Microsoft Flight Simulator performance with DLSS 3
Nvidia DLSS 3 support has been added to Microsoft Flight Simulator in the latest update. This bypasses CPU limits and allows running at triple-digit fps thanks to “frame generation” techniques. Flying is now more comfortable, smoother, although there is one rather significant limitation – you need to own one of the graphics cards with an Ada Lovelace GPU. Older GeForce RTX generations unfortunately don’t support DLSS 3.
Nvidia DLSS 3 for Microsoft Flight Simulator is already “finished ” (out of beta) and it is already a public thing. On Steam and MS Store. MSFS is one of the most dynamically changing games and its current form is once again hitting CPU limits. That is, if you own a more powerful graphics card. You can see this in the RTX 4080 Suprim X tests, where there is only a minimal difference in fps across 1080p and 2160p resolutions at Ultra details.
Under normal circumstances (without CPU limitations), the game would be significantly faster in Full HD. In UHD (2160p) an average of 60 fps may not be enough for some, and even lower minimum fps is also annoying. To improve this situation Flight Simulator finally gets DLSS and right away in version 3 with the new feature of “frame generation”, which adds frames without higher demands on the CPU.
How frame generation works is discussed in this article. For the purposes of this test, it is also worth noting that this feature can be combined not only with traditional DLSS 2.x upscaling techniques (the Q, B, P, and UP stand for Quality, Balanced, Performance, and Ultra Performance scaling levels, respectively), but also with TAA or Nvidia DLAA.
Or you may not use Anti-Aliasing at all. Whatever you choose, with DLSS frame generation active, the frame rate will always approximately double. In order to enable frame generation in the game at all, you need to enable hardware GPU acceleration in the operating system settings (Start/Settings/System/Display/Graphics Settings/Hardware-accelerated GPU scheduling).
Test platform custom scene (Paris-Charles de Gaulle, Air Traffic: AI, February 14, 9:00 am) autopilot: from 1000 until hitting the terrain; API DirectX 11, graphics settings preset Ultra; extra settings: AMD FidelityFX sharpening 0.
The results above are obtained by testing according to standard graphics card test methodology (with the AMD Ryzen 9 5900X processor). The graphics card used is the MSI RTX 4080 Suprim X with Nvidia 526.98 Game Ready drivers.
English translation and edit by Jozef Dudáš
