Inside Microsoft Flight Simulator - Xbox Ports, Performance, PC Optimisations - The Asobo Breakdown!

[@nikhilpai9034]

The transparency and openness of the conversation is blowing my mind just as much as the experience of flying over my own house for the first time! Thanks, Asobo and DF!

[@salemsaleh9577]

I wish I could see my house but the game uses Bing Maps :(

[@GameChronicles]

My house isn’t even on Xbox but clear as day on PC. Unimpressed with console port.

[@RogueAgentX]

@@GameChronicles make sure the settings are correct. Bing maps and/or photogrammetry might not be on by default on Xbox.

[@nikhilpai9034]

I know many of us probably won't get to see our house but the fact that we can even try is still a pretty astonishing feat. Turning on Photogrammetry and streaming online data might help though!

[@kevinj4243]

Downgrades and false advertising are okay as long as you eventually tell us you did it! THANK YOU ASOBO TAKE MORE OF MY MONEY!

[@TumbleFig]

Really love how candid Lionel is being here. Not often you hear a technical director speak openly about legacy baggage in a codebase. "The objective before optimizing was to make it work at all"... I feel that. The fact that the glass cockpits are web views is fascinating, but makes a ton of sense.

[@rickysargulesh1053]

I really appreciate his honesty here. That heightens my respect for Asobo even more. It's just a beautiful experience and it's nice to see that they still optimize it.

[@elche8461]

He was actually talking about consoles with that sentence and where did you hear they re still optimizing ut

[@SteelSkin667]

It is particularly refreshing compared to the id Software interviews where they were sometimes trying to avoid specifics, probably for that very reason.

[@maynardburger]

@@elche8461 MFS is a long term service title. Games-as-a-service long before it became the norm nowadays. It's in their best interest to keep improving it, and of course they've got a load of talented programmers sitting around, you kinda need to ensure they have work to do.

[@SmarterThanAll]

@@maynardburger "game" might be a little much it's a hardcore flight sim so the service model always made since

[@FortressArena]

"This is getting a bit technical." "Its ok, this is Digital Foundry."

[@SkeleCrafteronYT]

And that's why we love Digital Foundry, doesn't shy away from the real details.

[@ormancadam6453]

I dont totally understand it all. but I like what I hear.

[@Ratt1eHead]

Here's what really blows me away. This is the same studio that created the excellent A Plague Tale!! Fantastic studio!

[@theoathman8188]

Not to take anything from the team, but he said they built upon the previous flight sim code base and the world map technology was provided by Microsoft.

[@-1nterruption-960]

If only Microsoft could acquire them

[@WayStedYou]

@@theoathman8188 almost as if they were porting the game

[@kiisseli1337]

Plague Tale was very average game

[@proxywolfx]

@@kiisseli1337 ah, so what your telling me is....its a game, got it

[@X_Leonhart]

Just played A Plague Tale Innocence, and now that I’m enjoying Flight Simulator I really think Asobo is one of the most amazing studios of this generation.

[@pixeljauntvr7774]

Yeah these guys a incredibly talented.

[@MG-fb2fr]

Agree!

[@CaramelisedNipples]

Plague tale was an amazing game. So well made and just the right length.

[@rinkumultani6515]

you playing on pc with vr? what gpu and vr headset you have`?

[@sergeleon1163]

I think it's a technical feat that they managed to combine the engine that they had with Bing, Azure and old Flightsim code this well. I think in the process they learned a great deal and we will see some of that come towards future titles of them starting with a Plague Tale Requiem

[@leoz96]

Loving these developer interviews

[@AaronLaye]

DF absolutely killing it with the recent MSFS content - keep it coming!

[@ODIOPOWER]

DF absolutely killing it with the recent content - keep it coming! Here, i fixed it for you

[@Superdelphinus]

Yeah they were a bit slow understanding how revolutionary this game is at the beginning from a technical perspective, but they’re making up for it with bells on now.

