Sometimes a soaring plane can be blown off course pretty severely - Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 had some questionable post-launch content. Its successor will not be taking things too far beyond the realm of believable flight scenarios and promises that it will only feature real-world aviation activities.
The flight simulator community has questioned the addition of Halo’s Pelican and the upcoming Dune Ornithopter to Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020. Many feel that the game has strayed far from being the realistic simulator it is advertised to be.
However, it seems that Asobo Studios, the maker of the Microsoft Flight Simulator series, will be focusing on the simulation aspect of the game. Jorg Neumann explained during the recent FlightSimExpo in Texas last week that Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 will not be an expansion and will not be featuring "gamey missions".
The Head of Microsoft Flight Simulator also addressed some concerns from fans of the game. "Some of you correctly asked 'What the heck is this, is this just an acceleration pack or some such thing?" Neumann said. "Nope nope nope. This is the biggest undertaking ever in flight simulation. No doubt about it."
The devs explained it gathered data from around 12 million Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 players. They have found that around 3 million players can be categorized as "core gamers" while the other nine million are "more casual people." One common element that the devs have found in both types of players is that "people wanted more stuff to do" in the flight simulator.
"We said, 'okay, cool, fair enough, let's go make things like that,'" Neumann shared. "But we are not a game. So we're not making game-y type missions at all. What we're doing is accurate aviation activities. We're working with lots of organisations across the planet that do these things. That do firefighting, that do search and rescue [...] This is why we call it 'choose your pilot lifestyle'. This is the pilot lifestyle, this is what people really do."
Neumann also addressed concerns that there was a lack of commercial airliners in the recent trailer for Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024. "There are gonna be a lot of airliners, trust me [...] you're gonna be happily surprised when we get to the whole plane list," Neumann stated.
Asobo CEO Sebastian Wloch shared some interesting things about the upcoming Flight Simulator. According to Wloch, the studio is working to make the game client thinner to reduce installation size and get players into the simulator faster. He also promised that the thinner client will reduce loading times and help keep system requirements low.
Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 will also feature new physics and aerodynamic engines to support new aviation activities like (and pardon our lingo) tissue, rope, and other soft-body physics. The upcoming flight simulator will also add enhanced aircraft modeling to show much more detail.
All the changes being done to Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 will be backward compatible. This means the community, especially players who bought content for the previous title, can transfer seamlessly to the upcoming flight simulator.
We are excited to see how the new "aviation activities" work. We personally enjoyed the Top Gun: Maverick content where players are challenged to fly as low and as fast as possible to a given point. Hopefully, Asobo adds more features that make players feel like real pilots doing specialized tasks.
