i would like to see Microsoft & Asobo considering native support for ARM based Chips!
I know this is still a while out, but basically all major player (Apple, Qualcom, Samsung, MS themselves and now even NVIDIA) did announce a move to ARM based chips in the near future. So i guess the arm version of windows will be getting more attention very soon!
Again, all still a while out, but better plan early!
I think at some point, Microsoft & Asobo will probably have no choice left, so why not start sooner than later!
It will probably be some time before there are suitable machines that can actually handle MSFS that need it… but yes, that’d be sweet.
[Note that currently, the only Windows 10 ARM64 machines you can get max out at 16 GiB RAM – the bare minimum for MSFS – and have relatively slow integrated GPUs as well as relatively poor single-threaded CPU performance running on Qualcomm processors. The Apple ARM processors are a lot faster but have the same RAM limitation for now, and run Windows only in virtualization which slows down use of the GPU further.]
I have a new M1 Mac and it’s really a piece of ■■■■.
In the future, probably situation will be better but ATM is useful only for web browsing and light works.
4k videos from mirrorless kill it, excel with big files kills it, games… nothing
But probably an M3 will be good.
Interesting, my M1 MBP is a absolut game changer for me. I even run x-plane 11 with payware aircraft & scenery at a stable 30FPS on 1440p, with quite high graphic settings (eg objects maxed out). With all that the CPU runs at around 70%. FlightSims are heavily limited by CPU single core perf, MSFS is no exception. This is where the M1 shines! And remember this is just an improved tablet chip. Literally the weakest laptop/pc chip apple will ever release.
I think with just a little push on the GPU, this is the way to go!
Two years later, the Windows on ARM landscape is not much different - slightly less slow Qualcomm processors with unimpressive embedded GPUs that would not run MSFS well. Maybe someday…
As Microsoft has started project Volterra (Windows Dev Kit 2023) to get developers into developing for the ARM architecture, Microsoft seems to be moving more and more towards full ARM support.
The new Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite chips have started appearing in ARM64 Windows laptops, with CPU performance that’s reportedly much more comparable to AMD and Intel chips (and the Apple chips in the equivalent Macs) when running native code.
I don’t know how the GPU does so far, but we’re getting a lot closer to the time when someone might want to run MSFS 2024 on their ARM64 laptop or small desktop.
I know someone that runs XPlane on an M2 MacBook Pro and it actually runs it very well.
Those things are both computing and graphical powerhouses. For work as a software engineer on a complex project when they swapped out my I9 MacBook Pro for an M1 Pro it literally cut the full build time of a particular project from 9 minutes to 3, and I have a friend that makes video for a living and an Mx MacBook Pro completely replaced his newish 24 core Threadripper, dual high end GPU video editing workstation. Sorry but anyone who doesn’t think the new Apple Silicon Macs are beasts is just misinformed lol.
Ya video editing needs are different from gaming but they could absolutely run Flight Simulator very well if it was optimized for them, which I realize is a big task.
Can confirm. My wife makes online music video tutorials and lessons and it cut her export time massively. She moved from an intel Macbook Pro, to a M1 Mac Mini in 2021 or 2022. So those chips are a marvel.
With that said, I think the AMD Strix series of chips are going to be wild and a tough competition for apple. So, just to bring it back on topic, MSFS will almost certainly run decently well on those chips, given what they are.
Ya I mean seriously, my comparison point was coming from a machine with significant thermal limitations so that i9 was not really performing at its real capacity but my buddy makes medium and long format video in the outdoor action/adventure space often working with large amounts of 8k footage. He was an early adopter to an apple silicon MBP because it was the first portable machine he could expect a reasonable editing experience for that sort of stuff out of but it ended up actually outperforming his newish full on pro grade workstation, just astonishing. Definitely capable of running a sim like this probably better than high end gaming laptops because the thermal situation is so much better.
Those do look interesting, probably also a matter of optimization to run something like this well though.
The good news if they do ever do this is that add-on makers will be entirely cushioned from having to deal with this by the use of Wasm!
As long as Asobo can build the game engine and the Wasm runtime for ARM64, add-ons don’t have to worry about shipping separate x86 and ARM code… every existing aircraft will “just work” on ARM64 Windows.
So I’m glad we collectively paid the investment of MSFS 2020 migrating add-ons from native Windows DLLs to Wasm, able to span now to the Xbox and in future (we hope) to ARM-based WIndows PCs.
