Hardware recommendations: Difference between revisions

You may also want to check out the following article on building your own FlightGear box based on decommissioned and refurbished server at [[Howto: Build a cheap FlightGear box]], and also learn about how the FlightGear project handles old hardware support at [[FlightGear and old Hardware]] - see [[Minimal Startup Profile]].

Before selecting a GPU and CPU have a look at the benchmark lists in the [[Hardware recommendations#Mostly high and Max settings with 2015.2B mid range GPU|profile]] below for an approximate idea of performance. If you are choosing a laptop see the manufacturers website for that model to find out your GPU and CPU, and check the list. Remember the slowest component will be the limiting component. For example: if you want high graphics but your GPU is slow, having a very fast CPU will not help. Higher resolutions needs faster GPUs, you can't run FlightGear at 4k woith a laptop if your manufacturer has not included a fast 3d card even if they have included a fast GPU - you need to run FlightGear at lower resolution or find a laptop with faster GPU. If you run out of RAM then you cannot have really high visibility ranges or object densities even if your GPU and CPU is fast. The tips in the sections below about avoiding Intel integrated GPUs, mobile laptop GPUs, and low range NVIDIA GPUs (xx10, xx20, xx30, xx40) apply.

For flight simulators the usage can vary depending on the craft used, how the craft is used, and over what scenery the craft is used. The visibility range can change with altitude, how fast the scenery is loaded can change with speeds. How complex the visuals are depends on how much vegetation or man-made buildings are in the visible scenery. The following all place different demands: slow and low with a balloon/[[pterosaur]]/glider/wingsuit/ground effect vehicle, slightly faster and higher in a single prop [[Cessna 172P|C172P]]/[[Cessna 182S|C182]]/[[Piper J3 Cub|Cub]]/[[Piper PA28 Warrior II|PA]], fast and low in a supersonic [[Saab 37 Viggen|Viggen]]/[[Grumman F-14 Tomcat|F-14]] jet, higher altitude but slower in a [[Airbus A320 Family|A320]] airliner, fast and high in a Concorde, extremely fast and high in suborbital craft like the [[X-15]] , or using a [[Space Shuttle|Shuttle]] or [[Vostok-1]] space craft that is fast enough to reach orbit. View distances can vary from [[:File:EC135 Heer.jpeg|individual grass blades]] in airport keep to seeing [[:Category:Screenshots of Earthview|entire continents]] from orbit using an orbital renderer. Flying over a dense forest can mean [[:File:Alouette-lll over the Carpathian Mountains in Romania in Autumn (Flightgear 2018.x).jpg|vast]] amounts of trees are in view, while flying over a barren desert or ocean can mean there are few objects. You can always fly with a lower scenery loading distance and/or a lower visibility distance. A cloudless day can mean there are fewer clouds to draw and also may be lighter on CPU to simulate as Advanced Weather tracks lifecyles of individual clouds. On very old systems turning down cloud density and visibility range can help - as can turning off parts of the Advanced Weather simulation, or using basic weather. If you are flying at night using instruments for navigation, you can turn down graphics settings a lot :) . Different craft place different demands on CPU and GPU. Some craft have detailed electrical, electronic, and mechanical systems which are demanding on the CPU to simulate, while a craft like a glider does not. Some craft have high fidelity graphics and complex electronic displays - these can be demanding on the CPU and loading times, not just the GPU!. Some craft have options to reduce graphics. Some craft have options to reduce CPU usage by making parts of the simulation less responsive or less fine-grained - but these craft tend to be craft which are demanding on the CPU to start with.  

Tip: If you have a slow GPU or CPU, you may be able to find craft that are less demanding for your bottleneck. Different aspects of craft can be demanding on the GPU or CPU - systems & instruments, aircraft interior art, aircraft exterior art, or flight dynamics model (FDM). For example, some craft may have detailed systems and instruments but have simple interior art. Some research projects just produce a flight dynamics model with no art and simple systems. Don't worry about the CPU time taken by the flight dynamics model - it isn't really heavy on CPU to simulate - think of an offline flight dynamics engine like JSBSim as a photo viewer for digital fine-art - it may take hours, days or weeks to render a fine-art quality ray-traced [https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Tpe10-bloom-f25-l7-1920.jpg digital image] but your web browser can display it very quickly - similarly JSBSim can take the results of computational fluid dynamics done on a supercomputing cluster, or taken from windtunnel data, and simulate quite quickly. Tip: You can use the filter in <code>[[FlightGear Qt launcher|FlightGear Qt Launcher]] > Air craft tab > Browse > Filter using ratings > click Adjust minimum ratings</code> to lower minimum ratings and look for craft which have e.g. good systems and flight dynamics model but simpler art - but this only gives a ''small'' clue - some craft like a glider may not have much systems to simulate or have a simple model so they are not demanding even when recreated in detail.