Learn why MSFS photogrammetry can lower FPS or cause stutters, how to identify the bottleneck, and which settings fix it without guesswork.
Photogrammetry can lower frame rate and cause stutters in Microsoft Flight Simulator because the sim must download, decompress, place and render dense 3D city data while you fly. Its effect depends on connection stability, CPU main-thread capacity, RAM, VRAM and cache storage; brief pauses often indicate scenery delivery rather than a weak GPU alone.
Why does photogrammetry cause stuttering?
The stutter usually occurs when new scenery tiles arrive and several parts of the system must process them at once. Unlike procedural buildings, photogrammetry consists of detailed geometry and textures reconstructed from aerial imagery.
- Internet connection: The simulator downloads scenery as the aircraft approaches it. Packet loss, unstable Wi-Fi, bandwidth limits or delayed delivery can produce pauses, pop-in and melted-looking buildings.
- CPU and main thread: Downloaded data has to be decompressed, organised and submitted for rendering. Dense cities also create more objects and draw calls than ordinary rural scenery.
- GPU and VRAM: Detailed meshes and textures increase rendering and memory pressure. Once VRAM is exhausted, moving assets between system memory and video memory can create severe frame-time spikes.
- Storage and rolling cache: Cached scenery can reduce repeated downloads, but a slow, full or corrupted cache can become another source of pauses.
This is why photogrammetry may hurt frame pacing without causing a dramatic drop in the displayed average FPS. A flight can report 45 FPS, for example, yet still feel rough when individual frames take much longer as a new city sector loads.
Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 streams more of its content than MSFS 2020, so disabling photogrammetry in the newer simulator does not remove every possible cloud-delivery pause. It only removes the photogrammetry part of that workload.
What do the different symptoms mean?
| Symptom | Most likely limit | Best first check |
|---|---|---|
| Pauses as a city appears, with blurry or malformed buildings | Streaming connection or cache | Check online data settings, connection stability and rolling cache |
| Low but steady FPS throughout a dense city | CPU main thread or GPU | Lower Terrain LOD, then check GPU load and VRAM |
| Sharp stutters after increasing textures or render resolution | VRAM pressure | Reduce texture resolution or render scaling |
| First pass stutters but a second pass is smoother | Initial downloading, processing or caching | Compare cold and repeated passes separately |
| Stuttering continues over rural areas with photogrammetry off | Not primarily photogrammetry | Check traffic, aircraft, add-ons, storage and general performance |
How can I test whether photogrammetry is the cause?
An identical back-to-back flight with photogrammetry enabled and disabled is the most reliable test. Avoid changing several graphics settings at once, because that makes the result impossible to interpret.
- Choose a repeatable route. Use a short flight over a photogrammetry city at the same altitude, heading, weather and time of day.
- Keep other loads fixed. Use the same aircraft and leave traffic, multiplayer and airport scenery unchanged. Glass-cockpit aircraft and busy airports can create their own main-thread load.
- Record the enabled pass. Note average FPS, visible pauses, building quality and when each stutter occurs. On PC, the developer FPS display can show whether the main thread or GPU is limiting performance.
- Disable only Photogrammetry. Leave other online scenery options unchanged where the simulator permits it. In MSFS 2020, keeping Bing Data World Graphics enabled preserves aerial ground imagery while procedural buildings replace the photogrammetry mesh.
- Reload the flight. Returning to the main menu and loading the route again prevents already loaded nearby geometry from distorting the comparison.
- Compare frame pacing as well as FPS. A small FPS gain combined with the disappearance of major pauses still confirms that photogrammetry was contributing to the problem.
The first enabled pass and a repeated pass can produce different results because the second may reuse cached scenery. Record both rather than treating the warmed-cache result as representative of every flight.
Which settings reduce the photogrammetry performance hit?
Lower Terrain LOD first when the main thread is overloaded, but address the network or cache first when buildings arrive late or look distorted.
- Terrain Level of Detail: Reducing this setting decreases the distance and detail at which terrain is processed. Our practical Terrain LOD adjustment method explains how to find a useful balance without immediately sacrificing all distant detail.
- Rolling cache: Keep it on when you revisit the same regions and have suitable fast storage. Recreate or disable it if pauses began after cache corruption, storage problems or a simulator update. See when rolling cache helps and when it can hurt before allocating an unnecessarily large cache.
- Texture resolution and render scaling: Lower these when the GPU is limited or VRAM is nearly full. They will not repair an unstable scenery connection.
- Object LOD and traffic: Reduce these if a photogrammetry city is also full of road vehicles, aircraft and detailed airport objects competing for main-thread time.
- Connection stability: Prefer a wired connection where practical, stop competing downloads and verify that the simulator has not reached a configured data limit.
Do not clear the rolling cache after every flight. That forces scenery to be downloaded again and can make the next visit less smooth rather than more.
Will faster internet eliminate photogrammetry stutters?
Faster internet only fixes stuttering when scenery delivery is the bottleneck. It cannot remove CPU decompression, main-thread, GPU, VRAM or storage limits.
Consistency matters as much as headline download speed. Packet loss, Wi-Fi interference and large latency swings can interrupt tile delivery even when a speed test looks adequate, and there is no universal bandwidth figure that guarantees smooth photogrammetry in every city. If scenery remains flat, blurry or malformed, work through our photogrammetry streaming and loading checks.
Should photogrammetry be turned off?
Turn photogrammetry off when its urban detail is less valuable to you than consistent frame times, or when your connection cannot deliver it reliably. Keep it enabled when city accuracy matters and your system can stream and render it without disruptive pauses.
Disabling it generally replaces covered cities with procedural buildings. Satellite ground imagery can remain enabled separately, while handcrafted airports, installed scenery and many individual landmarks are separate assets and are not removed merely by switching off photogrammetry.
On consoles, where fewer graphics controls may be exposed, the photogrammetry toggle is also a useful diagnostic tool. A stable connection and an appropriate performance or display mode still matter, but there is less scope to tune individual CPU and GPU settings than on PC.
Why does MSFS still stutter with photogrammetry off?
Persistent stuttering with photogrammetry disabled points to another bottleneck or to the simulator's wider content-streaming system. Common causes include high Terrain LOD, AI traffic, complex avionics, detailed airports, VRAM exhaustion, background storage activity and conflicting add-ons.
On PC, repeat the test with Community add-ons temporarily disabled and a default aircraft at a default airport; do not delete the add-ons. MSFS 2024 users should then follow our broader CPU, GPU, VRAM and streaming diagnosis rather than continuing to change photogrammetry settings that are no longer affecting the result.