Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 stutters far less on the native arm64 preview engine. Play now offers its new revision, r5. The game keeps rewriting small pieces of its own code while it runs, and each rewrite made the x86 emulator throw away its translation of that code and translate it again, on the game's main thread, which showed up as long frames. r5 steps over writes that put back the bytes already in memory, translates freshly rewritten code in small pieces for a few seconds, and reuses an earlier translation when the same code comes back. In test flights on a base M4 at Gibraltar, frames over 100 ms fell from 59 to 5 in two minutes parked on the runway and from 55 to 23 per minute of take-off roll, and the frame rate went from 19 to 22.5 fps parked. The game's recipe turns these switches on for Flight Simulator 2024 only, so other games are not affected.
To try it, press Play on Flight Simulator 2024, choose Use the preview engine, then New environment. Highball sets up an environment on r5 with a Steam of its own that you sign in to once, and the copy of the game you already installed comes along without a new download. If you already set the game up on an earlier preview revision, Play offers once to move that environment to r5. The tested configuration is a Mac with 32 GB of memory, and smaller Macs have not been tested enough to say how they do. The first launch takes about 13 minutes to reach the cockpit, and the take-off can still hitch when one of the game's pop-ups opens.
Also in this version:
- Read more on a game page opens when you click the words, not only the small arrow beside them. Thanks to Hayden on Discord.
Coming from 0.10.15? Everything from the 0.10.16 to 0.10.19 betas is in this version too:
- Forza Horizon 6's dialogue, navigator and engine sound play on the Wine 11 engines r24 and later. Pick one in your Forza environment's settings, under Advanced, Engine. Thanks to @TxCsOffc, who found the cause and wrote the fix (highball#313).
- Games on the native arm64 preview engine can get macOS Game Mode, since its helper now declares itself a game. The Intel engines don't get it yet (highball#338). Thanks to @dtacci (highball#339). (Corrected on 2026-10-19, this line first said every Wine game.)
- A game can open on the display you pick, from the Display choice in its Advanced section. Thanks to @tuandinh0801, who built it (highball#360).
- Steep starts on Apple silicon, on the new default engine r28. Thanks to @Sean-Shmulevich, who found the cause and wrote the fix (highball-db#465).
- Red Dead Redemption 2 no longer stops with Rockstar launcher error 113 in an environment moved off the default engine. Thanks to crêpe on Discord.
- Stop really stops an Epic download and keeps its progress. Thanks to udance4ever (highball#323), who also asked why a 32-bit Mac game gets its Windows version, which Highball now explains (highball#316).
- A Steam install that finishes while the game's page is open turns its button into Play. Thanks to @NorseGaud (highball#286).
- A Highball folder on an exFAT drive no longer hands Wine the hidden ._ files macOS writes there. Thanks to akki on Discord.
- BeamNG.drive starts with -gfx dx11 by itself. Thanks to DJTheron (highball-db#474).
- Apple's D3DMetal from Game Porting Toolkit 4.0 beta 3 on the r26 engine, vkd3d's shader pipeline cache kept between starts, and a warning before a download when your Mac has less memory than the game needs.