Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 supports PC VR headsets, although you’ll also need a pretty beefy rig to even run it. Now, players are getting the much-requested fixed foveated rendering feature, saving on compute and boosting performance.

Microsoft Flight Sim fans have been waiting for native support for foveated rendering for some time now, and now developer Asobo Studio has pushed its ‘Sim Update 2’ beta which brings both fixed foveated rendering to the game.

Foveated rendering is a technique that lowers the resolution in your peripheral vision, reducing your GPU’s workload and upping frames per second (FPS) you can render. When activated in the VR Settings menu, it uses Quad View rendering, which can add to your CPU overhead, the studio warns.

Image courtesy ‘IceManDBB’

While fixed foveated rendering is available to all PC VR headset users who opt-in to the beta update today, there’s no word on when to expect dynamic foveated rendering, which allows users with eye-tracking even more performance gains.

Dynamic foveated rendering does this by only rendering where you’re looking at the highest quality, leaving all else outside of your focal vision to be rendered at low resolution. Of course, a PC VR headset with eye-tracking is required for this, which in similar applications can double performance.

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It does seem to be in the works though, as Asobo says in the settings screen above “it can be used with Eye-Tracking when available for best use,” although the company hasn’t provided a timeline when it will turn on the feature.

That said, Asobo is working with Pimax, which has been an official peripheral partner for Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 since November, to bring this and other VR-specific features to game.

Notably, we haven’t seen mention of any of this in the official Sim Update 2 changelog, so we’ll be keeping an eye on YouTuber ‘VR Flight Sim Guy’, who regularly dives into MFS2024, and was also one of the first to report the new fixed foveated rendering feature. You can check out his video below showing off the new performance gains.

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Scott Hayden
Well before the first modern XR products hit the market, Scott recognized the potential of the technology and set out to understand and document its growth. He has been professionally reporting on the space for nearly a decade as Editor at Road to VR, authoring more than 4,000 articles on the topic. Scott brings that seasoned insight to his reporting from major industry events across the globe.
  • JanO

    @Ben

    A few recent RTVR articles present ETFR as much more effective than it actually is. The way our eyes and head move when looking around in VR already benefits from simple fixed foveated rendering. The complex and costly addition of eye tracking only adds about 25% to the performance gain obtained from just FFR. Furthermore, ETFR being a reactive tech, there's a both a processing delay & cost to ETFR. In real gameplay, your head movement will usually follow your eye movement by the time ETFR has done its thing.

    This tech will mostly be used to spy on you and profile you for even more targetted ads.

    • Dragon Marble

      In real gameplay, your head movement will usually follow your eye movement by the time ETFR has done its thing.

      That's absolutely not the case. You obviously haven't tried any ETFR headsets.

      And, if "the way our eyes and head move" is good enough, why do they need eye tracking for targeted ads? Which way is it?

      • JanO

        To each his own I guess… I'd rather pay for hardware that WILL provide a better experience than for hardware that will provide big corporations more info about my visual preferences.

        It baffles me how people don't see this for what it really is. I'm not saying ETFR doesn't work, I'm saying it isn't worth the trade-off…

        • JanO

          FFR gives a sizable performance uplift with little effort. The additional performance you get from going from FFR to ETFR isn't as big and is much more costly in both hardware & software.

          • Traph

            While this is true in a literal sense, in actual usage on modern pancake lenses ETFR is tremendously beneficial. Fixed foveation rings were “fine” on fresnel lenses because the image degrades towards the outside of the lens regardless. On pancake lenses, they’re annoyingly visible at all times.

            Eye tracked foveation provides performance benefits similar to FFR, except it’s “free” due to not seeing the degraded visuals. Plus you can typically increase the ring sizes quite far before they become noticeable in your peripheral vision – to levels where FFR would be a horrific experience. The only real technical downsides are that wireless eye tracking more or less requires an optimal wireless network setup and in some cases FFR can be superior if you’re hard limited on CPU.

          • JanO

            I agree FFR was easier to "hide" with older fresnel lenses, given their properties. The fact you see the border of the foveated rendering zone when using pancake optics has more to do with a bad implementation since it could just gradually reduce the rendering resolution to mitigate for this or, as you said, make the FR zone larger. By the way, the larger the ETFR zone, the smaller the gain. You say it's free, but it's not you pay for harware, software dev and you also pay in performance and privacy at runtime. All of this money & efforts aren't really giving you that much more than good old FFR, hence my opinion that I'd rather put the additional money on a better graphics card for a bigger win.

          • JanO

            Take a look at youtuber "Vr Flight Sim Guy" 's latest video. Hint, hint: it's titled "I'm DISSAPOINTED! QUAD View DFR vs FIXED Foveated…"

    • XRC

      Using Pimax Crystal here with the Tobii 120hz eye tracking and Pimax Play's dynamic foveated rendering injector.

      It's working very effectively in my favourite openVR DX 11 titles like Aircar and Into the Radius.

      Have it set to "quality" it's very impressive in terms of keeping frame rates consistent on my RTX 4080 desktop whilst I'm not seeing any artifacts or timing issues

  • eadVrim

    PSVR2 is really cool in this simulator cause of vibrant colors, deep black, high brightness and more natural 3D, but it needs more options to be activated like (eye tracking and HDR)

    • Arno van Wingerde

      Hm, yes but that may not happen. Moreover, I would like to see MSFS to run on my PS5 pro (I do not own aor want a PC), but that is most likely not going to happen.

      • eadVrim

        There are rumors that MFS will support PS5 and Switch

        • Arno van Wingerde

          I'd say those rumours wer very strong on April 1st. PS5 seems unlikely… Switch near impossible, unless the next Switch is much more powerful.

          • eadVrim

            Not unlikely. There were many Microsoft exclusives that were later released on PlayStation

  • I think that, too!

  • ZarathustraDK

    This is one of those "ace up their sleeve"-things that Valve conceivably could pull out with Deckard. Dynamic Foveated Rendering, but on a compositor-level instead of a per-game level since they control SteamOS.