Can I Run This Puppy?

[Mac6737]

I am delighted with P3Dv.4.5 and much add-on Orbx scenery, and had not wanted to mess around with MFS2020 just yet, thinking there would be bugs, fixes, etc., for a good year or so.

 

Then someone gave me a link to the DL for my birthday! So, I have 2 questions:

 

1. Can I run it with reasonable performance? --

 

Core i7-8700K, 3.7 GHz

GeForce GTX 1070 Ti

AORUS Z370 5LGA motherboard

16 GB 2 X 8GB DDR4-2400

MSI 27" LED gaming monitor

 

2. Can I put the DL onto an external hard drive, and run it off that?

 

Thanks all,

 

Mac6737

[CRJ_simpilot]

Yeah, your computer should do it, not too sure about the offline usage question though as I don't run the game right now.

[data65]

Yes you can! I have this thing fully maxed and it runs smooth as silk. I am only running it in 1080p though. Here are my specs:

AMD Rysen 2700x at stock speed

Gigabyte Aorus X470 Gaming WiFi MB

EVGA GTX 1070ti Black Edition

32 Gigs of Corsair RGB ram

Asus 27" Monitor

 

As you can see our systems are very similar.You may want to add 16 more gigs of RAM. As for the hard drive just make sure it is an SSD. The game will load your rolling cache onto your C drive but you can change that as well.

[Mac6737]

Yes you can! I have this thing fully maxed and it runs smooth as silk. I am only running it in 1080p though.

 

OK, I'll try it -- some day. Meanwhile, what do you mean by "1080p"? That is not a screen resolution, is it?

[loki]

Yes you can! I have this thing fully maxed and it runs smooth as silk. I am only running it in 1080p though.

 

OK, I'll try it -- some day. Meanwhile, what do you mean by "1080p"? That is not a screen resolution, is it?

 

1080p refers to a screen resolution of 1920x1080 progressive. Basically the standard resolution for HD TVs. Next step up is typically 1440p, or 2560x1440, and then 4k which is 3840x2160.

[Mac6737]

1080p refers to a screen resolution of 1920x1080 progressive. Basically the standard resolution for HD TVs. Next step up is typically 1440p, or 2560x1440, and then 4k which is 3840x2160.

 

O I C. We use the smaller number as shorthand. I now run P3D in what I guess we call "1440."

 

I'll impose by asking a follow-up Q: The Graphics menu in P3D (and I believe FSX) gives you a choice of "Texture Resolutions," expressed as squares: 4096 x 4096 ("Ultra"), 2048 x 2048 ("High"), 1024 x 1024 ("Medium"), etc. So what is the relationship of "screen resolution" to "texture resolution"?

 

Thanks for your help, loki.

 

Mac6737

[DominicS]

I am delighted with P3Dv.4.5 and much add-on Orbx scenery, and had not wanted to mess around with MFS2020 just yet, thinking there would be bugs, fixes, etc., for a good year or so.

 

Then someone gave me a link to the DL for my birthday! So, I have 2 questions:

 

1. Can I run it with reasonable performance? --

 

Core i7-8700K, 3.7 GHz

GeForce GTX 1070 Ti

AORUS Z370 5LGA motherboard

16 GB 2 X 8GB DDR4-2400

MSI 27" LED gaming monitor

 

2. Can I put the DL onto an external hard drive, and run it off that?

 

Thanks all,

 

Mac6737

 

You're absolutely good to go with that setup:D!

 

However...for an even better (smoother) experience, I would definitely upgrade to 32GB at some point.

[a-baum]

This sim seems to be pretty system friendly, or at least you can scale it down to run. I am running it on custom/medium on a Lenovo Yoga 15" with core i9, 16GB memory, and a GeForce GTX 1650 with 4gb memory. Runs pretty good. I'd have to spend a pretty penny to have significantly upgraded graphics.

[data65]

O I C. We use the smaller number as shorthand. I now run P3D in what I guess we call "1440."

