Believe it or not, the early signs of the holiday shopping season have already arrived. To that effect, like clockwork, Nintendo has brought back the annual Black Friday bundle it has released each year for what seems like all of human history. However, this time there’s a new edition! You can now purchase a Nintendo Switch: Mario Kart 8 Deluxe Bundle for $299.99 (see it at Best Buy), or a version with the Switch OLED for $349.99 (see it at Best Buy). For those keeping track, the OLED bundle is new for Black Friday 2024. Let’s look at the details.
Where to Buy the Nintendo Switch: Mario Kart 8 Deluxe Bundles
These bundles offer a $79.98 discount versus buying all of the items individually at regular price. That’s a great deal for anyone in the market for a Switch.
What Comes in the Switch Bundles?
Nintendo Switch or Switch OLED Model
Mario Kart 8 Deluxe (digital code)
12-Month Individual Nintendo Switch Online Membership
Buy either of the bundles, and you’ll get a Nintendo Switch or Nintendo Switch OLED console. You’ll also get a digital download code for Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, which, despite its age (the original version came out on the Wii U in 2014), remains one of the best racing games ever made in my opinion.
What’s the Difference Between the Standard Switch and Switch OLED?
The only difference between the bundles is the model of Switch that’s included. If you’re wondering which one to get, the quick and easy advice is this: if you plan to play games in handheld mode often, get the OLED. If not, go with the standard Switch.
The OLED model is better in a number of ways, but they’re all related to playing games in handheld mode. At 7 inches, it has a larger display than the standard model’s 6.2 inch screen. The OLED display is noticeably brighter and offers much richer colors than the standard model. It also has true blacks, with no backlight shining through. And the kickstand on the OLED model is much sturdier.
What About the Nintendo Switch 2?
If you’re hesitant to buy a Switch while rumors of the next Nintendo console swirl, you have good reason to hold off. It’s possible the Switch successor will be backwards compatible, letting you play all of your original Switch games. However, Nintendo has signaled the Switch 2 won’t come out until April 2025 at the earliest.
So if you want to play Nintendo games before then, you’ll need a Switch. And these bundles are the best deals you’re likely to find on current-generation hardware.
Chris Reed is a commerce editor and deals expert for IGN. He also runs IGN’s board game and LEGO coverage. You can follow him on Threads.
FFVXI does make some improvements, adopting a full set of DLSS and FSR upscalers and frame generators, and its mouse and keyboard integration feels generally slicker than XV. Sadly, it’s still no first-rate adaptation, neglecting numerous PC features and giving low-end systems an even deeper kick in the plums. Cutting the quality settings can help, as per the guide down below, but overall performance is so up-and-down than you’ll likely never achieve a perfectly smooth ride.
After ten years, we’re now just a little over a month away from playing Dragon Age: The Veilguard. I played a hefty seven hours of BioWare’s first original game since Anthem in 2019 and fourth mainline installment in the Dragon Age series, starting with the prologue and later loaded into several different saves. As a longtime fan, what I’ll say is ten years is a very long time but so far, The Veilguard hasn’t disappointed.
Getting Into Character
Now, I could talk to you about the combat (and I will) or the gorgeous locales (that’s coming too) or the way it felt to see Varric and Solas again. Or I could skip straight to the character creator and start with: There’s. So. Much. Hair. Look, I loved Dragon Age: Inquisition, but fans have long acknowledged the limitations of its character creator. The Veilguard blew me away in that regard. After the lackluster options of the last entry, it’s wild to see what we’ve got to look forward to. Thirty hair options for Qunari and 88 for non-Qunari, complete with gorgeous physics as Rook scurries through Northern Thedas. So many different hair textures are represented, whether you’d like totally straight hair, 2B waves or 4C curls. In making my character, I was drawn immediately to a long braid that whipped around as quickly as I did.
Qunari horns also see a massive improvement. With 49 unique styles, options range from large and imposing to decorative or even asymmetrical. That said, yes, their foreheads can look pretty jarring. I played as a Qunari mage during most of my preview and will say I got used to the look pretty quickly. Drago n Age: The Veilguard actually only marks the second game of the series where you can play as a Qunari, so the odd imbalance of forehead versus face feels like stylistic growing pains. I remain curious about whether more time with the character creator might help. The Arishok of Dragon Age 2 is, in my opinion, such a beautifully crafted model and I would love to be able to create a Qunari Rook that feels as memorable.
