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Here's some tips and tricks I use to increase the stuff I can do in GeoFS and extract maximum performance from the game and its aircraft.
PERFORMANCE, VISUAL QUALITY, AND FRAMERATE (FPS)
I have spent about a month perfecting my settings for GeoFS 3.0. Currently, I have managed to attain a quality higher than minimum, and still keep up to 15 FPS. 10 FPS is the minimum FPS that I consider to be "smooth", and this is the limit because below this limit the lag is so high that GeoFS becomes much less fulfilling to play and aircraft are difficult to control. So here is how to get the settings in the graphics dropdown that I have selected for GeoFS 3.0:
1.) Select quality slider to 3 (it should also be here by default).
2.) Open "advanced" dropdown.
3.) Set resolution to max. This makes the render quality not bad at all.
4.) Set viewing distance to 0.25. You may find a lot of horizon glare and difficulty seeing over 100 miles away from your aircraft at high altitude, but that isn't usually too important. Plus, increasing this to significantly higher values starts to take its toll on your FPS.
5.) Set tiles chache size to zero. It took me a while to figure this one out, but as far as I can tell, minimizing this significantly improves framerate and the only consequence is a lag spike when spawning into someplace.
6.) Set shadow quality to 1. I haven't found out whether increasing this causes more lag, but it's minimized in my settings just to eke out maximum performance.
We've arrived at the volumetric clouds and 3d vegetation - the most laggy items in the game. However, I've been able to bump these up since I first played 3.0 as I figure out more about how all these settings work. If your computer is potato or you want more than 10-15 FPS, you can set vegetation quality to minimum and volumetric clouds to off later in the settings.
7.) Set atmosphere and volumetric clouds quality to 2, which it should be at by default. The clouds start casting shadows at 2 quality, which is great for realism.
8.) Set vegetation to 2, which should also be default. This gives you a sufficient number of trees and some bushes without increasing lag too much. Grass is not rendered at this graphics stage, which is probably for the best.
9.) Of the next three options, set drop shadows and globe lighting to on, but leave anti-aliasing off. This will give you a couple more FPS.
10.) Set color enhancement to maximum - the colors and vividity of the terrain will really "pop".
11.) Set everything else below that to "on" except transparent UI, which is up to you.
There. Now you should be getting a workable FPS with the amazing rendering of GeoFS 3.0. Note, however, that flying helicopters will be hard.
LANDING IN INSTRUMENT METEOROLOGICAL CONDITIONS OR VIA A NON-VISUAL APPROACH
This has always been hard, and the lack of a proper ILS system in GeoFS compounds this. There is an autoland extension, but it must be installed via Tampermonkey, a Chrome extension. However, there are still some tools that one can use to make landing a bit easier in IMC or on an instrument approach.
For this example I started at 20,000 ft a decent ways from Innsbruck, aiming for a landing at runway 08. The weather was very bad for visual flying, as below the cloud deck was heavy rain, fog, and marginal visibility.
So how do you land with precision through all this IMC in the absence of ILS, autoland, etc.?
Well, first we need to know where the runway is. So I created a localizer by drawing a line on the runway and parallel to it using the "create flight path" feature. Now we know where the runway is and when to line ourselves up.
So now we engage autopilot, set the altitude to 0, airspeed as appropriate, and changing the heading as needed to account for terrain and lining up on the runway. The key here is constant changing of the descent rate, so if you need to pause the descent to clear some terrain, just set the descent rate to 100. You can also descend at much higher rates to get down to the runway if needed; here I'm descending down a hill at 4500 fpm.
Take advantage of this wierd gap between the clouds and the rain + fog to get a glimpse of your surroundings.
Descend at a fairly high rate until you start to see the terrain imagery, then reduce the descent rate to around 100 FPM (higher if going down a hill). Hopefully you're close enough to the airport that you don't hit the ground before the runway. Eventually you will make out the PAPI lights, and there's your opportunity to get lined up. You may turn off the AP at this point, or continue until just before touchdown. If you're very low relative to the PAPIs, halt the descent and deactivate AP. If you're high relative to the PAPIs, increase the descent rate
From sighting the PAPIs it won't be long before you're over the runway, and then it's a simple matter of increasing the descent rate until you hit the ground (preferably not halfway down the runway). The touchdown, however, will be hard, but that's a reasonable tradeoff for being able to land at all. Once you touch down, you will almost certainly be turning off AP and manually doing the rest of the landing.
Congratulations. You have landed in complete IMC with no ILS, GPWS, autoland, or any other of these computerized tools to help you land in IMC.
A few notes: the landing will be hard and the approach will be sketchy as hell. You will need to pay close attention. Also, if the airport is less than 500 ft above sea level, the autopilot will take over the vertical speed (you won't be able to control it) 500 ft or less AGL, so you will need to take manual controls at this point unless you're sure that the plane will land on the runway while trying to level off at 0 feet.
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