago, J7SC_Orion said:

...the caches are really, really helpful, but there are (rarer) limitations at the Azure MS FS 2020 server side. For example, if you fly around a really remote area with structures such as mountains that has very little air traffic, you'll notice a lot more 'tiles filling in' as you go compared to a new flight to a new region (for your system), but one which other folks seem to have crossed multiple times already. 

 

I'm speculating, but figure it must be Azure servers looking for less-often called-up bits from their multi-petabyte global map. I noticed this when I flew to the South Pole, as well as the Arctic...

ROTFL, I can hear you now... 'damn it! I'll take care of that image loading issue once and for all!" (Goes and builds a petabyte storage server...) "Rolling cache issue my ass... "

Edited November 23, 2020 by schuck6566

[Sir Beregond]

On 11/22/2020 at 8:45 AM, schuck6566 said:

Reading this thread made me want to know more about the whole minimum/maximum/actual requirements for it. I dug around a bit on line to see what I could find. Went here found some interesting results,https://www.game-debate.com/games/index.php?g_id=35975&game=Microsoft Flight Simulator&p_make=Intel&p_deriv=Core+i7-4770K+4-Core+3.5GHz&gc_make=Nvidia&gc_deriv=GeForce+GTX+980+Gigabyte+XTREME+4GB+Edition&ram=16&screenRes_width_FPS=1920&screenRes_height_FPS=1080&checkSubmit=#systemRequirements

Then from the comments there I took the included screenshot.

 

Interesting. Thanks for posting this.

 

I do run at 1440p, but if needed maybe I just set it to 1080p.

[J7SC_Orion]

3 hours ago, schuck6566 said:

ROTFL, I can hear you now... 'damn it! I'll take care of that image loading issue once and for all!" (Goes and builds a petabyte storage server...) "Rolling cache issue my ass... "

 

Alternatively, we could try to talk @ENTERPRISE into a 'EHW power giveaway' of a bundle of 20 of these 100 TB SSDs for a 2 petabyte 'MS FS 2020 home server'. They're only US$ 40k a piece, and he might get a volume discount... 

  

[ENTERPRISE]

3 hours ago, J7SC_Orion said:

 

Alternatively, we could try to talk @ENTERPRISE into a 'EHW power giveaway' of a bundle of 20 of these 100 TB SSDs for a 2 petabyte 'MS FS 2020 home server'. They're only US$ 40k a piece, and he might get a volume discount... 

  

Ha! Now that would be a giveaway. Can you imagine that *Starts Saving*

[schuck6566]

4 hours ago, J7SC_Orion said:

 

Alternatively, we could try to talk @ENTERPRISE into a 'EHW power giveaway' of a bundle of 20 of these 100 TB SSDs for a 2 petabyte 'MS FS 2020 home server'. They're only US$ 40k a piece, and he might get a volume discount... 

  

 

1 hour ago, ENTERPRISE said:

Ha! Now that would be a giveaway. Can you imagine that *Starts Saving*

Hmmmm, 1600 sponsors X's $500 = $800,000. (sigh) gotta find a way to cut more corners.... 

[J7SC_Orion]

...or @ENTERPRISE could start selling cute kitten vids on the side to raise extra SSD monies...I understand he likes that sort of kitten thing...

 

Anyway, what with Covid-19 travel and other restrictions, I am sure glad there's my MS FS 2020, always ready to fly me anywhere on earth

  

Spoiler

 

 

  

  

Edited November 24, 2020 by J7SC_Orion

[J7SC_Orion]

...yet another mandatory MS FS 2020 patch (around 13 GB in total)   ...so far, all 'updates and/or patches' are mandatory for MS FS 2020 

 

 Microsoft really should learn not to barge into people's free time at their own home and let them decide when to install updates, instead of this 'mommy knows best' attitude...

[ENTERPRISE]

On 11/24/2020 at 2:26 AM, J7SC_Orion said:

...or @ENTERPRISE could start selling cute kitten vids on the side to raise extra SSD monies...I understand he likes that sort of kitten thing...

 

Anyway, what with Covid-19 travel and other restrictions, I am sure glad there's my MS FS 2020, always ready to fly me anywhere on earth

  

  Reveal hidden contents

 

 

  

  

Kitteh ! 

On 11/27/2020 at 4:46 AM, J7SC_Orion said:

...yet another mandatory MS FS 2020 patch (around 13 GB in total)   ...so far, all 'updates and/or patches' are mandatory for MS FS 2020 

 

 Microsoft really should learn not to barge into people's free time at their own home and let them decide when to install updates, instead of this 'mommy knows best' attitude...

 

Oh man, that blows, something I will have to look forward to is continual downloads lol