Every aspect of your Rook is editable, even allowing for facial asymmetry if you choose.
Customization certainly doesn’t stop at hair (or horns) of course. Every aspect of your Rook is editable, even allowing for facial asymmetry if you choose. Sliders allow you to change everything from head shape to the melanin in your skin to the presence of vitiligo. Perhaps my favorite addition, however, is the introduction of body diversity. Cyberpunk 2077 and Baldur’s Gate 3 had whiffs of this, but nowhere near what you’re capable of in The Veilguard, which is much more similar to the breadth of the character creator in Dragon’s Dogma 2. For each of the four races, there are plenty of presets to choose from, all with varying heights and muscle/fat distribution. Once you’ve chosen your preset, however, you can build further upon those elements as much as you’d like.
First is a triangulation of coordinates allowing for many unique combinations of body types that are thinner, larger, or more muscular. Height sliders are fun – especially when it means watching my particularly short elf ruin years of Solas’ ritual planning by pushing over a statue. The options feel almost endless. There’s even a glute slider and, yes, I gave my Rook one hell of an ass. All of this is only scratching the surface. I haven’t even gotten into facial hair, makeup, scars or tattoos. As an elf, my Rook sported` some vallaslin, but there are so many different designs for both the face and the body to experiment with.
While I didn’t spend very much time exploring customization for the Inquisitor, I just know we’ll all get the chance to make them in the way we’ve always imagined. Also, it may be a relief to some of you to know that Veilguard abandons the awful green lighting of Inquisition’s character creator and instead allows you to cycle through several lighting options in service of creating Rooks that look just as good in gameplay as they do when you create them.
Fighting Chance
Combat, meanwhile, was a refreshing change from DA:I. My go-to class has always been mage, and even as a Knight-Enchanter I often felt like I was standing in one place holding down the left trigger. This felt like a return to the pace of DA2, with innovations that improve upon the experience of battle overall. The Veilguard introduces a new fighting style for mages featuring an orb and dagger tailored for close-quarters combat. It’s tailor-made for players like me who love magic but, also, really like to stab.
Combat was a refreshing change from Dragon Age: Inquisition.
During my preview, I played through the prologue and then dropped forward into various points of Act 1, so I really got to quickly experience the progression Rook and their companions can go through as fighters. We may not be able to take control of our companions this time around, but The Veilguard really encourages strategizing with them. They’ll call out to you when they’ve rebuilt their mana or stamina, and the ability wheel even suggests combos. My focus during the event was mission-driven so I didn’t get as much of a chance to interact with the characters as I would have liked, but even the brief moments of banter endeared me to them pretty quickly.
Each class gets its own ultimate ability (think the Focus ability) along with a ranged attack – for warriors that means yeeting your shield like a giant metal boomerang. I’ve always played Dragon Age for story and not combat, but with this new system I had so much fun. I felt present during every encounter and truly accomplished after every boss battle. That said, there’s definitely a bit of a learning curve. I still found myself confusing controls a few hours in. It’s a departure from all three previous installments, but luckily The Veilguard offers five different difficulty levels that you can change at will if you want to ease yourself in.
The Dragon Age-Free Decade Ends Soon
As a longtime fan, The Veilguard felt like a homecoming of sorts. Just as much as seeing familiar faces in Solas and Varric, I was overjoyed to be back in the world of Thedas itself. Moving us north allows for that sense of discovery I got in Inquisition, and if I’d encourage anything it’s to really look at your surroundings. Not only are there small environmental puzzles to untangle along with small and effective moments of visual storytelling, but the horizon is full of breathtaking scenery that drives home the scale of these locations I’ve personally always wondered about. One new locale, for instance, is a gorgeous underwater prison called the Ossuary. I won’t spoil what you’re there to do, but the design alone makes it one of the most memorable moments I’ve had in any Dragon Age game.
Even after hours of gameplay, I still felt like I could have played for many hours more. I’m optimistic about The Veilguard and excited for it in a way I haven’t quite felt about another game in quite some time. If you’d like to see even more of the game, check out our exclusive IGN First coverage, which features even more gameplay and deep dives on Rook’s companions.