[@SkeleCrafteronYT]

I love this guy's enthusiasm, such a great feeling

[@PPN462]

This whole interview 😂 Alex: wow it is incredible, how did you optimize this? Lionel: I am just glad that it works at all

[@e2rqey]

Asobo studios level of openness, transparency and communication with their community should be what other developers aspire to do. Comparing Asobo studios to Frontier Development or Blizzard is like Night and Day.

[@mememachine5244]

Yeah, like them telling us how the sim was gonna be ruined to allow it to be ran on xboxs :D

[@MrAlex0803]

Love the vid, this dev knows his shit, very very impressed. Not as usually when they send the marketing guys and they only answer with buzz phrases.

[@viktorianas]

We implemented this revolutionary technology based on years of research and development, user experience is our top priority and we took no shortcuts, nor compromises, our simulation is a cutting edge state of the art piece of software utilizing the sheer power of our proprietary in-house cloud based computation!

[@tranquilitybase8100]

"Yes... errr.... our game isn't really a game, it's an experience that happens in a metaverse and is supported by the blockchain." 2021 Marketing guy.

[@mercuriete]

best video ever. I like more technical interviews like this in the future.

[@brewski535]

I've been really enjoying my time on XSX, Asobo have done an excellent job here! 👏

[@Scotland_Above]

I wish there was a 'Love' button to click on this video. Asobo have done an incredible job along with Microsoft to bring us experiences that most of us couldn't have dreamed of before. I trained with the RAF when I was younger. This let's me relive the past in an emotional way. This isn't just a 'game'.

[@Scotland_Above]

I just flew A successful complete circuit from Dundee (where I trained) in MSFS 2020. At least this time I didn't get intercepted by two F111s and escorted out of the Leuchars military airspace like I did in real life! 🤣

[@EverSnaxolotl]

Wait til you hear about the thumbs up

[@ChilesSupportTV]

I'm not a flight simmer but I've been having a blast on MSFS.

[@tinobrown1780]

The good thing is, you don’t have to be a flight sim enthusiast to enjoy watching the beautiful world recreated from a birds eye view.

[@kofodsen]

Then you are a flight simmer 💪

[@JJ-fk5ys]

Yes you are LoL

[@JJ-fk5ys]

If you're having a blast that means you like Sims LoL

[@leonfrancis3418]

Same. Some hiccups in the tutorial, but man. Nothing feels better than flying. I think I'm gonna look into learning it in real life.

[@czbrat]

As a PC gamer, this is the reason why I'm thankful consoles exist.

[@VariantAEC]

No kidding. Even so they haven't done the user interface any justice unfortunately. Opting to click in the stick to bring up a cursor is kind of a problem. I can't remember off hand what I assigned to the right stick but my left stick controls the landing gear. I probably assigned resetting the camera to the right stick... Regardless you weren't previously able to control the UI using the controller alone it required the use of both the mouse and keyboard. The latest update I have played (I think update 6 Nordic World Update if this isn't the latest) did break a lot of keyboard and controller bindings. Reapplying them doesn't fix the issue even after restarting the game and dis/connecting any HID peripheral causes the game to soft lock as did changing the controller layout in some cases. This game is still a mess in the last update and again I'm not even sure was on the version they're discussing here when I played last. I guess I will be checking that out very soon.

[@mememachine5244]

What, so the sim can be ruined? It was miles better before su5.

[@Battleneter]

Well this is one of the few games I play where a controller makes sense over a KB and mouse, well better in combination with a KB. Its good to see this title on console, really feel console gaming needs to expand on the types of games available if they are to compete against PC long term.

[@harrybosch4595]

Did you view the same video as I did? Look at the segment that starts around 8:00. Do you really think that your PC benefits from using less then 6GB system RAM (usually 16 GB available) and also using less from the available Video Ram. They use more compression, cull more data and dropped some graphics card features (see segment about trees) to make it run better on console. The result is that a lot less of the extra available power of your PC is used, this is noticeable in the picture quality we now get. The only benefit is if you are the type of user that want to fly @ 60 fps or higher at the costs of reduced visuals.

