Hi, does anyone know how to tell if Direct storage is active on Windows 11. Can I enable/disable it or is it automatic?
I’ve just installed Windows 11 and have an NVME drive and an RTX 2070 Super graphics card so I should be able to take advantage of it.
There’s no game on the market that supports it yet AFAIK.
Ah, ok. I thought MSFS was using it on the XBox and therefore it might have been on the PC version after SU5?
Is there any option to turn it on or off in Windows?
And it’s not exclusive to Windows 11, direct storage works with Windows 10 too.
I haven’t found any command specifically for DS. My guess is that it will be a function of the NVMe drivers, perhaps DX12 as well, and will simply be enabled if connected hardware supports it.
Exciting stuff … lest hope it will also come to current PC users of MSFS, as well as the X-box users.
With how single thread bottle-necked MSFS is could DirectStorage really give a performance advantage other than load times?
Direct storage is not even implemented into Windows 11 yet, It’s coming later.
…and I did read that you needed an NVMe storage device with 1Tb capacity or greater for it to work.
“requires 1 TB or greater NVMe SSD to store and run games that use the “Standard NVM Express Controller” driver and a DirectX 12 Ultimate GPU.”
I wonder if it can be utilised on a per disk basis. My current OS disk is 0.5TB, but the disk I install games, and applications on is 1TB. I’d be quite happy if the OS disk wasn’t supported, as it already boots in a few seconds from power on.
Some reports indicate the 1TB limitation may have already been dropped.
The new requirements for DirectStorage in Windows 11 now read as follows: “DirectStorage requires an NVMe SSD to store and run games that use the “Standard NVM Express Controller” driver and a DirectX12 GPU with Shader Model 6.0 support. ”
DS has to be implemented in the software code before you will benefit from it.
You can’t just enable it from the settings in Windows…
Ok thanks for replies guys, looks like those of us with capable hardware will just have to wait and hope it gets implemeted in MSFS sometime soon. 
Interesting. My >1Tb comment was because that’s what Microsofts official Windows 11 release page still says today!
[Windows 11 Specs and System Requirements | Microsoft] (Windows 11 Specs and System Requirements | Microsoft)
Hi, nearly the end of August 2022 and still no more idea if FS will use direct storage. It just poped up today on my news page so I am looking to see if there is any progress here.