 

I'll impose by asking a follow-up Q: The Graphics menu in P3D (and I believe FSX) gives you a choice of "Texture Resolutions," expressed as squares: 4096 x 4096 ("Ultra"), 2048 x 2048 ("High"), 1024 x 1024 ("Medium"), etc. So what is the relationship of "screen resolution" to "texture resolution"?

 

Thanks for your help, loki.

 

Mac6737

 

Texture resolution simply means that the texture used is bigger and thus has more detail. It has no relationship to screen resolution. Be aware that the larger texture resolutions may impact performance.

[Mac6737]

Texture resolution simply means that the texture used is bigger and thus has more detail. It has no relationship to screen resolution. Be aware that the larger texture resolutions may impact performance.

 

Not to belabor the point, loki, but I don't see how texture res can have "no relationship" to screen res. Both affect the sharpness of the image seen on the screen, right? I know that higher texture res may impact performance, but you yourself warn that your "smooth a silk" MSFS2020 is realized at only 1080p screen res. I took that to mean that higher screen res may also affect performance, right?

 

In another forum (Orbx), I've complained about poor performance in certain high res sceneries (TrueEarth), and was advised to try lowering my texture res to 1024 ("medium") from 4096 ("ultra"). That helped a lot. And I also tried running P3D in 1080p. Terrible! Blurry and at least as much stutter and low FPS as in 1440.

 

In any event, as I said, someone gave me a MSFS2020 download for my birthday last week. So I'll try it, first at full strength, and I'll go to 1080 if necessary. (Assuming I can get through the install, that is.)

 

Mac6737

[loki]

Not to belabor the point, loki, but I don't see how texture res can have "no relationship" to screen res. Both affect the sharpness of the image seen on the screen, right? I know that higher texture res may impact performance, but you yourself warn that your "smooth a silk" MSFS2020 is realized at only 1080p screen res. I took that to mean that higher screen res may also affect performance, right?

 

In another forum (Orbx), I've complained about poor performance in certain high res sceneries (TrueEarth), and was advised to try lowering my texture res to 1024 ("medium") from 4096 ("ultra"). That helped a lot. And I also tried running P3D in 1080p. Terrible! Blurry and at least as much stutter and low FPS as in 1440.

 

Did you mean to quote me? It looks like you are replying to multiple posts from others.

 

Both texture resolution and screen resolution will affect performance and image quality, but in different ways and are not directly related. Screen resolution is only about the displaying the final image on your monitor. Higher screen resolutions mean your GPU has to process more pixels, which requires more processing power, VRAM and memory bandwidth. This is completely independent of what the image is.

 

1920 x 1080 = 2,073,600 pixels

2560 x 1440 = 3,686,400 pixels

3840 x 2160 = 8,294,400 pixels

 

As you can see, the number of pixels climbs pretty dramatically when you get to 4k.

 

With LCD monitors the sharpest image will be displayed using the monitor's native resolution. Running at 1080p on a 1440p monitor typically means the lower 1080p image has to be stretched or scaled to fill the screen (unless you play with the settings to keep the image centred and not scaled).

 

Texture resolution refers to the textures that are used when initially rendering the image. Higher resolutions will basically produce sharper and more detailed images to render. Higher texture resolutions do also require more power from the GPU, similar to screen resolution. Lowering the resolution lessens the amount of data the GPU has to process when rendering the image to be displayed, sometimes significantly.

 

1024 x 1024 = 1,048,576

4096 x 4096 = 16,777,216

 

The higher resolutions are going to put a lot more pressure on memory.

 

Where screen and texture resolutions cross paths is when looking at the final image. At higher screen resolutions, especially when you get to 4k, lower texture resolutions will become very obvious. On the flip side, using high resolution textures with a low screen resolution is a bit of a waste as the difference in detail isn't nearly as obvious, unless you get very close to the object. However, they are still independent of each other.

 

Here's an article with some good examples.

 

https://tay.kinja.com/screen-resolution-vs-texture-resolution-a-point-wort-1786369820