This guide is based upon an RTX 4090 based rig. However, you can use this guide for many other GPUs or lower or higher performance across many brands, just by altering some of the settings in some places. Lossless Scaling is designed to help everyone.

It makes a big difference in Lossless Scaling if you have a decent CPU, but it is not essential. I have a Ryzen 9 5950X and Lossless Scaling works like magic for me, giving me very little additional latency.

Lossless Scaling will add some latency, which may get more severe depending upon how demanding the frame generation is for your GPU and CPU. I have found the latency in the sim to be almost imperceptible for me, but people may have different experiences.

There has been a lot of debate about Lossless Scaling as being a fake product. It certainly is not and the extra frames it generates are actually sent to your screen. The difference is that Lossless Scaling uses algorithmic interpolation to manufacture frames that guess the differences between the actual frames that your GPU renders. It then adds them to the pipeline and spurts out more frames to your monitor, giving you a subjectively smoother visual experience. It will add some GPU overhead, as your GPU is needed to make the fake frames too, so bear that in mind later in this guide when deciding how hard you want to push your GPU before applying Lossless Scaling.

I am not affiliated, instructed or compensated for talking about Lossless Scaling. I am enthusiastic about it because it rescued this sim for me and allowed me to fly fighter jets above trees at ridiculous frame rates, which is my main passion.

Lossless Scaling has a vast amount of other use cases. I recommend exploring those other uses, as it truly can bring you better gaming.

UPDATES after publication:

2025:

Lossless Scaling now has an adaptive scaling setting which is probably better in most cases.

I have often found that Riva Tuner Statistics Server (free) is much more efficient at FPS capping than any other method.

You need to own Lossless Scaling, which is available on the Steam store. It is very cheap at the time of writing this section.

Here is a link to their storefront on Steam:
Lossless Scaling on Steam

You need to know how to access Nvidia Control Panel and customise settings on a per application level basis.

You need to be somewhat familiar with what all the different graphics settings you can achieve in the sim, but just tinkering is also good enough to establish the balance you need.

Open Nvidia Control Panel by right-clicking over your desktop.

Select Manage 3D Settings.

Click Add and find flightsimulator.exe in the install path on your rig. Select it to map this executable to the setting you are about to make.

Set a Max Frame Rate of 40 FPS.
You could target 30 FPS, but I would suggest aiming for 40 FPS.



The reason why you are locking your maximum frame rate is to ensure that your GPU can smoothly render the level of detail that you have set in the sim as best as possible. Lossless Scaling will then multiply those frames to get you a much higher frame rate.

Create a new Game Profile in Lossless Scaling using the "+" button and give it an appropriate name for you to remember that this is a setting for the sim.

Set the Scaling Type to LS1 and Sharpness according to preference ( I use 1).



Set Frame Generation to LSFG 2.3, Mode to X3, Draw FPS to On and Capture API to DXGI.



Leave Lossless Scaling running whenever you run the sim if you intend to use it, as you will ALT+TAB out of the sim to run it, or use an allocated hot key.

There is an essential that you must set:

Set Display Mode to FULL SCREEN (It's actually a form of borderless windowed mode).

DIRECTX Version to DX12 (BETA).
Set this if you are using an RTX GPU.
Maybe not strictly essential, but will be necessary to follow the recommendations below.

I also have some recommended settings for owners of an RTX GPU:

Anti-aliasing to TAA.

NVIDIA DLSS Frame Generation to ON.
This ensures you can reach your target FPS that you locked in within Nvidia Control Panel.

AMD Fidelity FX Sharpening to 20.

V-Sync to OFF.



The key thing to remember is to dial in settings that allow you to hit your Max Frame Rate that you set in Nvidia Control Panel most of the time. Don't be tempted to just shovel everything up to maximum. Start with sensible values and keep tweaking until you find the sweet spot.

Make sure you have the sim running and have paused if in-flight.

Now ALT+TAB out of the sim and select the Lossless Scaling application to bring it into focus. If it isn't running already, fire it up in Steam.

Find the Game Profile that you have set up within Losslesss Scaling for the sim and click the Scale button.
You can also set up a hot key.

Now quickly switch back to the sim by using ALT-TAB and clicking in the sim window. This is important to achieve within 5 seconds, as it instructs Lossless Scaling which window you want to alter the output for.

If you have the Draw FPS option in Lossless Scaling set to On, you will see two numbers at the top-left of the screen. The first number is what your rig is rendering and the second number is your new frame rate using Lossless Scaling frame generation.

Now do some flying and see how much better things are, making any adjustments where required to ensure your rig can always hit at least or around your Max Frame Rate that you set in NVIDIA Control Panel.