Coming this week on Digital Foundry (Week 30, 2021) (Patreon)

Hi everyone, Rich here to talk #content - lots of exciting stuff going on this week, so let's not beat about the bush.

* Alex is returning to full production by tackling a monster - Flight Simulator 2020 for Xbox Series consoles. And straight after writing this, I'll be filming the VRR mode! We also hope to have something a little special on this game a little further on down the road.

* John is currently working on The Ascent - mostly focusing on Xbox Series consoles, but with a touch of PC too. Expect that later on in the week.

* Tom is just finishing up a state of play video on the Xbox versions of Cyberpunk 2077, patch 1.23 - you know, the one that 'fixed' the PS4 versions. What's the score on Xbox? How does Series X compare with PS5 these days? Find out on Wednesday. 

* After that, Tom will be looking at the upgrades for Shadow of the Tomb Raider on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series consoles. I dashed over to the post office today to send him a hard drive with my library captures of the FPS Boost version. If it is indeed a native app upgrade, it'll be interesting to see how FPS Boost compares. PS5 looks like being the first back-compat upgrade that actually increases resolution, up to 4K60 checkerboard. If PS5 is a back-compat job, I'm very curious if anything at all has changed on Series - or whether it just makes FPS Boost 'official'. At the very least I'd like to see 1080p on Series S.

* John has a busy week - he's working with Audi to have the next full DF Retro episode ready, but it may slip a day or two. Regardless, it's coming soon and it's going to be great.

* Audi is hard at work on the next DF Retro Play and something special is being lined up for Retro supporters - a Resident Evil 2 N64 livestream with Alex Aniel and Chris Huelsbeck (who created the Musyx engine for the game).

* Rich (ie me) has a couple of longer term projects on the go. I also will be unearthing more treasures for Classic FPS Remastered. There's been a bit of a lull here: this is because my SATA to USB dock stopped working (!) which I guess is preferable to the alternative explanation: that over a decade's worth of library data is gone.

At some point this week, I'll be upgrading my PC. The monstrous Core i9 10980XE is being replaced with... a Ryzen 9 5950X, which I bought for £560 courtesy of a tip-off from Will '@dealsfoundry' Judd. It might seem like a 'side-grade' but the heat from the Intel chip is quite astonishing - and not only that, I've been running it at stock clocks and even there it's hitting the stock power limit of the EVGA X299 Dark board it is in. Let's just say that as processors go, it's not Summer-friendly and the case is permanently open. Still, it shall live on - it'll replace the first-gen Threadripper in Tom Morgan's PC - which sits within the air-conditioned Eurogamer offices.

Anyway, thanks for your patience on this one, it's been a busy day.