![]() ![]() There's some stuff in Australia, some stuff and Japan a nd then I say, ' hey how about Brazil?' And everybody looks away," he told me. "I 'm trying very hard to get other continents captured because it's very much United States and y ou have great data for Europe, pretty good data for Western Europe. That includes cities - for which the Flight Simulator team now charters its own planes to get the photogrammetry data - but also smaller features like adding more animals, including birds, and getting better weather data (and maybe historical weather data in the future). As Jorg Neumann, the head of Microsoft Flight Simulator at Asobo noted a number of times during the event, the mission here is to build a digital twin of the earth. And for those who feel nostalgic, the team also brought back 24 classic missions from previous Flight Simulator versions.īut beyond looking back, Asobo and Microsoft also used this event to look into the future a bit. Microsoft and Asobo also brought back four classic airports, including Chicago's Meigs Field and added 14 heliports and 15 glider airports. You're not going to do steep turns with it anytime soon, but it's a fun diversion.Īnd there is more. ![]() It's a beast, no doubt, with its massive engines and weight. The Spruce Goose feels a bit like a novelty, but it's also a beautiful model and surprisingly easy to fly. I'm sure we'll see some helicopter tutorials pop up in future releases, though. Interestingly, while there are no new tutorials in the game to teach you how to fly helicopters - because the team argues that with all of the assistance functions turned on, it's actually pretty easy to fly them - there are about half a dozen glider tutorials in the game now. And you can launch a glider from anywhere, too, whether that's JFK or your local glider field. And those animations are nice, too, including your friendly launch helper running next to the glider to help keep you steady as you start your takeoff roll. One nifty feature is that you get the option between winch launches - which are standard in Europe, for example - or using a tow plane, which is the usual way to launch a glider in most of the U.S. If you're looking for a more relaxed flying experience, gliders are definitely the way to go. Otherwise, there are very few surprises here. Still, as Bossard told me, the idea here was to create an engine that allows real-life glider pilots to find thermals exactly where they would expect them to be. "Sometimes you have to make some clever choices that help us to create the same kind of behavior with a low computational cost." "If we want the perfect simulation, then we would need a quantum computer 100 years from now," Asobo's Martial Bossard explained. The weather engine doesn't create clouds from first principle, for example, and so when creating the system for the thermals, the team had to work from where the clouds are and then work backward from there. The physics engine for this takes into account everything from the outside temperature, the angle of the sun, the material the sunlight is reflecting from and more - but the Asobo team also admits that it still cheats quite a bit here to do this within the computational limits of the engine. Here, too, Microsoft added some new visualization to the sim to let you see up- and downdrafts around you. Louis, the 1935 Douglas DC-3, the 1937 Grumman G-21 Goose and the 1947 Havilland DHC-2 Beaver.Īs you would expect, Gliders are a much more docile affair. Other new aircraft include classics like the 1903 Wright Flyer, the 1915 Curtiss JN-4 Jenny, the 1927 Ryan NYP Spirit of St. The highlights here are what Microsoft and Asobo call their first "true-to-life" airliner in the base game - an Airbus 310-300 - and the Spruce Goose, the largest seaplane and wooden aircraft ever built. ![]() In total, the update includes 12 new planes (two helicopters, two gliders and eight fixed-wing aircraft). Gliders and helicopters aren't new to Flight Simulator, but when Microsoft and Asobo resurrected the sim back in 2020, they were still missing from the game. As the company had teased before, this update to the sim will introduce helicopters and gliders, as well as a few classic aircraft. ![]() Microsoft is celebrating the 40th anniversary of the venerable Flight Simulator series today with the launch of the aptly named Microsoft Flight Simulator 40th Anniversary update. ![]()
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