Microsoft Flight Simulator X
General tips
- Install FSX Service Pack 1 and FSX Service Pack 2. Both include a staggering number of performance and bug fixes.
- FSX is very CPU-heavy.
- Autogen and traffic generally contribute the most to poor framerate. Lowering the autogen helps the most to improve framerate.
- Considering the above, you may be getting 50FPS up at 35,000ft, but as soon as you start your approach into a dense city, be prepared for your framerate to double down.
- Addons are abundant, but have the potential to harm your installation. Try to install with caution and always back up your original files.
Tweaking your settings
- The built-in framerate lock is good, but external framerate locks seem to yield much better results.
- You will not notice a difference in visuals by lowering your mesh complexity from 100% to 60-70%.
Config file
FSX.cfg is located at:
C:\Users\%USERNAME%\AppData\Microsoft\Flight Simulator X\
Tip: A quick way to get here is by typing %appdata% into the run prompt.
General CFG Tweaks
Turn off the red warning messages
Change the following lines from True to False.
InfoBrakesEnable=False
InfoParkingBrakesEnable=False
InfoPauseEnable=False
InfoSlewEnable=False
InfoStallEnable=False
InfoOverspeedEnable=False
Reduce stutters during turns
Add the following to your CFG file. The default value is 1000000.
[BufferPools]
PoolSize=5000000
Increasing it to 5000000 or 10000000 trades off some of your video memory. However, be warned: On some systems this tweak can cause FPS drops or disoriented graphics.
More precise autogen density
Autogen are the trees and buildings automatically generated by the game engine. They can consume a lot of resources, so you may want to further adjust their abundance beyond the ability of the in-settings slider.
Add the following lines to the [TERRAIN] section of your CFG file. The default values are as shown.
TERRAIN_MAX_AUTOGEN_TREES_PER_CELL=4500
TERRAIN_MAX_AUTOGEN_BUILDINGS_PER_CELL=3000
The absolute maximum value FSX will recognize for either property is 6000. After setting these values, the in-game slider will scale down the values as it's moved toward the left.
Faster texture loading
Change the following value to something higher:
[DISPLAY]
TEXTURE_BANDWIDTH_MULT=400
Reduce blurries
Increase CPU time dedicated to loading this scenery data by adding the following value:
[MAIN]
FIBER_FRAME_TIME_FRACTION=0.33
Increase this value to devote more time to loading. Or reduce the value if you don't have a problem with blurries and want a little more framerate.
This variable determines the amount of CPU time given to loading scenery data as a fraction of the time spent rendering. The default value of 0.33 means that for ever 3 milliseconds spent rendering, FS will give 1 millisecond to the scenery loader.