Microsoft Flight Simulator PC Performance Review and Optimisation Guide

Graphical Settings Comparison – In the air  

Microsoft Flight Simulator is a game of two halves, high altitude flight and take-off/landing. When flying close to the earth, your CPU will be hammered hard as all of the game’s details are simulated, but that isn’t the case when flying at 12000 feet. 

At such heights, there is no need for detailed ground simulation, freeing up more CPU cycles to enable higher, smoother framerates when players are flying above the clouds. 

Even at Low-End settings, Microsoft Flight Simulator looks fantastic when flying at such heights. Higher settings will provide more accurate lighting, shadows and volumetric clouds, but that doesn’t stop the game from looking great at low.  
 

(Low-End VS Medium)
  

Volumetric Clouds is one of Microsoft Flight Simulator’s most demanding settings, offering gamers fluffier, more realistic clouds at the cost of computation time and lower framerates.  PC gamers will require strong graphics cards to play Microsoft Flight Simulator with high framerates ant High-End/Ultra Clouds, but it is hard to deny that flying through such detailed clouds isn’t an incredible thing to behold. 

(Medium VS High-End)
  

 
In most games. Volumetric Clouds is something that we would recommend that players turn down. Not many games will have players looking into the sky for long, but with Flight Simulator the sky is its focus, making such high-end settings a necessity. I can see a lot of PC gamers upgrading their hardware to experience Ultra clouds, as the upgrade is very noticeable. 

(High-End VS Ultra)