The Dragon Ball Tenkaichi series is one that meant a lot to me as a teenager and young adult – which was about the peak of my obsession with Dragon Ball Z – but it’s also one that I haven’t really thought about or touched in the last 15 or so years. Fast forward to the present, and after about three hours of hands-on time with Dragon Ball: Sparking! Zero, it felt like I was hit with a spirit bomb of nostalgia as I once again got back in there, chaining together rapid movement teleports, bouncing my foes like ping pong balls between multiple vanishing attacks, and kicking them away with so much force that they destroy mountains. It was like reuniting with a dear old friend, and yet, Dragon Ball Sparking Zero feels like much more than just a nostalgia play. It’s packed with new mechanics, a brand new approach to story mode, and a host of other exciting features that I only got a taste of, but I’m excited to dig more into once it comes out next month.
The first two hours of my hands-on time was spent on freeplay. I used a large chunk of this time to refamiliarize myself with the Tenkaichi style of gameplay by hitting up Sparking Zero’s exhaustive tutorial mode, which covers all of the many many mechanics present here. There are Vanishing Assaults, Vanishing Attacks, Lightning Attacks, Burst Smashes, Dragon Smashes, high guards, low guards, high speed evasion counters, perception counters, super counters, z-counters, and so on. It’s a lot to take in for sure, but it all serves to enhance the depth of the combat, and most importantly, deliver on the power trip of controlling some of the most powerful characters throughout all of anime. Sure, I might not NEED to know how to knock an enemy away, vanish behind them, drill them into the ground, and then pick them back up and hurl them away like a ragdoll – there are other, simpler ways to get just as much damage, if not more – but doing stuff like that feels so incredibly cool, and to me, that’s what the Tenkaichi series is all about.
Once I was back up to speed on the combat and mechanics, I decided to check out one of Sparking Zero’s big new modes outside of its story mode: Custom Battles. It lets you create, share, and play out your own fantasy Dragon Ball fight scenarios – complete with options to create an intro cutscene, a title card, mid-match triggers, and outro cutscenes that cover what happens when you win, and when you lose. There’s even a Mario Maker-style rule to it, where in order to share your Custom Battle with other players, you need to be able to prove that it’s possible by beating it yourself.
Unfortunately, I didn’t have the time to craft my own battle to the degree that I would have wanted, so I opted instead to see what the mode was capable of by trying out some pre-made battles that were prepped by the developers. And to my delight, they were a lot of fun, with a great variety of different types of fights. Some were simply based around the idea of pitting certain characters against each other: like a battle of speed demons that had you controlling Burter as you faced off against Kakunsa and Hit. Another had you as Kid Goku going up against Master Roshi to relive one of their training sessions, and forcingforced you to win the fight specifically with whatever move Roshi calls out.by using a Kamehameha.
Custom Battles have great potential as a sandbox for creative players to come up with and share exciting fights that go far beyond the limits of Dragon Ball’s canon.
My favorite, though, had me playing as a weak and underpowered Captain Ginyu against an appropriately overpowered Frieza. My only hope for victory was using Ginyu’s ultimate technique, the body-change beam, to swap bodies with Frieza and then easily finish the fight. Easier said than done, as whenever I tried to power up to be able to use the move, Frieza would hit me with an instant-kill death beam. So I had to engage with Frieza in combat just enough to be able to charge my meter, knock him away, and then use that time to charge up into Sparking Mode so I could look for an opening to land the attack. It was a surprisingly tense and refreshingly unique battle, and a great showing of the potential that this mode has as a sandbox for creative players to come up with and share exciting fights that go far beyond the limits of Dragon Ball’s canon.
On the Next Episode of Dragon Ball Z
After the time for freeplay was up, I got a chance to check out a handful of Episode Battles, which collectively make up Sparking Zero’s story mode. Dragon Ball’s story has been told an ungodly number of times at this point across pretty much all forms of media, but what makes Sparking Zero’s interpretation especially cool is how it gives you multiple opportunities to do things differently from how they’re supposed to go. Right from the start of Goku’s episode battle, when Raditz takes Gohan away and Goku and Piccolo give chase, you actually don’t have to join forces with Piccolo. You’re given the option to instead go it alone, and if you do that, then you’ll be joined by Krillin and fight Raditz in a battle with a completely different outcome.
That’s not all either. Even if you decide to play it by the canon and team up with Piccolo, if you manage to defeat Raditz before Piccolo is able to charge his attack, you’ll be met with a special fully animated and voiced “Sparking Episode” that plays out this “what if” scenario of Goku surviving his encounter with Raditz, getting to train Gohan himself, and being there right when the Saiyans arrive on Earth.
Producer Jun Furutani told me that when selecting the battles that they wanted to highlight in Episode Mode, they wanted to focus on the battles that highlighted the playable characters the best in the story, but they also wanted to put a focus on battles that could potentially lead to branching outcomes.
