Microsoft Flight Simulator has become something of a staple to PC gaming, ever since it was first released back in 1982. With a new-gen console port of the game releasing recently, it's a franchise that is growing all the time, even if the Xbox Series X version does have a file size spanning nearly 100 GB. With that, a recent update has been announced for the PC version, which looks at greatly improving performance.
In a recent post on Steam, Asobo Studio announced numerous optimizations to Microsoft Flight Simulator, which puts focus on hardware usage, loading times, and reducing in-game stuttering. Specifically, one thing the new update addresses is how the game uses multi-core processors, graphics cards and memory. In order to significantly improve performance on the PC port, the team rewrote aspects of the game's engine.
There are also a number of features being included with the patch. Among many additional accouterments, the studio has added some accessibility features, such as a screen reader. This enables text-to-speech narration. At the moment, it only works with the English language and is not yet available on all the game's menus. On top of this, there are new cockpit interactions, and new flight assistance which allows players to get in-flight help from the AI. There is no word yet whether Flight Simulator will be getting helicopters any time soon.
Some other updates include an overhaul of the game's training flights, which makes them "more digestible" according to the post, as well as adding navigation features for the Xbox controller. The gist of it seems to be that this PC update is a substantial one. Flight Simulator is often privy to some pretty big updates, such as the recent patch which looked at improving the Nordic countries. As the game is so hardware intensive, fans should hopefully be happy that there are efforts being put into the game to make it less of a system hog.
While Flight Simulator received VR support late last year, this latest update doesn't seem to make any improvements to this feature. However, it does say there are some known minor issues with VR and that the virtual reality compatibility for new tutorials is a "work in progress." That aside, the update seems to have added a lot of tweaks and additional content, but arguably the most alluring aspect is the ways in which it aims to reduce loading times and better use hardware for improved performance overall.
Microsoft Flight Simulator is available now on Steam and Microsoft Windows Store, Xbox Series X.
Source: Steam