Microsoft and Asobo Studio have released the Sim Update 4 for Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024, marking the next step in the sim’s ongoing development.
Sim Update 4 – 1.6.32.0 focuses on boosting stability, enhancing performance, and resolving a wide range of issues. Beyond general bug fixes, Sim Update 4 introduces numerous refinements and quality-of-life enhancements, updates to Career Mode, and a variety of improvements and updates across most of the included airports and aircraft.
Performance and stability have taken a notable step forward in Sim Update 4, with optimisations across the main CPU thread, event display processing, scenery object culling, airports, ATC, aircraft, and road and boat traffic. The update also addresses several crashes affecting systems such as WASM, out-of-memory errors, ATC, the smart camera, flight planner, airport vehicle simulation, and several others.
Red Bull Air Races
In addition to the Sim Update 4 release, Red Bull Air Races have now been released, overlapping with the Microsoft Flight Simulator’s launch on the PlayStation 5. The Red Bull Air Races are available through the activities menu, featuring courses in Abu Dhabi, Budapest, Rio de Janeiro, Monument Valley, Spielberg and more worldwide.
The mammoth Sim Update 4 changelog can be found on Microsoft Flight Simulator’s website.
A briefer changelog can be found below.
Sim Update 4 Changelog
New Content and Features
- The collection page of the World Photographer mode now only displays the title of the hovered objective
- Added a loading spinner in the avatar creator page
- Added a new graphic setting on consoles to display or hide seatbelts
- Added helicopter vortex ring protection assistance
Stability & Performance
- Fixed a rare crash during boot video when using FSR
- Optimised grass rendering.
- Performance optimisation of the input system.
- Fixed a crash in the tissue simulation.
- Fixed a crash in the tyre mark and footprint system.
- Performance optimisations on airport, ATC, aircraft, and scenery.
- Performance optimisations of boat and road traffic.
- Performance optimisations of the sim flow code.
- Fixed a crash in the world map.
- Fixed a crash in the ATC system.
- Fixed a crash in the smart camera system.
- Fixed a crash in the AI path following system.
- Fixed a crash in the flight planner.
- Fixed a crash in the airport vehicle simulation.
- Fixed a crash in the radar system.
- Fixed a crash in the ATC tower system.
- Fixed a crash in the special effects system.
- Fixed crashes in the navigation graph system.
- Fixed a crash in the airport taxiway simulation.
- Optimisation of the main CPU thread.
- Optimisation of the main CPU code for event display.
- Added a new parameter in SimBase.Document: ” SimBase.DependOnSettings”. It takes a string for an option’s name. IT allows the XML to be read if the option is true (works only with on/off options). Added the param to the Seatbelts.xml to have seatbelts only when the new option “Seatbelts” in graphic settings is true
- Optimised scenery objects culling computation.
- Optimisation of the graphic user interface (menu pages).
- Fixed CFD not compatible with inverted flight.
- Fixed a crash in the copilot system.
- Fixed a crash in the airport system.
- Fixed a crash in the CFD simulation.
- Fixed a crash in the gltf scene graph.
- Fixed a rare crash occurrence when adjusting flight plan waypoints’ altitude.
- Fixed a crash in the path following.
- Fixed a crash in the cabin service system.
- Fixed a crash in WASM.
- Fixed a crash in the pushback system.
- Fixed a crash in the ATC menu system.
- Fixed incorrectly named root parameter display in pitch flight model debug window.
- Fixed partially ineffective incidence parameter for new htail objects ([OBJ_AIRGEO_HTAIL.N]).
- Fixed a crash in the flight planning system.
- Fixed a crash in the camera system.
- Fixed a crash in the aircraft unallocation system.
- Fixed a crash related to air traffic.
- Fixed a crash in the aircraft loading and creation system.
- Fixed a crash in the cabin service system.
- Fixed partially missing usage of sweep parameter in new aeroplane htail object surfaces.
- On PC and Xbox, changed the way mip evictions are handled to improve texture management and reduce stutters.
- On Xbox, the GPU is now used to manage the mipstreaming to reduce stutter frequency.
