StormILM
Charter Member
Just wanted to share some observations from my in depth testing so far. First I will cover the general FPS performance. I have posted my system specs before and won’t bore anyone with that again (it’s in the top 3% so I have been told) and my net speed is nearly 500Mbps. After seeing so many reports that even with high end hardware, performance was good to excellent and in some cases, mediocre over highly dense scenery. When I ran over NYC this evening, I used but Live Weather and a selected theme with dense broken clouds and used the A320 Neo as the benchmark aircraft. I have everything set to Ultra 4K and I was getting a solid 30 to 32 FPS with high variations being 38 to 40 and the lowest being 25 to 28. The performance was super smooth without any perceivable stutters & no pauses. I think part of getting the best performance is finding the right balance between the In-Sim Settings and your GPU’s software. I haven’t made many changes to the stock settings for my RTX2080ti other then a few tweaks from DCS users which I used to harmonize a general high performance setting chart for DCS and P3Dv4.5. That being noted, I am happy with the results and even though it’s not 60FPS, without any question, the performance I am getting with this level of detail completely eclipses FSX and P3Dv4.5.
Lastly, I wish to cover the aircraft and scenery bugs. With the Jets, they need significant overhauling to their Flight Dynamic, especially the Thrust and Drag. The Airbus is my favorite, it’s the most stable and they did do a decent job of adding the Fly-By-Wire Protection Systems in. I did a Power-Off Stall scenario which I had full back-stick and idle power. The jet leveled off and the Auto-Throttle System kicked in the prevent the stall from progressing. The bank angle/pitch limiter work well too. While the handling of this model is good, the AoA on Approach is too high. You have to go much faster than the average approach speeds to flatten out the nose high attitude which simply isn't correct. The Autopilot is a bit of a mess, clunky to use and to be honest, a user who may know how the Airbus works in regard to Managed Flight Modes are better off to fly the flight profile in Managed Mode for both the Power Schedule and Flight Path. Word of advice, when using the Flight Planner and then the CDU (FMS), go ahead and add your Departure Runway and Arrival SID/STARs. If you add the Approach in flight, it may try to cycle back around to the previous waypoint or Departure Airfield. Also of note with the Airbus (I haven't tested the other jets for this) but I encountered an old bug going back to FS9 where I had wing-rocking osculations at cruise altitude. I don't know of this is Flight Dynamics related alone or if it was the combination of the Flight Dynamics and the Autopilot coping with a sheer crosswind. At some headings, this issue didn't occur but anything with a full or quartering crosswind, the issue was constant.
At this point, I feel the other jets are practicably useless due to being overpowered/under-drag tabled.
The GA birds to me are a gem. I truly love the Xcub with it’s high and low speed capability and the big moving map nav display and autopilot. I can sight see anywhere in VFR and speed up between the uninteresting terrain and slow down when I want to eyeball something. If the real Xcub wasn’t so outrageous in price, I’d love to own a real one!
The other GA’s are quite nice as well. The Cessna’s remind me of putting around Eastern NC and Virginia in 150's and 172's. I do like the A36 Bonanza as well.
As far as the two Turboprops, I like them both but the King Air has too much INOP gear on it. Last night I flew home from KFLL and started having major icing issues and despite running the de-icing, it was hopeless. I was IFR in a Cave of Ice at 25,000ft! Not sure if the Anti-Icing Switches are tied into actual function in the Sim or not but they didn’t work at all. Hopefully the Devs will update a lot of these models to sort out the glaring issues (some I have noted but am sure there many more others have noted and reported). I realize they are Lite Models as to not overwhelm new users but they could be improved nevertheless.
Lastly, I will briefly touch on the scenery. Overall, it’s stunning but the glaring issues are the elevation of some streets and roads in some cities as well as hilly/mountainous regions. Every now and then I will see odd towers of terrain appear and then disappear bit so far I have only seen the latter a couple of times. Of course there are the bridges, piers/docks and dams which are underwater in many places. Also, with some airports, there are missing buildings and taxiway lights are misplaced across/blocking some taxiways. Of course a lot of this is trivial for the moment but hopefully they will get corrected as well.
I have attached screens of my NVIDIA Shadowplay FPS overlay (hopefully you’ll be able to read them).
Lastly, I wish to cover the aircraft and scenery bugs. With the Jets, they need significant overhauling to their Flight Dynamic, especially the Thrust and Drag. The Airbus is my favorite, it’s the most stable and they did do a decent job of adding the Fly-By-Wire Protection Systems in. I did a Power-Off Stall scenario which I had full back-stick and idle power. The jet leveled off and the Auto-Throttle System kicked in the prevent the stall from progressing. The bank angle/pitch limiter work well too. While the handling of this model is good, the AoA on Approach is too high. You have to go much faster than the average approach speeds to flatten out the nose high attitude which simply isn't correct. The Autopilot is a bit of a mess, clunky to use and to be honest, a user who may know how the Airbus works in regard to Managed Flight Modes are better off to fly the flight profile in Managed Mode for both the Power Schedule and Flight Path. Word of advice, when using the Flight Planner and then the CDU (FMS), go ahead and add your Departure Runway and Arrival SID/STARs. If you add the Approach in flight, it may try to cycle back around to the previous waypoint or Departure Airfield. Also of note with the Airbus (I haven't tested the other jets for this) but I encountered an old bug going back to FS9 where I had wing-rocking osculations at cruise altitude. I don't know of this is Flight Dynamics related alone or if it was the combination of the Flight Dynamics and the Autopilot coping with a sheer crosswind. At some headings, this issue didn't occur but anything with a full or quartering crosswind, the issue was constant.
At this point, I feel the other jets are practicably useless due to being overpowered/under-drag tabled.
The GA birds to me are a gem. I truly love the Xcub with it’s high and low speed capability and the big moving map nav display and autopilot. I can sight see anywhere in VFR and speed up between the uninteresting terrain and slow down when I want to eyeball something. If the real Xcub wasn’t so outrageous in price, I’d love to own a real one!
The other GA’s are quite nice as well. The Cessna’s remind me of putting around Eastern NC and Virginia in 150's and 172's. I do like the A36 Bonanza as well.
As far as the two Turboprops, I like them both but the King Air has too much INOP gear on it. Last night I flew home from KFLL and started having major icing issues and despite running the de-icing, it was hopeless. I was IFR in a Cave of Ice at 25,000ft! Not sure if the Anti-Icing Switches are tied into actual function in the Sim or not but they didn’t work at all. Hopefully the Devs will update a lot of these models to sort out the glaring issues (some I have noted but am sure there many more others have noted and reported). I realize they are Lite Models as to not overwhelm new users but they could be improved nevertheless.
Lastly, I will briefly touch on the scenery. Overall, it’s stunning but the glaring issues are the elevation of some streets and roads in some cities as well as hilly/mountainous regions. Every now and then I will see odd towers of terrain appear and then disappear bit so far I have only seen the latter a couple of times. Of course there are the bridges, piers/docks and dams which are underwater in many places. Also, with some airports, there are missing buildings and taxiway lights are misplaced across/blocking some taxiways. Of course a lot of this is trivial for the moment but hopefully they will get corrected as well.
I have attached screens of my NVIDIA Shadowplay FPS overlay (hopefully you’ll be able to read them).