X-Plane 11.50 Benchmarks with Metal

[Janichsan]

Does anyone know where I could find benchmarks of the recently released X-Plane 11.50 under macOS using the new Metal renderer? Or has anyone tested it themselves?

I tried searching the web, but I can only find benchmarks for Windows and Linux with Vulkan.

 

[Tornado16]

Does anyone know where I could find benchmarks of the recently released X-Plane 11.50 under macOS using the new Metal renderer? Or has anyone tested it themselves?

I tried searching the web, but I can only find benchmarks for Windows and Linux with Vulkan.

I’ve been running it and managed to up my settings significantly. On the same pre metal settings it gave me over 10 FPS increase. So I kept my FPS the same and moved the sliders higher.

With a new 27 inch iMac, 10 core i9, Radeon Pro 5700 XT, 64 GB RAM, SSD and running 11.5 with Metal and Orbx True Earth scenery I’ve been able to push all the sliders to the right - Visual Effects & Texture Quality both on max, Antialiasing on 4x SSAA+FXAA, Anisotropic on 4 x. World Object on max, Reflection minimal, Parked Aircraft & Shadows both ticked.

This gives me 40 FPS over countryside and 30 FPS over dense cities like London. A great improvement over Open GL.

 

[Janichsan]

I’ve been running it and managed to up my settings significantly. On the same pre metal settings it gave me over 10 FPS increase. So I kept my FPS the same and moved the sliders higher.
...

This gives me 40 FPS over countryside and 30 FPS over dense cities like London. A great improvement over Open GL.

That doesn't sound quite as impressive as some of the reports I've seen about the performance with Vulkan, but it's hard to judge without actual benchmarks on the same (or comparable) hardware. Anyway, any improvement is welcome.

Did you run into any issues with incompatible extensions/add-ons? Many add-ons seem to require updates to work with Vulkan, but I have yet to see one mentioning having been updated to support Metal.

 

[Tornado16]

Did you run into any issues with incompatible extensions/add-ons? Many add-ons seem to require updates to work with Vulkan, but I have yet to see one mentioning having been updated to support Metal.

It is quite impressive given that I’m getting those frame rates with settings virtually maxed out.

No compatibility issues at all. But most aircraft had updates as a result of 11.5 so those would have fixed any potential issues.

Performance wise it’s streets ahead of MSFS 2020! And whatever anyone says about the eye candy of the scenery in the new flight sim, it’s still not a patch on Orbx TE where you get the right buildings/roads/railways in the right places for true VFR flying.

 

[Janichsan]

Performance wise it’s streets ahead of MSFS 2020!

From my understanding, most performance issues in MSFS 2020 are due to the scenery streaming over the internet. That's the advantage of having the scenery fully local. (But hat's a different discussion.)

 

[Tornado16]

From my understanding, most performance issues in MSFS 2020 are due to the scenery streaming over the internet. That's the advantage of having the scenery fully local. (But hat's a different discussion.)

Yet with a solid 200Mbps internet connection and a 16GB graphics card it still comes up as GPU limited when all its using is 4GB of GPU memory. Admittedly the graphics drivers for the 5700 XT are new and not optimised for MSFS (although new ones arrived yesterday), but X-Plane can ‘fill its boots’ with memory whist MSFS continues to struggle.