- Improved texture quality management to reduce stutters.
- Fixed that some UI elements sometimes failed to spawn, resulting in an empty tile, for example, in World Photographer
- Partially mitigated stutters caused by low memory
- Fixed a rare crash when selecting an icon on the World Map
- Fixed a memory leak and a crash when you’re in free flight with ATC open, restart, then stay in ATC
- Fixed a crash in the cabin service navigation graph system.
- Fixed a crash in the METAR system.
- Fixed some pop-in when invisible objects are changed to be visible.
- Fixed the erroneous formatting of a Fuel System error message that could cause a crash
- Fixed a crash that could occur in TIN city areas.
- Adjusted triggers at which avionics are disabled when memory is getting low, and added a notification message when doing so.
- Fixed random crashes when animating Inverse Kinematics of 3D pilot (MSFS2020 packages only)
- Add a new Multiplayer replication models option (High Fidelity / Simplified)
- Fixed an issue that could lead to out-of-memory errors
- Improved loading of runway materials during RTC
- Fixed concurrent accesses to Atmosphere Cache, which could lead to crashes when add-ons write to AIRSPEED SimVars
- Fixed a crash occurring sometimes occurs when the default audio device is not available
- Fixed stutter in the ATC panel when receiving new messages
- Fixed a crash when manipulating departure/arrival info in Free Flight mode
- Fixed FPS drop due to tessellation on DEM skirts
- Set the minimum text size bigger size on handheld platforms
- Fixed a crash in the cabin service system.
- Improved material loading to reduce popping during transitions
- Fixed a crash in the aircraft simulation.
- Fixed a crash in the aircraft loading when the flight model cfg file was incomplete or contained incorrect data.
- Modified DisplayFPS debug to have clearer memory statistics.
- Fixed a crash when closing/opening the weather panel multiple times
- Optimisation of the renderer
- Fixed instancing draw distance and limited its min size to 0.25%
- Fixed some infinite loadings
- Performance optimisation of the terrain engine.
- Fixed an infinite loading when starting a flight with a scenery from a package, then stopping the flight and disabling the package, and restarting a flight at the same location.
- Fixed a crash when switching in and out of Virtual Reality
General Bug Fixes
- Fixed an issue where plane thumbnails were not used correctly in the activities briefing
- Fixed smoke FX not correctly simulated in career firefighting initial attack after skipping previous steps
- Fixed the ghost line at the bottom of the panel camera
- Opening the “Companies” page now only plays the validation sound a single time
- Validation sound is now only played once when going into the Free Flight plane selection
- Fixed panel.cfg registration font and style different from 2020
- Fixed the wrong livery displayed in the aircraft selector on start
- Fixed an issue where the credits would close before reaching the end
- Fixed an issue where refreshing the airport data could cause a stutter, most visible when selecting a departure or an arrival in the Free Flight/world photographer
- Fixed an issue where the departure time in the logbook was not set to the real time of the flight
- Added the missing scrolls using a gamepad on the help pages
- Fixed AI aircraft contrails not showing if the user’s altitude is too low
- The weather layers in the advanced layers in the World Map filters are now usable with “IFR” and “Blend”
- Fixed an issue where some panels were not retaining position and size information when restarting certain game modes
- The animation where missions appear on the career World Map is now noticeably smoother
- Fixed an issue where some lists were not fully displayed for resolutions smaller than 1080p
- Fixed text during the boot process being tiny on high-resolution screens
- Fixed an issue where the chat history disappeared after the user changed an option
- Fixed gamepad disabled when hovering over an external UI panel
- Fixed Character Creator text not being translated
- Fixed an issue where changing the voice chat output or input device would appear not to work properly
- Fixed an issue where some input could be displayed in the controls screen regardless of the selected device in the “Devices list”
- Fixed an issue where some discovery tiles could have wrong styling
- Fixed an issue where some option lines could have wrong values when switching from one screen to another
- Improved Avatar load inside the Character Selector
- Fixed the Character customisation button not being visually disabled when the customisation is unavailable.
