Say a prayer for that game that was released in august 2020, it’s day has passed. Why? Because of changes to the game, starting with SU5, to allow it to run on xbox.
The game was initially coded to run on pc, low and high end, with graphics adjustments to match pc power.
But now a year later, its potential is limited to what the xbox can do. It doesn’t matter if you have a 3090 gpu, or buy whatever is released next such as a 4xxx series gpu or 12th gen alder lake cpu’s. Doesn’t matter if you buy a 16 core cpu, msfs will never fully use them.
SU5 proved that pc users will have to put up with downgrades to their experience in order to accomodate xbox users, this shows how ms/asobo will always approach this going forward. They want 1 code base that can be ran on both platforms, saves a lot of money and attracts lots of users from both platforms. It’s all down to money ultimately.
On the plus side, the game is still very good, still the best flight sim graphics by some margin. I hope xplane and dcs see whats been done here and respond.
A few months ago I very nearly spent several £1000 on a top pc system just for this game (I’ve already spent £1000 on a gpu and upgraded my ram - the latter being a waste of time now), thank god I pulled out at the last minute. My 4 yr old i7 7700k will run this game just fine for the forseeable future now that its being limited by consoles.
Caveats - mid/low end spec pc owners might be glad to see the sim running well on their pc’s, good for you. Also, i’m a VR user and no pc can run the sim at the proper frame rates needed for vr headsets. We have to use various tricks/tools to get a butter smooth gaming experience, but these tools introduce graphical defects. Up and coming gpu’s/cpu’s will make a big difference to vr users who might for example greatly benefit from reaching 90+fps at high resolutions, not so much for 2d simmers with high end pc’s who already get adequate fps rates on their monitors.
TL;DR i’m a bit miffed the pc version of msfs has been nerfed so that its console compatible, but i understand why, money talks.