Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 requires 64 GB of RAM

Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 is just a few months away from launch, and developer Asobo Studio has released the game’s system requirements. They’re mostly nothing to talk about. The game can scale up to the aging GTX 970 and up to the latest RTX 4080, but one requirement has players scratching their heads — 64GB of RAM to meet the “ideal” system requirements.

That’s an unheard of amount of memory for a game, even in 2024. For comparison, I have an RTX 4090 with a Ryzen 7 7800X3D, which is probably the most powerful gaming PC you can buy right now. Even with that, I only have 32GB of RAM. Why would you need more? Even the most demanding games can’t saturate 32GB of RAM, and there’s a strong argument that 16GB is enough for most titles. Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 changes this narrative.

Planning on flying on PC? Here are the minimum, recommended, and ideal system requirements for #MicrosoftFlightSimulator2024.

photo:twitter.com/yDdsDaxutR

— Microsoft Flight Simulator (@MSFSofficial) September 19, 2024

The RAM requirements are not surprising once you understand how it works Microsoft Flight Simulator works. In the previous version of the game, Asobo developed a system that could stream real-time photogrammetry of cities into the game. That’s why you see the network speed requirement in the spec list above. The game has to store that data somewhere, and with only 12GB of available VRAM, some map detail is sure to spill over into system memory.

Naturally, the faster your internet is, the more data the game can stream, and the faster memory you’ll need to put those assets into the game world. The ideal specs also list some powerful hardware like the RTX 4080 and RX 7900 XT, which are likely to play the game at higher resolutions, requiring even more space for high-resolution photogrammetry.

The developers are making some major detail improvements Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024, too. Asobo claims to have increased “the detail of its virtual environment by a factor of 4,000” and that it “can now download virtually any rock on Earth.” Asobo has also significantly reduced the download size to just 50 GB, while the previous version could take up hundreds of gigabytes. “Now we’ve integrated everything in the cloud, and everything is streamed and cached on the hardware. You don’t have to install any new World Updates; they’re just streamed seamlessly,” said Asobo CEO Sebastian Wloch.

Microsoft Flight Simulator will launch on November 19 for Xbox Series X/S and PC, and will be available on Game Pass on launch day. Pre-orders for the game are available now for $70.