Microsoft Flight Simulator has been the benchmark for PC performance for a while now. It is a well-deserved honor for the 2020 title as the game recreates aerial views of the world with stunning detail. Naturally, there is a compromise involved: you need a pretty powerful PC to run the game at max graphics.
Even the most advanced rigs, enabled with an RTX 3080 GPU, struggle to give it that sweet 4K 60fps render. Mid-range PCs, of course, do an even worse job and are unable to get close to a 60fps reading.
So essentially, if you lack an excellent CPU, even a good GPU won’t get you the best output for Flight Simulator.
Thankfully, these woes might be a thing of the past very soon.
In a Q&A session held on Twitch earlier today, Asobo CEO Sebastian Wloch, Executive Producer Martial Bossard, and MS Flight Simulator Head Jorg Neumann revealed that the game’s upcoming Sim Update 5 will rewrite a part of the game’s engine and vastly improve performance.
“We have rewritten a lot of the parts of the engine, parts of the architecture have been improved to get the maximum performance out of the sim with the minimum resource/memory/bandwidth footprint,” said Wloch.
The team showed this in action with a video that compared the game’s performance on Sim 4 with that on Sim 5.
Before Update 5, Wloch’s development PC rendered Flight Simulator’s iteration of Manhattan at upto 35fps on Ultra settings.
However, after Update 5, Wloch’s machine ran the game at a good 50-60fps. Additionally, the update cut down the game’s total RAM usage by half and freed up the CPU by giving the GPU more load to bear.
While performance improvements will vary with hardware (as pointed out by Wloch), there is no denying that this is a significant jump from previous stats.
Of course, VR will also see similar improvements, and there is no doubt that DirectX 12 will bring its own upgrades for the game.
Sim Update 5 is scheduled to land on July 27 along with Flight Simulator’s Xbox Series X|S port. Additionally, devs have confirmed that Xbox Series X will run the game in 4K while Xbox Series S will get a decent 1080p treatment.
Both consoles will run in 30fps on most TVs, though if you possess a monitor with a variable refresh rate, unlocked framerates are possible. The game will also come with full cross-play and cross-save, so you may switch between TV and monitor as you please.
About Microsoft Flight Simulator
Developed by Asobo Studio, Microsoft Flight Simulator is an Amateur Flight Simulation game available for Microsoft Windows. It will also be launched later for platforms like Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S.
By utilizing intricate topographic data from Bing Maps along with real time weather forecasts, one will surely be flummoxed by setting eyes upon the game’s phenomenal optic spectacle. Its almost unjustified to call this masterpiece a simulator when its life-like realistic. From incorporating snow-bested mountain range to clamoring towns and cities, almost every little detail of this gem is breathtaking.
Not only are the graphics authentic, its gameplay too is hair-splitting and diligent. From take off and landing to engine inspection; Everything should be looked into with perfection. One will have to get used to the physics of the game along with figuring out how to travel by utilizing VFR navigation.
Innumerable challenges, dares and missions are also incorporated in order to further spice things up along with a worldwide leaderboard to see and compare the progress of countless other pilots.
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