When the release date of the simulator was published, they created a pre-order FAQ. This FAQ was in a few locations including Zendesk. There was a question about play anywhere and the limitation was that it would be available for Microsoft Store users but not for Steam.
Now that the game has been out for quite a while the pre-order FAQ has been removed, and it has been replaced with the Xbox FAQ where again the issue is covered:
If I have Microsoft Flight Simulator already for PC, do I already own the Xbox version?
Yes, if you have the Windows Store PC version, you will also have the Xbox version. This means that if you already own the simulator through the Microsoft Store, you will be able to play it on Xbox as well. The sim shares the same multiplayer world, content, and services. However, if you purchase through Steam, you will not have access to the Xbox version.
Last I heard, DX12 will allow them to do more with effects and lighting and reflections and other visual aspects. It was said not to expect much in terms of performance.
For DX12 to affect performance, it would have to somehow reduce the number of polygons/object and yet still provide equivalent quality. It would also have to have flight modeling aspects built in and somehow improved. And it would have to somehow ease managing thousands of objects that need to be calculated for location and appropriate movement. And it would have to allow faster movement of GB of scenery data.
I really don’t think the improvement in performance is due to the introduction of DX12. Not for this game.
Maybe it could make displaying clouds better with less data? That’s probably worth a couple of FPS.
My bet is that the performance improvements will be due to what they’ve talked about in more efficiently managing scenery data.
And just how is “Improved performance” measured? Is it faster fps? Or is it better scenery, i.e. greater radius of trees and keeping objects visible at a greater distance, and maybe handling of photogrammetry visuals? So, not necessarily faster FPS, but a better visual experience, or maybe, again, not faster FPS or better overall performance, but, removal of the stutters you get when loading scenery? So, FPS performance remains the same, but the “dreadful” performance aspects are vastly improved.
In other words, they’d have to define “improved performance”.
I thought they said DX12 may allow some aspects of the sim to be offloaded to the CPU, like a lot of the instrumentation in the cockpit (I believe was an example). This could result in an improvement with the sim’s performance.
That would be cool. So is that all instrumentation, or just the graphical displays (which would still be a significant enhancement for the airliners and G1000 style planes)?
I remember something being said in the dev Q&A that they were working or moving cockpit instruments (glass cockpits) to a different thread so this could be what you are thinking of.
I bought the Steam version before launch and knew full well that this meant I did not have the Play Anywhere option available to me. This was clear at the time from the pre-launch FAQs that I saw.
I’m sorry that you did not see this before purchase but the Steam limitation is well known and been discussed before.
Over time, I do expect a 20% to 30% increase in performance (based on all optimization routes they have, not from the magic DX12, which Seb said, nope, not going to increase performance with that, well, not quite so harshly, but, what he meant.). Technically, that’s about a 5 - 10 fps increase for most folks. It might happen. Personally, what I imagine will actually happen is they’ll pump the performance gain into farther visuals, and perhaps find a way to cut back a bit on “Horrid performance” in other words, reduce stuttering over heavy use airports and large cities a bit.
It bugs me so many people expect “performance increase”, without any definition of what that is. It can mean so many things.