[@mememachine5244]

@@harrybosch4595 Sims dead, theyve played their cards. Going back to xplane and p3d.

[@DudeMcDuderson]

Love vids like this. I hope we get more where a developer doesn't shy away from being technical. I know some of it isn't that accessible if people don't know about how software works, but to us software devs this stuff is super interesting! Keep it coming!

[@andreajesuspirlo]

When it comes to mapping sizes Asobo studios are way ahead. 12 years back they also developed a beautiful and underappreciated post-apocalyptic racing game called fuel which at that time held the world record for having the largest playable map in a console game.

[@SamsonFRYT]

I’ve played FUEL a lot. I knew then that asobo were meant for great things.

[@simulacrae]

You do know that flight sims have had maps of the entire world for decades right?

[@rlfernandes9538]

I'll say it again: Digital Foundry is uniquely changing the way this industry works.

[@Akashmash]

Thank you guys!

[@37654]

You're welcome

[@雪鷹魚英語培訓的領航]

Digital Foundry. You guys are having a very positive impact on the consumer and developer communities. Love hearing the nitty gritty details. I can listen to John Carmack talk way out of my league but still follow along enough to learn something.

[@karannsyt]

He has so much charisma and knowledge, as a computer science student, he is everything I ever want to be

[@karannsyt]

@you- tube the dev, but Alex is not too bad as well he's amazing too

[@drivetounderstand8579]

Lionel, if you’ve been at Asobo long enough to have worked on Fuel, thank you very much. To this day I don’t believe there’s a more engaging sandbox for physics and geography. The campaign was very rewarding but I’ve probably spent five times as much time just playing around in that world you created. Many thanks.

[@Beavernator]

It seems the Series S is making developers think outside the box on ways to optimize their coding, which in turn is creating MASSIVE gains for Series X and PC's... Same thing with Switch with some of its "Impossible Ports"... This is a good thing... For too long developers have to just been using brute force to push past sloppy coding... Glad that optimization is making a comeback...

[@VariantAEC]

True of any console.

[@Nct104]

it’s going to be the case of balancing. Is the hardware and the platform at the middle point for the developer to optimise better for both.

[@LonghornsLegend]

And some people tried to make the argument the Series S was going to hold the generation back

[@VariantAEC]

@@LonghornsLegend Well I guess you forgot this is a last generation game that everyone already realized was very poorly optimized. After optimization it runs well on consoles but visually speaking *this game was never particularly taxing.*

[@FortressArena]

@@LonghornsLegend I think some people forget that the CPU in Series S is almost as fast as Series X, and a little faster then the one in PS5. In CPU terms its not holding anything back. Great work by Asobo.

[@tinyentropy]

Thanks to those extremely talented devs for making this possible on the Xbox consoles!!!!

[@KatalistProductionsKozzySasha]

Amazing job Asobo! Played it since day 1 on PC and been playing it this week on Series X, I am blown away. Amazing the Series S runs it so well to. Such a fun relaxing game

[@scorpian007]

MSFS is a technical marvel. >2500 hours now with this since it launched and have learned a great deal about flying all sorts of plans including real life procedures and flying with online ATC. Asobo are wizards. Love seeing these technical dev interviews that the DF team does, keep them coming 😊

[@callumdointhings5]

Bahaha this guy was great. Id imagine knowing that you're working for Microsoft might make this situation pretty stressful for him but he killed it. I cancelled GamePass but I think I'm gonna pick this up on Steam ❤

[@Haywood-Jablomie]

You can often buy GamePass 7 day keys for 75 cents and just stack a whole bunch of them

[@Beaut_Beau]

This was really fascinating, and Lionel from Asobo was a great and generous guest sharing all that information!

[@swavezmartin]

This game is so dope I am blown away I am loving this on the series x

[@Soundtract]

Really excellent interview, love the technical detail and how candid the Asobo technical director is. Can't find content like this anywhere else, thank you!

[@lewkbrett]

Such an amazing interview. I wish more developers would do technical interviews like this.

[@RayOid]

If any studio Microsoft needs to aquire, that is Asobo Studios. Noone should come first.

