When the upcoming Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 was first announced, I was completely taken by surprise. “Another one so fast and so soon?” I said to myself. The hugely successful reboot, Microsoft Flight Simulator came out in 2020 and prior to that, there was a massive gap since FSX. Curious at what Asobo and the Microsoft team had been cooking, they took me on a trip across the globe to find out.
Microsoft Flight Simulator was a big leap for the franchise, you can fly anywhere in its digital twin of our world, basically explore the world at your leisure in stunning visuals and detail. It’s a live sandbox world not only for the hardcore flight simmers but for the digital tourist and casuals that a lot jumped in especially when travelling was restricted during lockdown – it was a perfect time for this title to shine. With the bar set so high not that long ago, where do you go from here?
Talking to Jorg Neumann, Head of Microsoft Flight Simulator, I asked him about my feeling of the announcement, whether the shorter period between this title and MSFS2020 might not set the expectation as high:
“The principle has always been; Don’t make a version if you don’t have something fundamental to say. That’s been the principle forever. That’s how we went into 2024.”
“We knew we had to do the architectural change” (which we’ll get into this preview) “…but then you also don’t want to do something half assed. So we’re going to put as much stuff in there across the spectrum of what people wanted”
“…which undeniably is a huge step forward”
Which is true, after hands-on with Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 and talking to the team. The franchise took a massive leap forward in such an incredible short amount of time, I was too stunned to speak. In the recent Gamescom 2024 trailer, the biggest key takeaway revealed were the new career mode and activities. This is where I mostly focused my hands-on time.
Embracing the freedom to do what you want, you can choose to start your career mode from anywhere. Yes, anywhere! Well, not really at the commercial airports (that comes later as you progress) but pick a random airfield/airport anywhere in the world and that will be your base starting point in your pilot career.
Career mode really opens up progression as a single-player which the team has heavily emphasised based on feedback from the community; players want more direction and things to do. The career mode goes as deep as customising your pilot to completing training and tests as you progress up.
There’s a career skill tree which you can find your footing and for complete newcomers, this allows you to learn step by step on the basics of aviation as you progress up the ranks to a commercial pilot. While I didn’t have enough time to fully flesh out the career, it was also mentioned that you can be the boss of the company, allowing you to manage the jobs you take and obviously servicing the aircrafts. That just feels like a whole nother type of game in my opinion; Microsoft Flight Management?
There seems to be a lot going on in Career mode and the progression ticks all the boxes for those including myself wanting something to come back to which the previous title lacks. There’s definitely going to be a lot of weekends inside sinking hours into this.
Apart from career, some other new highlights I managed to check out in the hands-on were the Challenge League and World Photographer. Challenge League is a new take on the current challenge system which is something I was quick casually into. It reminds me a bit of weekly racing sim challenges where you have to beat your mates. The Challenge League offers three different objectives for the week and you have that timeframe to get the highest score. In the hands-on, I managed to get some good scoring leading on top of the pack for the most part but my helicopter landing skills were not up to scratch unfortunately.
This offers some quick bites of entertainment and also an incentive to load up Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 every night to shave that second or score above your opponents. I love this sort of daily tasks, something to give the game an extra lifespan rather than just flying about. There is a big sense of purpose now.
World Photographer is another welcome addition to MSFS2024, something definitely up the alley for the digital tourists or for those wanting a break. Taking screenshots of amazing scenery has always been one of my favourite things about the previous title; hey look, there’s my house and it seems like the team has absorbed that into its own mode.
The mode allows you to explore key landmarks around the world but also gamifies it with objectives. Sometimes you can change the time and day to get the photo needed but at other times, you can’t and you rely heavily on noting down the perfect time of the day to jump into the game and take the shot. Animal Crossing was emphasised a lot in some of the design aspects of some of this mode and I can’t wait to explore it further.
While the new modes and career allows some player direction, you can still treat Microsoft Flight Simulator like your usual A to B flying sim. Load up the map, take to the skies but while the core aspect of this feels the same as the previous title, there’s a lot of improvements under the hood which one of them quite notably – the client side of the game.
Coming into this event, I knew I had to ask about the client. While MSFS 2020 was amazing once it was running, the title did suffer from success and the huge updates and file sizes limited the experience with load times with myself and others often leaving the client open for days to update the game. As a casual, this was not ideal.
Talking to Sebastian Wloch, CEO and Co-founder of Asobo Studio, he talked about how the architectural change for the client allowed more accurate data to be streamed and it’s heavily optimised in MSFS2024.
“You’ve seen the build you tested. It was a fresh install. You had everything downloaded in real-time wherever you went or whatever you tried.”
We also saw a comparison of the 2020 and 2024 build; and the speed from desktop to game was almost instant and the team has done well to address this problem.
While it has definitely improved, I’m curious to see how this works in a real-world setting especially for countries with a far inferior internet (cough Australia) – Sebastian Wloch did also mention that “overall the amount of bandwidth will be reduced as you only get what you need” in comparison to before where everything was packaged. Definitely keen to put this tech at work come November.
Apart from the new activities and updated client, we saw a lot of new tech under the hood. There’s a lot of play here and the sheer amount of data we saw get introduced was a feat in itself. The team mentioned adding every helipad into the game, all the oil rigs and even boats. Boats can’t be a big deal right? Well in MSFS2024, they are. The boats are real-time data geotracked so what you see in the sim replicates real-world data. How do you even start talking about obtaining data like that? Wait till we start geo-tracking real people into the series. (Hopefully not but the team has probably thought about that)
The detail in Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 is immersive, the groundwork has also been massively improved. Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 was defined as amazing to look at but once you got closer to the ground, there’s obviously a level of limitation, things started to be flatter, the world didn’t look as pretty as it was 10,000ft in the air.
It’s goddamn impressive and (also scary) the digital twin replicates our earth thanks to satellite data and machine learning. It also begs the question where Flight Simulator can go next? Maybe I can just stand outside long enough for a satellite to take a photo of me and somehow I appear in the game an hour later? Let’s not.
When the skies is the limit for a title like this, you improve everything below the atmosphere. Microsoft and Asobo have literally left no rock unturned in MSFS2024, there’s a lot going on the surface as well as under the hood and only having a few hours with this title doesn’t justify how big this next title is. If the previous Microsoft Flight Simulator had you picking up your jaw at the sheer scale of this game, prepare to be amazed again.
Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 releases on November 19th for Xbox Series X|S and PC.
