A new patch version is out for Microsoft Flight Simulator and it’s aimed primarily at fixing some of the performance woes that many sim pilots have been experiencing since Sim Update 3. We’ve also seen the latest developer update which has slightly revised roadmap details and gives a slightly better picture of what’s on the road ahead for the sim. Let’s have a look at some highlights!

But first, the patch

If you read my article earlier in the week detailing some of the performance issues or if you’ve experienced them first hand, you’ll know that flying in MSFS with these issues was painful and some of my flights had essentially ground to a halt. The new patch aims to fix that problem and it has just to main entries in the change log:

• Performance optimizations when flying close to large airports such as Dallas-Ft Worth (KDFW)
• Performance optimizations of server requests when in the menus and during flight

Going by comments around the community on Facebook, Reddit and on the official forums, it sounds like the patch may have just done the trick. Several users also reported frequent crash to desktop (CTD’s) episodes and this has apparently solved the issues for them as well.

I’ll be testing later tonight to find out if it’s sorted out my issues too!

A few highlights on the road ahead

The biggest updates I can spot on the weekly snapshots are the matching of community feedback and priorities together with details on when these features may arrive in the sim. For example, the two top rated items remain “G1000/3000 & autopilot related issues” and “Live weather and wind readings are not accurate.” Two legitimate issues that the sim has struggled with and that have been at the top of the list for a long time.

We now know that Asobo Studios is planning to continue working on this via several updates including releases in Sim Update 4, 5 and 6. It’s a minor distinction from before where it was all said to be ‘on-going’ but it does make a difference and it gives us all confidence that they are both working on and continuing to roll out updates as time goes on with these key features. Good!

The same can be said for things like turboprop engine logic issues and low resolution ground textures.

Other items, such as “Performance Degradation” under the latest update are listed as an ASAP priority and, as we’ve seen just today, there’s already one hot fix out to try and address these problems. I expect that it may still be on the list next week as the notes from Asobo imply that there’s more to do here.

Performance is likely to remain an item on the list for a long time and items such as DX12 and the build-up to Xbox release are likely to benefit that process in a positive way over time.

Read about the patch notes on today’s update here, or check out this week’s developer update for more details about what’s happening at Asobo Studios and around the community.