[@stealthninja4299]

My favourite next gen game so far. They've done an awesome job on console

[@GuillinCorp]

The performance gains are sick, had no idea they updated it like that

[@humvee3d]

Asobo, you have done incredible work. Thank You! With love from Siberia 0/

[@elm4nsuri]

Lionel sounds like such a cool dude! wishing him gd luck on all his future projects.

[@Harrysound]

I bought a series s on Tuesday for this despite never owning two consoles at one time in my 40 year life and having a PS5, because those guys made it happen and made it happen in a way that is simply ,technically stunning. 120hz mode is INCREDIBLE. I want it on every game

[@bs_blackscout]

Amazing interview! I love when devs go into detail without being afraid of being too technical. Understanding how things work is crucial.

[@mickos_]

I love this channel. Excellent video. Flight simulator on the series x is simply beautiful. I can’t stop playing it.

[@雪鷹魚英語培訓的領航]

6:21 "Caches are a bit of the secret formula to avoid re-doing things."

[@PurushNahiMahaPurush]

Lol this is so true. Several times, I've just calculated things once and dumped them into the memory so that I could save frame time by not redoing those things again. If you are not bottlenecked by system memory, this is a great option. But I would not use this approach in embedded systems where system memory is precious.

[@halofreak1990]

@@PurushNahiMahaPurush if you can deal with latency, a disk-based cache is also an option. It's how a lot of OG Xbox games worked

[@IamMarkSmith]

This interview was like a good game of chess between two strangers. My favorite point wa what Lionel was like “man you guys did your analysis.” 😂 that speaks volumes for what you all do @DigitalFoundry. Thank you for this.

the Asobo Studio people are so humble and talented, I wish them the best :)

[@emeraldcelestial1058]

Feels great listening to pros and great interviewers talk things the love and make. Great job.

[@fried_out]

What a fantastic interview, really. The questions were fantastic and Lionel was so open and detailed with his explanations. I thoroughly enjoyed every bit of it and I am definitely looking forward to more with other devs.

[@namakudamono]

Fascination interview! Many thanks, Alex - keep up the great work!

[@mbsfaridi]

Really enjoyed this video. Lionel was hilarious and explained things well, also the Turok guy bits was a nice addition.

[@Harlec]

I understood like a quarter of what they are talking but I enjoyed it anyways.

[@SuperSublime9]

Same here lol

[@Skeames1214]

always the case with df for me lol. their analysis matches with what my untrained eye sees, i love the breakdowns.

[@stubbietubbie]

Two nerds nerding out. Love it.

[@briengakaplan-b1550]

Unbelievable game. Can't even call it a game it's really an experience. I'm seriously considering getting my pilots license because of this game.

[@bombattzorzz]

Awesome seeing Asobo's technical director talk about this stuff. MSFS2020 is an absolute joy and the updates always fix/add/improve so much, especially this recent one (with some unfortunate technical exceptions of course). Thank you for speaking on this video, Lionel.

[@K0M1N0]

This was great to watch! I love how open Lionel was with his responses, really speaks volumes about the studio to let the technical director who knows his shit to do this interview rather than some marketing idiot.... By the way you don't need to be self conscious about getting too technical, we love it! Even if most of the people watching may not fully understand it's just inspiring to see someone so passionate about thier craft sharing thier methodology and opinions! And as always DF you're nailing it with the content 🙌

[@Tarets]

Such a great interview!

[@justin42]

Great interview, not much I can add that hasn't been said here but I really appreciated the deeper dive in the interview and the more technical discussion!

[@alexg350]

High credit to this developer and rest of his team. I just think they pushed the break too much for PC. Our machines not need such a downgrade. I hope the next update give us back the absolute beauty we had, without popping. Anyway, they try their best, but please don't let computers be affected by the lower level that consoles have. 🤓

[@robertmcmahon4549]

Im sure they will fix this,they had a timescale to get the consoles ready

[@lustechsource5197]

Such a great interview! Asobo did a great job getting this game optimized for consoles. It's insane that they got it running at all!

