This isn’t really the case anymore. Prices have fallen such that you can now configure a really nice gaming PC with a latest generation CPU and a 3000 series Geforce for about a grand. Albeit twice the cost of a Series X, it will fly circles around the Series X, which is using a processor that’s already a generation behind (or two depending on brand), and shared memory that’s split between the CPU and GPU. And those are two areas that seem to really matter with Flight Simulator: singled-threaded CPU performance to crank the main thread and RAM to hold the vast amounts of dynamic content.
The RAM situation is probably what most folks are referring to when they say the sim was “dumbed down for Xbox”.
The primary goal of SU5’s “performance plus” update was to get the sim running similarly on both platforms and came with several trade-offs that were acknowledged by staff on this forum. One prime example was the extremely aggressive view frustum culling that was implemented:
A boon for lower end hardware that struggled with stutters managing and drawing too many assets under constraints, the performance of PCs with graphics processing and memory to spare was compromised instead as every time the camera moved the sim was now doing many more slow load operations. The answer was a PC only hotfix with an option to basically disable the culling.
Users pointed out numerous other changes in level of detail, draw distance, texture tile size, shader issues. Some were accidental bugs during the port I’m sure, others were intentional trade-offs to increase framerate, but either way, it was done for the sake of getting the console experience on the same level as that of a higher end gaming PC.
Whereas most folks with a low to mid-range PC acknowledge that they are on such, and dial their settings down accordingly, Microsoft wasn’t cool doing the same to their latest flagship console. The appearance had to be that this was a high end gaming experience, and users who were sold on this probably wouldn’t be cool with knowing their settings would be dialed down either.
Asobo made a valiant effort and opened the door to many more players. And that’s a great thing! But PC users were right to point out that their performance or experience was compromised during the expansion to the XBox platform and ask for a change. Lots of console players took this personally, as if the sim was “dumbed down” not because of the hardware involved, but the because of the players that were involved. The computer doesn’t make the sim pilot of course.