Microsoft Flight Simulator Patch Addresses "in-sim" Issues

747 Flying through clouds
(Image credit: Microsoft)

Flying around the world is something that we took for granted before COVID 19. While the world has been on lockdown Microsoft Flight Simulator has been a great way to experience the miracle of flight from your own home, if your PC is powerful enough that is. Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 has received a patch to fix many “in-sim” issues that have been reported by the community.

As spotted by Anshel Sag, patch 1.8.3.0 comes in at 11GB and provides performance enhancements including an optimizations to load times, something that many have found painfully slow.

  • Optimized cockpit screen display when screens are not displayed on screen.
  • New option available to control cockpit screen update frequency.
  • Tweaked CPU thread priorities to reduce interruption of frame critical threads.
  • Optimized loading system to reduce overall loading times.
  • Optimized heavy airport scenes impact on CPU.
  • Reduced the amount of GPU overdraw to improve GPU performance.
  • Memory optimizations to reduce software memory footprint and improve performance on memory limited computers.
  • Overall performance optimizations.

The update also provides enhancements to ATC (Air Traffic Control) communications including three different voices for Azure generated ATC communications and a fix for incorrect voice packs being used. The patch goes further to improve the aerodynamics of aircraft and improves the simulation of weather and engine performance.

More details of this extensive patch can be found on the official Microsoft Flight Simulator website.

Les Pounder

Les Pounder is an associate editor at Tom's Hardware. He is a creative technologist and for seven years has created projects to educate and inspire minds both young and old. He has worked with the Raspberry Pi Foundation to write and deliver their teacher training program "Picademy".

  • v2millennium
    Live Weather still doesn't work. I see clear skies all over the Earth when "Live Weather" option is selected. Live Weather worked a couple of weeks after release, but then it just stopped. No matter what settings I turn on/off, it just doesn't work.
    Reply
  • ThatMouse
    It's good they are prioritizing. But my biggest complaint is that the ground looks like everything is flooded. Roads and bridges are underwater. Everything on the shore is underwater like it had just been hit by a hurricane. Iconic bridges are missing also, which instead shows underwater roads (i.e. Tampa Skyway bridge). I understand we have at least 50 years before rising sea levels get this bad! lol!
    Reply