[@OFFICIALARTMUSIC]

Absolutely crazy combining of web dev and game dev. This type of stuff is really exciting to learn about, especially if you have any interest in programming

[@hopepeho]

Kudos on the interview, it's fantastic. I really like seeing a proper technical explanation of the systems involved and I hope that you carry on in this direction. I think most people watching these videos appreciate when it isn't 'dumbed down' and getting straight answers is far more valuable than marketing fluff.

[@rodrigopinchiari4027]

Digital Foundry bringing us another GREAT technical review as always. Asobo, THANK YOU!!!

[@TheClumsyGeekGaming]

Huge congratulations to Asobo for this incredible accomplishment of releasing on the Xbox. I barely understood the technical discussions but I got an understanding of how complex it all is. This update comes at a huge price for high-end PC users, unfortunately, but I'm confident now that Xbox version is out, Asobo will turn back its focus into bringing back the image fidelity it lost in the form of additional graphics options for PC users.

[@budthecyborg4575]

19:31 TAA in Flight Sim collects data from the past 128 frames! Wow that's a lot of temporal sampling.

[@bomalpatriote5536]

🇫🇷 ASOBO 🇫🇷 Devs did a fantastic job!!!

[@AceCmbatguy25]

De ouf les boss vraiment

[@bomalpatriote5536]

@@AceCmbatguy25 et aussi le studio Français de Montpellier qui va sortir le jeu STRAY en exclu sur PC, PS5 & PS4 🇫🇷 Les Développeurs Français sont au top 👍

[@gerardnll2]

What a nice guy and what an interesting talk! So great!

[@selnor1983]

Playground Games and Asobo Studios are in a class of their own in terms or presentation and visuals at the moment. Both studios have smashed it out of the park and showed the rest of the industry what Next gen visuals are. Amazing work Asobo. Amazing work.

[@HorseheadNebula85]

Amazing stuff. To be able to take all those disparate code bases and make it into something elegant and performative. Asobo deserves all the credit in the world! Good job with the interview, Alex!

[@CooChewGames]

Thanks so much for not glossing over or over-simplifying; was really interesting and I enjoyed it lots.

[@jasonpattison1955]

Thank you both for such an incredible interview 💕. It's so invigorating and refreshing to see a developer to be honest and open and so very proud of their work. I'm going to buy the game even though it on XBox game pass.

[@SteelSkin667]

As someone who genuinely thinks that web technology is the superior solution for creating UIs, I really like their approach, but it definitely comes with some big challenges when it comes to performance. Javascript is basically single-threaded, memory leaks are really easy to create, and garbage collection does use a lot of resources. What's worse is that typically games consoles typically disallow JIT compilation for games due to security concerns. The CPU time used to update and render those glass cockpits must be insane.

[@logicalfundy]

Honestly I think a vector graphics library would've been a better fit. If interactivity is really needed, maybe combine it with a high performance scripting language like LUA. A full web stack is pretty heavy weight. There's really no going back on a released game, though. At least they split it off into its own thread now, which should make it a bit less consequential to the overall framerate.

[@AceCmbatguy25]

Flight Simulator and A Plague Tale are both incredible gems 💙

[@Silveraga]

More technical interview hell yeah

[@liaminwales]

So cool to see a dev talking about there game in a more technical way! Brave start with the topic of CPU, looks like the games made real improvements which is amazing!

[@NintendoSphere]

18:05 this exchange is fantastic! 😂

[@Saif0412]

Asobo studios is one of the great developers we have nowadays, great work on the interview Alex, always a pleasure to watch 👍

[@mayankpant1596]

It still blows my mind as to how this game runs on series s.. Engineering behind this is truely incredible..

[@jimechols4347]

Yes... flight simulators and driving games are great test beds for new GPU and CPU designs since it will reveal weaknesses in the architecture and help engineers design better products.

[@onehappykamper]

A big thanks to the team for producing such an amazing simulation. Merci. Gracias. Thanks.

