If you've recently installed a scenery from Aerosoft.com to Microsoft Flight Simulator and are having performance issues when flying to or starting at an airport, there are some steps you can take to try and resolve the issue.
CHECK YOUR SYSTEM SPECIFICATIONS
Addon scenery can have higher performance requirements than the default Microsoft Flight Simulator requirements. You can check the requirements of a scenery on the Aerosoft.com Store by navigating to the products page, and then clicking the "System Requirements" tab under the preview pictures.
If your system meets the requirements, proceed to the steps below. If your system does not meet the requirements, it's unlikely you'll be able to achieve adequate performance per our testing, however, you can still try the steps below.
CLEAR YOUR SIMULATORS ROAMING CACHE
In some cases, your simulators roaming cache could be causing performance issues, epically if it's caching in an older version of the scenery. You can clear your simulators' scenery cache by following the steps here.
CHANGE CONFIGURABLE OPTIONS WITHIN AEROSOFT ONE (NON MARKETPLACE PURCHASES)
Some scenery products have configurable options within Aerosoft One, which will allow you to adjust certain scenery features. This can often help with performance at performance heavy scenery. If a product has this option available, you will see a "configure" button next to the product entry in your Aerosoft One library tab.
We recommend trying out each setting so you can find out which settings work best for your system.
CHECK FOR OVERLAPPING SCENERY
Having multiple addons for a single airport, either downloaded from the in-game marketplace, or 3rd party sites, can cause performance issues, as two versions of an airport will be loaded at once. This can also cause issues such as overlapping textures or uneven terrain.
Microsoft Flight Simulator also includes some enhanced airports by default, such as EDDF, which act as standalone airports which this issue can occur with.
To resolve this issue, use the in-game content manager by going to Profile → Content Manager on the simulators main menu screen, and search for the airport you are having performance issues at. Ensure that only one entry shows as installed. If you see multiple entries, click on the non Aerosoft product and select "Delete". If the addon is installed via the community folder, you will need to manually delete it.
SWITCH TO "HIGH PERFORMANCE" POWER SETTINGS IN WINDOWS
- Select Start > Settings > System > Power & battery > Screen and sleep.
- Click on Additional Power settings
- Change to High-Performance Power Plan or create a custom Power Plan
- Perform a Full Shutdown of the computer (Turn off the PC, do not select "Restart").
CHANGE YOUR GRAPHICS SETTINGS
An easy way to boost performance is to tweak graphic settings. You can do this by launching Microsoft Flight Simulator and going to Options > General options > Graphics
We recommend adjusting the following options:
- Render Scaling (80 or below instead of 100)
- Terrain Level of Detail
- Object Level of Detail
Additionally, Under 'Advanced Settings', test FXAA instead of TAA.
[Advanced] INCREASE THE VIRTUAL MEMORY (PAGEFILE) ON YOUR SYSTEM
A pagefile allows a portion of your PC's storage to act as an extension of your system's RAM. This can sometimes help with performance improvements in MSFS.
- In the Windows Search bar, type Advanced system settings and open the Control Panel.
- Make sure you're on the Advanced tab.
- Click the Settings button from under the Performance
- On the Performance Options box, go to the Advanced tab > Performance
- Click on Settings
- On the Virtual Memory box, uncheck the Automatically manage paging file size for all drives
- Click to select the drive on which Windows 10 is installed (by default C:)
- Click to select the Custom size radio button.
- In the now-enabled fields, type the minimum and maximum size of the Pagefile in megabytes (MB) according to the physical memory present in your computer.
- Click Set and then click OK.
- Restart your computer.