With less than two months to go into the release of Microsoft’s new showpiece Flight Simulator 2024, the flight sim looks like upping the benchmarks for anything we have seen go before it.
The flight sim team has posted on its X account exactly the kind of hardware we are going to need to be packing in order to get the game looking like all the amazing videos and screenshots we have seen. If you want to run it in VR in something like a Pimax Crystal Light as Microsoft did at a recent showcase event, you are going to be drifting towards the higher end of these specs we would imagine.
Microsoft Flight Simulator PC Specifications
A highly detailed set of specifications awaits with in-depth breakdowns for both Intel and AMD setups. The minimum spec should be well within everybody’s reach but the scary-looking ‘ideal spec’ is suggesting a GTX 4080 or equivalent to get the game looking anything like its best. That’s at least a $1000 graphics card on top of potentially a $200 version of the game. You could just about fly to the other side of the world for real for that, but of course, it wouldn’t be as much fun cramped up in Economy.
Let’s take a look at those specs.
Category | Min Spec (AMD) | Min Spec (NVIDIA/Intel) | Recommended Spec (AMD) | Recommended Spec (NVIDIA/Intel) | Ideal Spec (AMD) | Ideal Spec (NVIDIA/Intel) |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
OS Version | Windows 10 | Windows 10 | Windows 10 | Windows 10 | Windows 10 | Windows 10 |
Direct X Version | DX12 | DX12 | DX12 | DX12 | DX12 | DX12 |
CPU | AMD Ryzen 5 2600X | Intel Core i7-6800K | AMD Ryzen 7 2700X | Intel Core i7-10700K | AMD Ryzen 9 7900X | Intel Core i7-14700K |
GPU | Radeon RX 5700 | GeForce GTX 970 | Radeon RX 5700 XT | GeForce RTX 2080 | Radeon RX 7900 XT | GeForce RTX 4080 |
VRAM | 8 GB | 4 GB | 6 GB | 8 GB | 12 GB | 12 GB |
RAM | 16 GB | 16 GB | 32 GB | 32 GB | 64 GB | 64 GB |
Storage | 50 GB | 50 GB | 50 GB | 50 GB | 50 GB | 50 GB |
Bandwidth | 10 Mbps | 10 Mbps | 50 Mbps | 50 Mbps | 100 Mbps | 100 Mbps |