Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 seeks to provide the “most ambitious flight simulation experience ever.” With such lofty goals, along with its advanced graphical rendering techniques and enhanced physics systems, one would expect it to take even more power to run than its already demanding predecessor.
In some ways, that notion proves to be true. However, you might be surprised to find out that at least the minimum system requirements are about on par with MSFS 2020.
Hangar upgrades
At the very least, Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 on PC is asking for an AMD Ryzen 5 2600X CPU equivalent, Radeon RX 5700 GPU equivalent with 4GB of RAM, 16GB of system RAM, 50GB of storage (preferably an SSD,) and 10 Mbps of Internet bandwidth.
Indeed, these are some extremely humble system requirements. But, what about the flip side?
If you own the equivalent of a tabletop battleship, then the ideal spec might be something you can pull off. For this, the sim needs AMD Ryzen 9 7900X/Intel Core i7-14700K CPU equivalent, Radeon RX 7900 XT/GeForce RTX 4070 GPU equivalent with 12GB of VRAM, 64GB of system RAM, and 50GB of storage and a 100 Mbps bandwidth Internet connection.
The gulf between the two extremes is arguably the size of the Grand Canyon, which makes one wonder how the experience will differ in terms of actual gameplay.
Nevertheless, the recommended specs are something that the average player of the existing Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 likely already has, or at least close to it.
For this, MSFS 2024 needs an AMD Ryzen 7 2700X/Core i7-10700K CPU equivalent, Radeon RX 5700 XT/RTX 2080 GPU equivalent, 8GB of VRAM, 32GB of system RAM, 50GB of storage. and a 50 Mbps Internet connection.
Curiously, Asobo has neglected to mention what the resolution targets are for any of these spec options. The Ideal Spec option is likely opting to provide a true 4K experience at a high framerate, considering that the components mentioned are closer to being considered bleeding edge. The Recommended Spec should provide solid performance at 1080p or 1440p. The Min Spec is likely to yield 1080p at 30FPS.
Making the most of the experience
Considering that Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 is also coming to the Xbox Series consoles, the Series S build must undoubtedly help out with the optimisation targets.
When MSFS 2020 initially came to Xbox Series consoles in 2021, a Sim Update was released that helped to improve performance on PC. Asobo pointed to its work on the console edition as the basis for this performance yield.
Since its announcement, Asobo has promised that Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 will provide a more optimized experience for PC players, thanks to multi-threading support and an overall improved rendering pipeline. The storage savings are also a big area of improvement, as more data will be distributed in real time from the cloud.
More Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 details:
Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 gets a torrent of new details | Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 has four editions for pre-order |
