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FSX Play v1.11.1.2 (Foresight) PC Perfomance Results

Published on September 3, 2024

Article Overview

Foresight released FSX Play in 2022, and it has received many updates for courses and improved performance since that time. This article dives into the most recent release of FSX Play, how it performs on current PC hardware, and what you should know when deciding what technology you will need for the best experience in FSX Play.

FSX Play Driving Range

Getting Started

So you're considering a Foresight launch monitor. With recent collaborations, you can license your device to use with a wider set of software options than previously available. Odds are good, however, your first software to consider will still be Foresight's FSX Play software, not the least of which because it is generally included with your hardware purchase. In this case, you'll want to know what is needed before you go ahead and purchase any old computer to run FSX Play.

When FSX Play was released, it was a bit rough around the edges, requiring top end hardware for a playable experience. Thankfully, due to software iterations from Foresight and hardware improvements from PC parts manufacturers, the barrier to entry has come way down. We will highlight the improvements in this article. The positive is that optimizations have made the software very playable for even our entry level systems, but it takes some extra tweaking in the software settings, and some visual tradeoffs depending on what you choose for your setup.

Those of you reading this article who have lived in the PC video game world will not be terribly surprised by the amount of data in the following graphs. As stated in the previous paragraph, Foresight offers a lot of graphics setting options which can be adjusted for various performance results. To help digest the large amount of data we have accumulated for this article, we will start by showing the performance results for 1080P resolution displays. We will then break down the performance for 4K resolution displays for those looking to run on the latest display hardware.

1080P Resolution Performance Numbers

We have two more graphs to show you for the 1080P results, but let's start by describing what is going on. The top four colors denote the 4 different graphical detail levels which you can set within FSX Play. However, on the left hand side, you will see 4 different settings options: Native, DLSS Medium, DLSS High, and DLSS Ultra. DLSS stands for Deep Learning Super Sampling. This is a technology developed by the video card maker to improve the frame rate of graphics rendering through the use of AI. Generally speaking, this technology has done wonders for those looking to get a smoother experience in their software without having to spend extra money on hardware.

You can see that when the three different DLSS options are turned on, you will get higher FPS numbers. The overall smoothness of the gameplay experience improves across the board for every graphics detail setting from low to ultra. However, there is a downside to DLSS, depending on the DLSS settings used, the visual experience gets less crisp with increased frame rates. Here are the other two computers we tested for FSX Play 1080P:

1080P Testing Summary

As with most golf simulation software, the performance is primarily determined by the computer graphics card model. The three computer models from SurfThing tested feature the RTX 4060, RTX 4070, and RTX 4080. The performance improvements are obvious from the graphs what happens when you go up each tier of graphics hardware. We want to be sure to highlight that from an objective standpoint, any performance of 60FPS or higher is generally going to be a great, smooth experience when playing since the majority of displays and projectors are rated at a 60Hz refresh rate, meaning that they can't display above 60FPS anyway.

Given this information, the most important graph to highlight then is the SG2-4614 utilizing the RTX 4060 graphics card. For this system, you cannot go above Medium graphics setting without experiencing slow downs and stuttering in the software. If you go up to Ultra settings, these issues become glaringly obvious with an average frame rate of 21FPS. Here is where DLSS plays a role.

DLSS allows for a faster frame rate. While jumping to the first setting, DLSS Medium you will see the frame rate performance nearly doubles (for those wondering, Foresight does not have a setting called DLSS Low, so don't go on a wild goose chase). However, there is a major caveat with enabling DLSS, the visual fidelity begins to blur, quite literally. In particular, FSX Play shows the distance to the hole as a 3D generated graphic on the fairway. In DLSS Medium, in particular, this number becomes unenjoyably blurry and hard to read. It is for this reason, we recommend skipping over DLSS Medium, regardless of your resolution setting or chosen computer hardware. We will now share the 4K resolution results on these same three computer builds before giving our final conclusions and recommendations.

4K Testing Summary

It is quickly obvious how much more taxing the 4K resolution is on the computer system. On the native graphics settings (DLSS off), we could not recommend the use of the RTX 4060 graphics card, as it does not even hit above 30FPS average on the lowest graphics settings. However, you can see how beneficial DLSS can be in improving the frame rate of the software. If you are not concerned about pushing the graphics fidelity to its max, but you still want to run in 4K, then running the RTX 4060 on DLSS High on Low graphics settings is the only setting for 4K on the SurfThing SG2-4614 PC that we can suggest. Otherwise, we highly recommend going to a higher level graphics card if you wish to have all of the visual fidelity and eye candy that both the software and the resolution has to offer.

Reality of DLSS: If you wish to use DLSS to improve the "smooth" factor of your golfing experience in FSX Play, we cannot recommend anything below DLSS High. If you utilize DLSS Medium, you will experience blurring numbers and letters in different areas of the course that will distract from the immersion factor. If you choose DLSS Ultra, perhaps you have better eyes than our technical team, but we could not discern a visual improvement in the experience, and instead, the framerate dropped overall. Hence, we can't recommend anything besides DLSS High when looking to improve your experience over the default graphics settings.

Courses: Inconsistent Performance

It is worth noting how inconsistent the performance can be from course to course. Our technical team utilized a spread of three golf courses to get our average performance numbers. The courses themselves consist of Twin Run, Kinsale, and Awbry Glen. The course Awbry Glen is, for one reason or another, significantly more taxing on the hardware than the other two courses tested. We can confirm that every course we loaded up can have varying results of performance. Because of this, our numbers do not perfectly cover the entire experience from course to course, or even hole to hole, but rather, it is a general representation of the overall experience with each set of hardware. Over time, the Foresight team has been improving the course performance. We have seen several drastically improve since their inception, and we expect that to continue moving forward.

Conclusion:

FSX Play is a very widely used software with ongoing development and course releases. Our official recommendation is to always turn on DLSS High graphics settings, regardless of what you choose for "Low, medium, high, ultra" for the rest of the settings, or what resolution you decide to run. This will always get you the best overall experience. If you have further questions about software and compatibility with computer hardware, be sure to check out our other blog posts, as well as our free Simulator Tech Guide. Our golf technology sales specialists are also just a phone call away to answer any questions you may have.

SurfThing computers are built and tested with Golf Simulation Software specifically in mind. Our in depth testing has helped home users and business owners decide which computers to run in well over 3000 simulators nationwide. SurfThing performed its testing on all PC models manufactured by SurfThing at the time of the article release, helping customers know exactly the kind of performance they will get on currently available computer hardware.