Will MFS PC version from now be bottlenecked by the Console?
No.
This is a myth perpetrated by people who don’t understand how these systems, and software development in general, works.
As a developer, I can certainly tell the compiler “turn these features on on PC, leave them off on consoles.”
The way in which consoles “hold back” PC development is largely based on some developers developing for console first, but not adding features to take full advantage of the PC.
However, this really isn’t the case here. MSFS 2020 was designed for PC first, then optimized for consoles later.
. . . and we’re not talking about weak consoles here. These are the latest generation! They are higher specs than the minimum requirements for running on PC! This is not archaic old hardware that should be holding back the game.
Microsoft’s goal was really to make the game look closer to High or Ultra settings on systems that would normally require you to go down to Medium or Low settings.
The Xbox Series S, the weaker of the consoles, has 10 GB of total RAM - that’s combining both RAM and VRAM.
The minimum spec system that FS2020 supports is 2 GB VRAM + 8 GB RAM = 10 GB total.
So here’s the deal: The Series S has enough total RAM to equal a minimum spec system. Which means that if they just straight ported it, some settings would need to be at their lowest.
. . . but they don’t want that. They want closer parity to high end PCs, not the budget PCs.
. . . so they have to make extensive optimizations to memory usage.
They can certainly make available “above Ultra” settings that use more memory to make the game look better, and I think that’s a good compromise.
I also think that all the new code introduced some bugs, which is normal, and I think will be ironed out over time.
