Microsoft Flight Simulator on PC now has large efficiency enhancements

Microsoft Flight Simulator is getting its largest replace ever on PC at this time, due to a brand new patch that delivers vital efficiency enhancements. The recreation has been notoriously demanding since its launch final 12 months, however the crew behind the simulator has been focusing closely on bettering its CPU and reminiscence utilization. PC gamers can now go forward and obtain the newest replace, and it ought to enhance body charges throughout quite a lot of {hardware}.

I’ve been testing the replace for the previous couple of weeks by myself PC, outfitted with an Intel Core i9-11900K and Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 Ti, and the enhancements are staggering even on prime {hardware}. I exploit Microsoft Flight Simulator for benchmarks throughout our GPU opinions, and in the identical part flying throughout Seattle, my body charge has gone from a mean of 45fps all the way in which as much as 68fps. That’s greater than a 50 p.c leap with extremely settings enabled at 1440p.

Even flying throughout areas like New York City sees some spectacular enhancements, with my machine now managing to hit 80fps common in what’s usually a really demanding a part of Microsoft Flight Simulator. The enhancements are so shocking that I’ve needed to double and triple verify my settings to verify I used to be truly operating at extremely on every part.

Overall, the sport now feels rather a lot smoother with much less random fps drops than earlier than. It must also be much more playable on a wider vary of {hardware} in consequence. Asobo, the developer of Microsoft Flight Simulator, demonstrated the sport operating on an older system with an Intel Core i7-9700K and an RTX 2060 Super earlier this month. Microsoft Flight Simulator jumped from round 30fps to just about a stable 60fps on this PC with the patch, and CPU and reminiscence utilization additionally dropped considerably.

“We have rewritten a lot of the parts of the engine … in order to get the maximum performance out of the sim,” defined Asobo CEO Sebastian Wloch earlier this month. The crew has been primarily engaged on CPU optimizations, and it’s clearly labored out properly.

This has all been achieved and not using a transfer to DirectX 12, too. While a DirectX 12 model of Microsoft Flight Simulator launches on Xbox Series X / S at this time, the PC model will stay on DirectX 11. That leaves the door open for much more potential enhancements sooner or later.

The upcoming transfer to DirectX 12 can even enable Asobo to introduce ray tracing within the recreation. Effects ought to embrace higher water, improved shadows, and the same old reflections which might be present in ray-traced video games. Asobo has not but confirmed when Microsoft Flight Simulator will transfer to DirectX 12 on PC.

“All the performance improvements come from just improving the simulator,” confirmed Wloch earlier this month. “PC has not yet moved to DirectX 12, the team is still working on it. It may bring improvements further, or not.”