Digital Foundry: Flight Simulator, The Ascent & Tech News

Microsoft Flight Simulator on Xbox Series X|S

The port of Microsoft Flight Simulator to consoles is a technical achievement. While running on high-end hardware is demanding, the developer (Asobo) successfully optimized the title by leveraging the Xbox Velocity Architecture and efficient data streaming to fit into the consoles' memory constraints.
The team notes a 30 FPS target for the console version but confirms the experience is highly stable and visually comparable to an "Ultra" PC setting, minus some specific tweaks to manage memory usage.
Discussions regarding VRR (Variable Refresh Rate) clarified that the frame rate is often lower than the 120Hz cap suggests, utilizing Low Frame Rate Compensation to maintain display stability.

The Ascent is highlighted as a visually stunning Unreal Engine 4 title. The team noted a significant gulf in performance between generations; load times on modern consoles are extremely fast, whereas they take nearly three minutes on previous-gen hardware.
Initial issues with DX12 stuttering on PC were addressed, but the game serves as an excellent case study for why SSD hardware and modern CPUs are crucial for future titles.

AMD RX 6600 XT: The team evaluated the new GPU, noting that while it competes well in rasterization, it struggles to keep up with NVIDIA’s DLSS ecosystem and advanced ray-tracing implementations.
MiSTer FPGA Console project: A discussion on a community-led hardware project designed to house the DE10-Nano board in a more ergonomic, console-like form factor, preserving retro hardware accuracy.
DLSS SDK: With the release of the NVIDIA DLSS SDK, developers have more freedom to implement the software. The team hopes for continued evolution and potential adoption for non-NVIDIA hardware.

"Games are less and less constrained by hardware and more constrained by manpower and budget and time."

The team reflected on the lack of complex physical interactions in modern games, noting that the PS4/Xbox One generation's CPU limitations inhibited developers from emphasizing physics simulations.
Looking ahead, the team confirmed new DF Retro episodes covering the F-Zero series, Star Wars games, and the potential impact of future PlayStation 5 storage expansion via M.2 SSDs.