I followed up and asked Furutani about how substantial these branches could be, to which he replied, “It’s a really hard question to answer because depending on which branch we’re talking about, it could skew very in a completely different direction. But some branches might just go back to the actual canonical route again. For example, when you fight Raditz, there’s some smaller branches that have been there, but it takes you back to the canonical route. And obviously after Raditz is Vegeta and after Vegeta is Frieza. Some of them are just blips, some of them kind of take you in a very drastically different direction.”
And while there are eight characters that make up Sparking Zero’s Episode Battle mode, they do seem to vary wildly in terms of length. I played 30 minutes of Goku’s and only got through the Saiyan saga; 30 minutes of Frieza’s only got me to the final battle against Super Saiyan Goku; and then 30-45 minutes of Future Trunks’ story from Dragon Ball Super pretty much finished it all up right there. Still, I’m very much looking forward to diving into all of these at launch and seeing if I can find all of the hidden “what if” moments myself. It’s worth mentioning too that they’re not easy to trigger. The fights themselves are already pretty tough, and to try and accomplish specific added challenges on top of that makes it seem like these are meant as rewards for the most dedicated players – doubly so because you can’t actually trigger these scenes if you lower the difficulty.
Beyond the Custom and Episode Battle modes, I also messed around with the tournament mode, which allows you to participate in one of many different types of tournaments, each with different rule sets. The Tournament of Power, for example, has you competing on the Tournament of Power stage with flight turned off and ringouts as an alternate win condition; Cell Games is a strictly 1v1 affair with no rules, but you only regain 20% of your life between fights; and Yamcha Games is straight chaos with random rules and random character selection. You can also create your own tournament and customize your very own set of rules as well.
And then finally there’s the encyclopedia mode, which I got to exclusively check out for a few minutes. It’s a returning feature from Tenkaichi 3, but instead of just having Chichi giving commentary on a character, this time you get Chichi, Bulma, and Videl all gossiping about the cast and giving their own little insights. The little bits I got to listen to were all very amusing, like the girls commentating on how ugly Goku becomes when he transforms into his Super Saiyan 3 form, or how Garlic Jr. looks like a roided-out Emperor Pilaf.
My relatively short time with Sparking Zero rekindled my love for the Budokai Tenkaichi games and was a much needed reminder that arena fighters can excite and thrill just as much as traditional 2D and 3D fighters can. The attention to detail here is phenomenal; the combat definitely has a learning curve, but is packed full of depth that is very satisfying to learn and engage with; and its story looks to provide a ton of flexibility in how it tells the tale of Dragon Ball. We’ll see how its final form turns out when Dragon Ball Sparking Zero releases next month on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC.
Mitchell Saltzman is an editorial producer at IGN. You can find him on twitter @JurassicRabbit
After being revealed in last month’s Indie World showcase, FuturLab and Square Enix have today announced that PowerWash Simulator‘s paid Shrek DLC will be making a mess on Switch on 10th October.
Adding to a long list of impressive PowerWash collaborations with the likes of SpongeBob, Final Fantasy and Back to the Future, the Shrek Special Pack offers up a collection of mucky locales from Far, Far Away, and it’s up to you to clean ’em.
Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 takes the franchise further than ever before with groundbreaking new elements like worldwide Aviation Careers, a white-knuckle Challenge League system, and a brand-new World Photographer mode.
The representation of Earth, the “digital twin,” graphically takes a leap forward with a jaw-dropping enhancement of the ground detail, the inclusion of worldwide ship traffic, the first ever implementation of helipads, glider airports, oil rigs, and vertical obstructions around the world all the way to the addition of dozens of animal species worldwide.
Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 — available for pre-order today on the Microsoft Store — will launch in a variety of editions on November 19, 2024, and the Standard Edition will be available on day one with Game Pass. All pre-orders will receive the De Havilland Canada CL-415 firefighting aircraft to use instantly in Microsoft Flight Simulator (2020).
2020’s Microsoft Flight Simulator was by far the most successful entry in Microsoft’s longest supported franchise. It redefined what was possible from a flight simulator by utilizing a mix of cloud-based worldwide map data, cutting-edge photogrammetry, machine learning techniques, and a real-time worldwide weather simulation. These offerings, along with a complex physics system that allowed for highly sophisticated flight models, all made the famous franchise a household name again.
