Take to the skies with Nvidia and AMD drivers for Microsoft Flight Simulator

At long last, Microsoft Flight Simulator has taken flight in the public airspace, and right on cue, AMD and Nvidia have released optimized GPU drivers to get the best performance while taking to the skies—you might need all the help you can get. And as is typically the case, each respective driver package also includes some additional goodies.

Starting with AMD, its Adrenalin 2020 Edition 20.8.2 driver package includes performance tweaks for four games: Microsoft Flight Simulator, A Total War Saga: Troy, Mortal Shell, and the Marvel's Avengers open beta.

Your mileage will vary, naturally, but according to AMD, Radeon RX 5700 XT owners should expect up to 12 percent better performance in A Total War Saga: Troy just by applying the latest driver. This is based on AMD's own internal testing on a PC equipped with an Intel Core i9 9900K CPU and 16GB of DDR4-3200 RAM. The release notes do make any other specific performance claims.

AMD's latest driver also brings with it a few bug fixes. They include:

• Reports of intermittent system hangs while exiting system sleep on some AMD Ryzen 3000 series mobile processors with Radeon graphics. 
• Pressing a key while Radeon Overlay is open, or exiting Radeon Overlay while playing Hyper Scape, may cause the players actions to freeze or fail to recognize input from the user.
• Upgrade Advisor may show an 'Unable to get requirements' error message when opened on Windows 7 system configurations.

AMD says it is continuing to monitor and investigate lingering black screen issues. One specific occurrence is listed in the known issues section—users who enable Enhanced Sync may run into a black screen in some games and with certain configurations (neither of which are specified). A temporary workaround is to disable Enhanced Sync.

You can download the 20.8.2 driver through the Radeon Software utility, or install it manually from AMD's website.

Moving on to Nvidia, the highlight of its new 452.06 WHQL driver is that it is brings 'Game Ready' status to Microsoft Flight Simulator, as well as World of Warcraft: Shadowlands (pre-patch support for upcoming DXR visuals), A Total War Saga: Troy, and Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1 + 2.

"Game Ready Drivers provide the best possible gaming experience for all major new releases. Prior to a new title launching, our driver team is working up until the last minute to ensure every performance tweak and bug fix is included for the best gameplay on day-1," Nvidia explains.

In addition, Nvidia's latest driver adds eight more G-Sync Compatible displays to the mix, including Acer's XB273U GX, VG272 LV, XV272 LV, CP5271U V, and X34 GS; Asus's PG329; IO Data's GC252UXm; and Lenovo's Y25-25.

There are several fixed issues with this release as well:

• [Shadow of the Tomb Raider][DirectX 12]: The game may crash when launched if Hardwareaccelerated GPU scheduling is enabled.
• [Death Stranding]: Texture corruption may be observed during gameplay on GeForce GTX 16/RTX 20 series GPUs.
• [Path of Exile]: Black square corruption appears around characters.
• [Sonic & All Stars Racing Transformed]: The game crashes when playing in a water level.
• [Forza Motorsport 7]: The game starts to stutter after racing a few laps.
•  [Zhan Ge Jing Ji Chang]: Corruption occurs in the game when played in the Tencent mobile game simulator.
• Several games randomly freeze for a few seconds during gameplay. Affected games include Assassin's Creed Origins, Planetside 2, Assassin’s Creed III, Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, and Assassin’s Creed Syndicate.
• The Nvidia Control Panel does not display the native resolution of some HDTVs if the timings are invalid.
• Some displays may show a green tint when Windows Night Light is enabled.
• Snow appears on the display upon waking up the HDMI monitor.
• [Notebook][Turing] Display may show pixelated corruption on waking notebook from long display off. 

You can download the 452.06 WHQL driver through Nvidia's GeForce Experience software, or install it manually from Nvidia's website.