Microsoft is updating its Flight Simulator engine with a big overhaul of the underlying codebase. This engine rewrite has resulted in some major improvements in performance, boosting one of the most taxing games ever made and making it far more playable at higher frame rates and higher resolutions, especially for those without the most powerful of components.
Known as Update 5, the patch for Microsoft Flight Simulator focuses on making the engine more efficient, demanding less of the local components and requiring less bandwidth for its cloud-connected processing components. This has resulted in a major uplift in performance and lets even mid-tier graphics cards like the RTX 2060 run the game at much higher settings and frame per second.
In the above gameplay demonstration, Microsoft showed an Intel Core i7-9700K and RTX-2060 powered PC delivering around 35/40 FPS in Manhattan at ultra settings, with an upscaled 4K resolution. In improving the engine, Microsoft reduced CPU demand massively, letting the graphics card flex its muscles a little more, and memory demands have been reduced too.
With the new update in place, that same configuration managed over 60 FPS on average. That's a huge improvement.
All of this is to help the game not only run better on PCs, but on the upcoming Xbox Series S/X release. That version of the game, and this update, go live for everyone on July 27.