- Fixed Vpainting in panel.cfg using the font colour transparent
- Fixed Arabic text rendered left to right instead of right to left on the adaptive plane and the adaptive mission text
- Fixed the shortcuts were sometimes not displayed correctly during missions
- Fixed avatar sometimes positioned incorrectly during RTC
- Fixed the wrong display of wind layer from live weather in the world map (PS5 only)
- Several Virtual Reality fixes:
- Authorised the toolbar in VR in external view
- Saved the state of panels when switching between VR and non-VR
- Plugged in the aircraft HUD in VR, it is deactivatable with the options, as it is outside of VR
- Fixed visual effects being rendered when material is invalid (was drawing wireframe quads instead of the expected effect)
- Fixed a hang that can occur when exiting a flight with a WASM Aircraft
- Fixed company name always rendered right to left in freelance when spawning in a place where the local alphabet is rendered right to left
- Added a message when the market is unavailable
- Added missing terminate call after sceMsgDialogOpen
- Fixed users can still send messages with ‘Enable Text Chat’ disabled
- Updated the options TTs with the correct description.
- Fixed parsing of SimVar units when loading an electrical system
- Removed exit aircraft when not in photographers’ activities
- Fixed soft lock when exiting the settings menu right after a modification
- Fixed random crashes in XML Gauges loading (fixes crashes when selecting the A2A Comanche in the Aircraft Selector)
- Fixed a crash when launching a flight and cancelling the loading with a plane containing WASM Modules
- Sim Update 4
- Fixed avatar image transparency when HDR is off on a compatible display
- Fixed ATC messages not properly displayed when Windows’ active code page is set to multi-byte (ex, UTF-8, Shift-JIS)
- Fixed the quick camera on the camera panel disappeared
- Fixed HUD colour randomly changing after flight restart
- Fixed an issue where the “Unbind” button in the input bar could be displayed after going through the “controls” menu
- Fixed character portraits sometimes being empty after booting the game
- Fixed an issue where the detailed list of controls could be visually empty after modifying a control
- Fixed cases where VFX could be spawned below ground.
- Fixed an issue where the arrows on the tabs of the ATC were not always present
- Fixed custom aerials, sometimes creating tiling or black tiles
- Mitigated an issue where incorrect thumbnails could be loaded for the character presets in the character creator
- Fixed WASM gauges not always fully loaded before starting the flight (could generate odd aircraft behaviour on start and/or restart)
- Fixed 3rd-party custom panels not available outside Free Flight mode
- Fixed the wrong HUD colour
- Fixed an issue where wind layers were not affected by the wind effect setting
- Fixed an issue where the selected livery was not immediately displayed in the Free Flight page
- Fixed incorrect registration number size depending on the registration text
- Fixed material emissive not being reset when turning lights off
- Fixed an issue where name plates were disappearing too fast when getting away from traffic
- Fixed non-Latin text rendering on the banner
- Added a sound when switching between tabs in the options
- Fixed an issue where a stutter would appear after a short while in the ATC
- Fixed an issue where the traffic was resetting when opening the weather panel
- Fixed the multi-window delete button in the general advanced options
- Fixed non-Latin character not rendered in the company name
- Fixed an issue where toggling the “real time” switch would not properly update the time in Free Flight
- Fixed World Map stamps display when changing resolution in career mode
- Fixed Airliners tend to be too high when setting an airport as arrival and spawning airborne
Install, Performance & Graphics
- Added some files from standard packages to the base installation to speed up first boot or updates
- Added the Community2024 folder, used to allow sharing of Community packages with Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020, without making this iteration load 2024 packages.
- Mitigated black patches on the water
- Fixed: New users were sometimes stuck at 0% loading when launching the game for the first time
- Fixed UI flickers when both FSR3 and NVIDIA DLSS are enabled
- Fixed a culling issue on the edge of the screen that could cause terrain to disappear.
Backwards Compatibility Bug Fixes
- Fixed aircraft registration blinking when switching livery on the aircraft selector
- Fixed coherent call
SET_MAP_PARAMSto allow LatLongAlt and LatLong argument