[@Kindersonde]

My technical knowledge is pretty limited but this was still super interesting to listen to. Thanks to Lionel for the breakdown

[@DanXcel]

fantastic interview

[@airforcex9412]

Tried it back-to-back, 3090 vs Series X today. It takes you about 2 minutes to adjust from 60FPS to 30 and then you’re set. It’s impressive that you can now do this on a console with all that fidelity!

[@xPORTALWALKERx]

Fantastic and fun interview!

[@anotheruser8105]

Super interview!!!

[@timsmith5980]

@Digital Foundry What is your take on the huge controversy going on in the Flightsim community regarding supposed downgrading of PC graphics, clouds, cockpit textures etc to unify code with Xbox release? Have you noticed this on your PCs?

[@tronicmuse]

The plan is to eventually enable pcs to have quality setting sliders that go beyond the Xbox versions. But it has to WORK first. Like Lionel said many times. Then they can iterate and fine tune it further.

[@-aexc-]

the only thing xbox is missing imo, is a gyro in the controller for better aiming and a proper offline way to set up the console

[@METALFACEDOOMXXXX]

And playstation 5 is missing quick resume smart delivery games for the holidays! List goes on. Nobody cares about that gimmicky bullshit in the dull sense 5

[@pixeljauntvr7774]

@@METALFACEDOOMXXXX Funny how Xbox fan girls are trying to flip the script on "no games" after having no first party titles for the first 9 months of the Series X launch. You got one now and you suddenly think you're king of the hill 😂😂😂😂

[@METALFACEDOOMXXXX]

@@pixeljauntvr7774 but it's true playstation 5 has no games we eating good over here and going to eating better this holiday! But hey you have stray cats to look forward to in 2022 if it even comes out lmfaoo

[@-aexc-]

@@METALFACEDOOMXXXX I don't care about the other gimmicks in the ds5, gyro is not a gimmick and is genuinely super helpful for camera controls. After moving to PC for a bit it's the only way I can use a controller when I need to control the camera

[@METALFACEDOOMXXXX]

@@-aexc- And do you even own a nextgen console?😆

[@simonemuzio4376]

Fantastic and very interesting interview, thank you DF!

[@paulanderson929]

How awesome. Just bought this in PC and love exploring and all the detail.

[@nierAutomata.]

love this format😻

[@antoes8659]

Amazing video! Fun to get some insight into this. Lionel seems like a great guy and develover.

[@bobbiebrownn]

Incredible interview you really do earn your keep on this channel. Extreamly good work

[@rakon8496]

What an amazing interview! Thanks

[@KidJustice123]

We've seen an incredible amount of talent emerge from studios such as Asobo and Moon. They truly are becoming masters of the craft.

[@Paulo-vp4mk]

Loved this video, amazing interview.

[@1970cgb]

Pity they messed up the PC version with latest update and then with the hot fix that was supposed to rectify update 5 issues .Also confirmed by their community manager .

[@budthecyborg4575]

Fantastic interview. At this point I think we've gone more in depth with Flight Sim than just about any other game ever before.

[@s0jabohne]

Great interview, keep em coming

[@Schraiber]

Absolutely love these developer interviews. So interesting!

[@simulacrae]

Of course not a word on how broken the sim is on PC. Pop in is insane, the clouds look worse. Some Xbox features were even turned on on the PC version like that crappy switch selection stuff. At the same time you can't fly airliners because the live weather is bugged. Several devs have pulled projects.

[@ganntradingsystemstimecycl2783]

Yeah it full of shit interview. This clearly states to me Asobo along Microsoft only care about Xbox..

[@DSS553]

Not to mention that it crashes to desktop constantly for many players. Even after the hotfix, which didn't fix anything.

[@nping2001]

More of these technical interviews please

[@ganntradingsystemstimecycl2783]

I'm glad both the guy interviewing and the dev guy are proud. Fact is Asobo have culled so much of the LOD in order for it to work on Series S.

[@tinobrown1780]

I flew over Africa in the rain playing Toto. It was great 🙂

[@countduckula6549]

i have a qestion how did they mess up the weather again