Flight Simulator update should fix CPU bottleneck and increase performance

Developer Asobo has made improvements to the Microsoft Flight Simulator engine, which should provide higher fps with the PC version. In addition, the game now leans more on the GPU and less on the processor. The update will be released on July 27.

Asobo CEO Sebastian Wloch says in a Twitch session that they have rewritten parts of the engine and improved the architecture. This allowed the developer to get ‘the maximum performance out of the game. Wloch stresses that they aren’t done testing yet; Asobo can therefore not say what fps everyone can expect.

He does show in-game images of his own PC running the new update of Microsoft Flight Simulator. This PC has an Intel Core i7-9700K, an Nvidia GeForce RTX 2060 Super and 32GB of memory. With the current version, it hits 4k in Manhattan with a render scale of 40 and Ultra settings 32 to 40fps. His processor is fully loaded, while his gpu is at fifty percent load. 16GB of memory is also used.

If he switches to the new update, he will achieve an fps of 54 to 60 with fewer stutters . The game then uses one hundred percent of the GPU, 75 percent of the processor and the memory consumption drops to 4.7GB.

In the stream, the developers also indicate that the sim will eventually work with DirectX 12. This gives the team the opportunity to implement ray tracing. However, this will not be implemented in the next update yet. That DirectX 12 update may also provide fps improvements.

The team also briefly discusses the Xbox version of the game, which will also be released on July 27. The game runs at 30fps on both Series consoles, with support for variable refresh rates . The Series X version will show 4k images, the Series S version will reach a maximum of full HD.