YouTube’s ‘SimulatedAviation’ has released a direct comparison video between DCS World and Microsoft Flight Simulator. This video compares the airports that are featured in both of these games, giving us a glimpse at their graphical and tech differences.
As we can see, Microsoft Flight Simulator looks better in all cases. This new flight simulator features a lot of high-resolution textures, as well as a more advanced lighting system. Still, DCS World does an excellent job, especially if we consider the fact that it’s coming from a smaller team.
As we’ve already stated, Microsoft Flight Simulator is the new “Crysis”. This game is currently using the DirectX 11 API and has major optimization issues, similar to those of Crysis. Still, Asobo plans to add support for the DX12 API via a post-launch update.
Now while the game suffers from CPU optimization issues, it also packs some of the best graphics we’ve seen to date. Microsoft Flight Simulator sports next-gen graphics, and it’s a beauty to behold.
Those interested can read more about MFS 2020 in our extended PC Performance Analysis article.
Enjoy!

John is the founder and Editor in Chief at DSOGaming. He is a PC gaming fan and highly supports the modding and indie communities. Before creating DSOGaming, John worked on numerous gaming websites. While he is a die-hard PC gamer, his gaming roots can be found on consoles. John loved – and still does – the 16-bit consoles, and considers SNES to be one of the best consoles. Still, the PC platform won him over consoles. That was mainly due to 3DFX and its iconic dedicated 3D accelerator graphics card, Voodoo 2. John has also written a higher degree thesis on the “The Evolution of PC graphics cards.”
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Smaller team? Heck, most people never heard of Asobo – the developer of Flight Simulator – until now, so how could they be bigger?
DCS is 150 employees. Asobo was 140 in 2018 but now they have Microsoft support and money so they are bigger.
The main difference is that DCS is actually playable on current hardware…
Nice find. I commented on the youtube video:
“Very nice comparisons. Were both were done at 1080, 60fps, max settings? (It would be interesting to see quick 1 min vid of both at 4k 60fps with a plane, just for kicks)”
Ive been waiting for MFS to launch since John started dropping 4k screenshots the past year or so. After finding out how much power it needs to run smoothly Im a bit discouraged.
I only have i7 6700k, 16GB , M.2 SSD, and R9 390x. Will I even be able to do 1080@60fps high settings on MFS?
Yeah, but will we ever have fun / hardcore dogfighting in MFS? I don’t think so…
Both games are necessary for every flight simulator enthusiast.
Edit : Just watched the video. Some parts actually look worse in MFS, and the color and lighting are sometimes really wrong. It doesn’t look so much better overall.