Flight Sims

[Rare White Ape]

On the subject of crashes:

Last night I had an hours-long session in the game with absolutely no CTDs. I hadn’t seen any updates for FS come through, but I did update a security patch and restarted Windows sometime earlier in the afternoon before playing.

The only other change was that I adjusted the recommended Nvidia video card settings that were mentioned in JayzTwoCents’ video (Game Mode was already on in Windows). Interestingly, I thought they were already configured this way, because the same YouTuber has already done a video in the past explaining the exact same topic and I set up by PC like that months ago. The settings might have been turned off in a video card update so I’ll keep an eye on them in the future.

So… happy flying for me, finally.

[Tom Servo]

Nice! I hope that luck stays.

For some reason I don't see much in the way of updates when I check the Windows store update history. Makes me wonder what other weird way that this works - as it is, it's unlike any other Microsoft store install I have in that I can actually see the folders.

[Rare White Ape]

I flew an A320 from Auckland to Wellington. There are two mountains on the Aotearoa landscape that stand out: Taranaki and Ruapehu, and the flight path just happens to go bang between the two of them.

It’s fascinating because the two mountains can be seen just on the southern horizon from Auckland, and just on the northern horizon from Wello, and you can use it as a gauge for your trip across the island.

But also, how fucken small is New Zealand! Crazy. I’ve ridden a motorcycle further than that trip in one day.

[Rare White Ape]

Another crash.

Something I'd forgotten: I've had my TV set to 1080/120Hz mode last night.

Switch it back to 4K - no change in visual settings, and it crashed. Prior to that the framerate was choppy in a downtown area until it eventually froze.

The error dialog says "The instruction at 0x00007FFFE4C616E9 referenced memory at 0x000000000000. The memory could not be written."

Googling 0x00007fffe4c616e9 brings up zero results.

[Tom Servo]

That's a weird memory reference. Almost sounds like a nil pointer.

[Rare White Ape]

OK after further mucking around, here's something fucking weird for you:

I've observed this in ACC before. If I switch my desktop resolution to 1080/120Hz I get a much higher and more stable framerate. And Flight Sim appears to be displaying at 4K when I launch it in this mode. It's smooth as butter with most gameplay running at a smidge over 60fps.

So, to drill deeper, my CPU is an i5-9600K OC to 4.5GHz, the GPU is an RTX 2070 FE with mild OC as well, and 16GB of 3000MHz DDR4 RAM.

Everything updated to latest drivers, etc.

I play FS with high preset setting but a few small things bumped up slightly to ultra (reflections, ocean waves, etc) and haven't gone any way into optimising it yet so I'll leave it as-is. I set resolution to 3840x2160 with a 50% resolution scale (I've been lowering it in an effort to gain stability before these latest developments) so it's effectively running at 1080p internal res with 4K upscale and a 60fps frame cap.

1) If I play the game set as above at native 4K/60 desktop, it looks nice but often chugs along with poor frame pacing at 30-60fps and constantly crashes.

2) If I change desktop res to 1080/120 but keep the game res at 4K with 50% res scale it appears to still upscale to 4K, looks very sharp, and runs with a framerate over 60fps 95% of the time, with no lower than 50fps seen when I swing the camera around wildly or when loading scenery tiles. It hasn't crashed once even in the few long play sessions I've had.

3) If I play at native res but set the game resolution to 1080p (still with 50% res scale - effectively 540p) it chugs along just like before and looks muddy as hell with low resolution graphics.

I could test more scenarios or take videos and screenshots but fuck it, if it works in this configuration and looks crisp, then I'll not complain too much.

[Rare White Ape]

In other news, I took a flight around Oahu and it reminded me of how much fun Test Drive Unlimited 2 was.

And you know what?

The island is probably more detailed in FS2020 and the developers would've hardly lifted a finger to include it in their game

[JSGeneral]

This is great!

[Yobbo NZ]

Seems to be my turn to get crashes now.
Couldn't even load into the world twice and 3rd attempt, it didn't make it past the loading screen.
I'm wondering if it's something to do with the gamepass version.

[Rare White Ape]

Someone's been playing Flight Sim.