FlightSimExpo got here in for touchdown in Texas final week, throughout which developer Asobo gave a presentation on Microsoft Flight Simulator 24. The sport was a shock announcement in the course of the Xbox Video games Showcase, and even induced a bit disquiet amongst its viewers who have been unclear about whether or not this was an entire new sport or principally a flowery enlargement with a brand new title.
Jorg Neumann is the top of Microsoft Flight Simulator and, after saying the Xbox announcement video had been “paper skinny”, got here out all weapons blazing (thanks, RPS). “Simply to offer you perspective, there’s many tens of hundreds of thousands of individuals watching [the Xbox showcase],” mentioned Neumann. “It’s good for our interest to point out up in these locations”.
Neumann then went on to handle a few of that preliminary response from the core Flight Simulator viewers. “A few of you accurately requested ‘What the heck is that this, is that this simply an acceleration pack or some such factor? Nope nope nope. That is the most important enterprise ever in flight simulation. Little doubt about it.”
The crew’s focus is, maybe unsurprisingly, aviation actions, with Neumann saying that Asobo reckons from its knowledge that round three million of the present Microsoft Flight Simulator’s gamers are “core players”, whereas the opposite 9 million are “extra informal folks”. The one widespread aspect the studio discovered between the 2 kinds of participant was that “folks needed extra stuff to do” within the simulation.
“We mentioned, ‘okay, cool, truthful sufficient, let’s go make issues like that,'” mentioned Neumann. “However we aren’t a sport. So we’re not making game-y kind missions in any respect. What we’re doing is correct aviation actions. We’re working with numerous organisations throughout the planet that do this stuff. That do firefighting, that do search and rescue […] For this reason we name it ‘select your pilot way of life’. That is the pilot way of life, that is what folks actually do.”
Neumann swiftly addressed an obvious concern a couple of lack of airliners within the trailer (“There are gonna be lots of airliners, belief me […] you are gonna be fortunately shocked after we get to the entire aircraft record”) earlier than handing over to Asobo CEO Sebastian Wloch for some tech speak.
“One of many greatest priorities for us was to make the consumer thinner,” mentioned Wloch. “Once I examine folks utilizing the sim the very first thing they are saying is ‘it took a day to obtain, there are such a lot of updates, it is filling my laborious drive'”
Wloch says the issue with delivering extra content material is ensuring the sport can “proceed to develop and [still] match on folks’s computer systems”. The earlier sport already used cloud storage however, appropriately sufficient, MSFS2024 goes to be even cloudier: “Individuals who launch the sim will solely obtain what they want,” mentioned Wloch, “not all types of textures that may by no means be displayed.”
The sport (sorry, Neumann) has a brand new physics and aerodynamics engine that features new modelling for delicate our bodies like tissue and cord (Wloch gave the examples of a helicopter lifting cargo through rope, or a yaw string on the outside being buffeted by wind). There was lots of chat concerning the modelling earlier than some earlier than and after comparability pictures of plane which confirmed simply how rather more bodily element is being calculated throughout the simulation.
One different large announcement amongst all the brand new stuff is that every one adjustments are backwards suitable. So present group content material ought to switch seamlessly into the brand new sport, no matter whether or not its creator updates it.
Simply the perfect little bit of the presentation got here when Wloch acquired into it and began delivering precisely what the sim crowd needed to listen to: enchancment after enchancment, extra element right here, there, in every single place. You may concurrently see the reside chat going gaga whereas a fully beaming Neumann stands behind Wloch ingesting all of it in.
Then comes a demo of a sizzling air balloon, inflating and hovering earlier than deflating and crumpling with the varied surfaces concerned colliding realistically, at which level, completely, the Frenchman Wloch says “so, voila”. The room bursts into applause. Neumann appears like he’ll burst with happiness and delight. Say what you’ll about Asobo however, boy, do they love a flight simulator.