787: MSFS Performance Hit By FIPs Q&A

A friend, Lonn in the US, who emailed me with some questions regarding MSFS performance hit he encountered lately after he got his 7th Logitech FIP and my C172 CMP+Annunciator.  I think his case is worth a post to clear up some queries among those who are building their home cockpits with FIPs.

His questions here:

How many Fips do you run? I am getting a 7th and have noticed lately that my cpu usage is getting high on the Logiflightsimulator.exe or Logitech exe for the panels.

I also noticed certain gauges use more CPU intensive. Like the new Cessna 172 CMP I just bought from you seems to use alot of cpu compared to another asi gauge etc. How do you deal with it.

If I turn off the logitech panel drivers altogether I get better fps since the cpu isn’t bogged down. I know you run alot of panels and wondered how you work around this?

It seems the more complex the gauge set the more cpu that logitech exe takes up. Like the CH701 takes up nothing. But you start getting the eng on the 172 along with the hsi and the new cmp and the cpu usage is very high.

Man I am going to have to start planning my gauges around cpu usage. Any advise? Do you have this issue?

My answers:

773: MSFS Multi-Monitor Setup

One of the features I missed the most after moving to MSFS from P3d is the 3-monitor setup.  I believe many friends feel the same.

A friend, KaseLite, who told me in an earlier email saying that he is running MSFS on three PCs with Wideview and the result is very good.  But he admitted that the approach isn’t economical.  Besides the hardware cost, you need to buy the same flight simulator, aircrafts and addons for all machines.

Nevertheless, KaseLite says that the graphics are the best this way.  You can run all machines at maximum solution.

Here’s a demonstration video of his 3-monitor MSFS setup KaseLite took upon my request to share with other friends here.   Thank you.

Builder: KaseLite
Aircraft: N333ZS
Home Airport: KSBA, Santa Barbara Municipal Airport

Project Notes:

752: KB5007262 crashes MSFS

WARNING:
If you are running Windows 11, be careful with the recent Cumulative Update (KB5007262).

My MSFS crashed to desktop after 5 to 10 minutes running.

I can confirm that on my system since I experienced the same situation twice in the last few days.

The first time was last Friday,

751: MY SU7 GRAPHICS SETTING UPDATE

My graphics setting in MSFS has been changed accordingly to the recent SU7 and Game of the Year (GOTY) update.  Improvements are seen in general.
Regarding the highly anticipated DX12, although the overall image quality with the new feature is enhanced and refined, and framerate seems affected very little only; unfortunately, it does brings frequent micro-stutters in many locations.  So DX11 is kept to be my choice.

748: Windows 11 – It’s Good

Just upgraded one of my computers to Windows 11 today.  I wouldn’t say it’s perfect.  But I am impressed !
Frankly, I was a bit hesitated since I heard pros and cons from the Internet.  So before the process, I backed up my whole system just in case something goes wrong.

Despite the Apple mac-like centered taskbar and new layout designs, all programs on my computer generally start a lot faster than what they are with Windows 10.

Both MSFS and X-Plane 11 start up a lot quicker.  They run smoother with some frame-rate improvements, too.   

735: My SU6 Settings with AN RTX3080 Ti

As the price of graphics cards goes down a bit lately, I decided to replace my 3-year-old GTX1080 Ti card with an RTX3080 Ti card last week.  I was planning to get the ASUS ROG version but it was out of stock and no schedule for next shipment at that moment. So I got the TUF edition instead. 

Frankly, with 12GB GDDR6X memory and a 1,755MHz over-clock rate, it is still a very powerful card to be used in MSFS for the next few years…I guess.
In general, I got an extra 75% to more than double the framerates with the new card straight from the box.  Not to mention I pushed many settings to Ultra in the Sim.

Here’s the update of my Graphics Settings in SU6 with the new card.  And I listed the framerates I roughly got from various activities and locations at the bottom of the table.

733: A Possible SU6 Fix to Store Users

While I was staying up late downloading the SU6 in the middle of the night, I received an email from John H. Helms saying that he couldn’t get his MSFS (Store version) updated to SU6.

He said the Sim notified him there was an update and took him to the Store.  But there was no update option at all.

He tried resetting the MS Store and logging off the Store, rebooting computer, and logging on again.  Neither worked.   He added that all previous updates worked without any problem.

While he was a bit confused about it all, he thought he did the followings to get the update eventually:

732: SU6 IS Good

After spending about 2.5 hours completing the SU6 Update, I played with it for 30 minutes with all addons and settings I last used in SU5.   Although I couldn’t tell what differences are exactly made, I am pretty impressed that the SU6 is quite good.

Regarding the update process,

727: I Gave My PC a Little Push

Probably like most of you, I don’t deliberately overclock my computer even though the hardware I got are OC-capable.  Normally I just leave it to the BIOS to auto tweak the computer a bit by default.

Surely this is fine as our systems can run to spec stably.

Unfortunately, no difference from other flight simulators, the MSFS 2020 performs better on better performing computers.

Therefore I lately further enabled XMP, thru which I got about 8-10 fps increase in MSFS by pushing the DDR4 RAM from standard 2400MHz to its rated 3200MHz.  That’s not insignificant I dare say.