Flight Simulators engines and FPS

[gerod]

Hello,

I’m not a specialist and I would like to get some basic explanations relative to the link between flight simulators engines and the FPS. I have not found simple articles on the Web.
I use most simulators of the market (FSX SE, P3Dv4, XP11, AFS2, FSW) and now FFS. I have been impressed by the fluidity of FFS and FPS greater than 100.

As a general rule FPS is dependent on the mesh/scenery and plane quality/complexity. I have observed it was not the case for AFS2 and I hope also for FFS in the future as I guess both have similar engines (it is a question).

It is quite different for FSX, P3D and also for XP11 although the dependence is less pronounced. I know there is also a dependence with settings but because of my configuration (not too bad now but for how long time?) most sliders are on the right.

It would be great to have some simple explanations, if possible, relative to this complex subject.
Thank you very much.
Best regards
gerod

[admin]

Hi Gerod,

This is a really tough question to answer because you could go really deeply into it. Every engine uses a different base graphics API (DirectX 11, DX 9, OpenGL, Vulkan, etc), every engine uses different graphical rendering techniques on your GPU (deferred vs forward, 16-bit vs 32-bit render targets), every engine uses different CPU techniques and prioritizes different things on the CPU to drive your GPU. I really can't give a great answer here because it's such a deep question.

As far as FFS goes, you can expect FPS/performance to stay roughly where it is as we improve graphics. Right now we're actually drawing a large number of meshes, and wasting a lot of polygons. We just aren't using all of those triangles and textures very efficiently. We'll be able to show much nicer looking scenery with the similar utilization as we improve the artwork (and improve the underlying subsystems). It won't be exactly the same, but this isn't going to suddenly be as resource demanding as other sims just because it looks better. We even have some plans to decrease CPU utilization.

Thanks,
Dan

[gerod]

Hello,
Thank you for explanations. I understand it is not possible to give more details, but it is very helpful for me as you have listed the main points and I can now investigate on each of these points.
I retain that further improvements should not impact too much the actual performances and that is very important regarding my experience of older simulators engines.
Best regards
gerod