Now with Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 on fast approach for a November 19, 2024, release date, we got our first deep dive into the game, and discovered how much more impressive the entire flight simulator experience is about to become for fans. From the digital tourist to a novice flyer to the most advanced pilots, it’s shaping up to have something for everyone to enjoy.
“Since we launched MicrosoftFlight Simulator in 2020, we have seen 15 million people come to the simulation and be interested in what we do,” explains Head of Microsoft Flight Simulator Jorg Neumann. “When you compare that number to the previous biggest launch we had, which was MicrosoftFlight Simulator X, it took 16 years to get to 5 million users. So there has been an explosion in the flight simulation hobby and it’s because of the community and excitement that everybody’s bringing [to Microsoft Flight Simulator].”
Earning Your Wings
One of the features I’m most excited to see come to Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 (MSFS 2024) is its Career System, designed to bring a comprehensive and immersive experience for all manner of piloting skills. The system cleverly mimics the experience of how real-world pilots start their aviation careers. “You can pick any single airport on the planet and start your career there, which means that you are going to take your lessons at this location. Your first job can be anywhere, and I mean anywhere, in the world,” explains CCO of Asobo Studio David Dedeine. “You will start as a rookie pilot and meet a mentor who will explain to you how the career works and guide you through the very first steps in the career.”
The Career System introduces new elements to the simulation like pre-flight procedures, logging flight paths, and choosing from a vast amount of mission objectives. Advancement is tracked through a certification tree where you can learn the skills to fly various types of aircraft – each of which comes with a training session to help you master those skills. Later, specializations will unlock a variety of missions, such as Search and Rescue, Commercial Flights, Firefighting, and many more.
“You are not going to have to spend five years of your life to do the actual exam. It’s a simplified version, but still, it will explain to you the basics of each of those different activities, from commercial pilot to tailwind, airliner, transport, etc.” Dedeine adds. “Performance for these missions is evaluated by several factors like following ATC instructions, taxi paths, and flight parameters. Completing these missions successfully nets you credits and reputation, which you can then use to save up and buy your own plane and eventually manage your own fleet.”
Once you have earned enough money to run your business with your personally-owned aircraft, a new phase in MSFS 2024 opens in which you’ll be directly responsible for your aircraft; every landing, every bump on the runway, is going to impact the warranty of your planes, affecting the cost to keep them maintained. Effectively, MSFS 2024 includes a management sim inside the wider flight sim.
“This is basically the management of your fleet,” Dedeine elaborates, “because you will buy more planes at some point to allow you to engage in a different type of activity. Maybe you want to buy your own airliners and expand your fleet across the world. This new Career System is a big chunk of the innovation we introduce in MSFS 2024, and I think it’s never been done at this level of variety and quality before.”
If there was a ding against the 2020 version of Microsoft Flight Simulator, itwas that each of its individual experiences, like Bush Trips and Landing Challenges (which are still fun), rarely felt connected to each other. It was akin to putting on a greatest hits album, giving you the best bits without experiencing what the journey was like to get there. This is what I’ve wanted from a flight simulator for such a long time, and having a chance to create my own virtual pilot journey from start to finish sounds like it’s going to keep me flying for a long, long time.
Improving the “Digital Twin”
Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 is also bringing massive enhancements to the simulated Earth by increasing the detail of its virtual environment by a factor of 4,000. For instance, the ground will no longer be a mere heightfield; it now features tiny stones, rocks, gravel and grass all modeled in 3D. This ground detail impacts your aircraft’s wheels as they interact with the various surfaces affecting take-offs and landings. Improved sky and atmospheric lighting, especially during sunrise and sunset, with varying displays of colors based on the makeup of the clouds ensuring accurate temperatures for all light sources. New cloud types like cirrus clouds will better simulate the highest levels of our atmosphere, while the dynamic weather has been improved as well, increasing the density to make storms and other weather phenomena much more realistic and impressive to fly through.
“We can basically get every rock on Earth now; it’s unbelievable,” Neumann adds. “We updated the aerial imagery for the entire world, and we set up a team of specialists that gather digital elevation maps from across the planet. The result of these last four years of work is that we now have an unprecedented level of ground detail. Nobody else has anything like this.”
And it’s not just inanimate objects that are getting massive improvements. Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 is attempting to populate its digital Earth (the “digital twin”) as close to our real world as feasible by introducing a large cast of diverse human characters and locally-significant vehicles, all adding to the overall realism of the simulation. For instance, there’s real-time ship tracking so you can see cargo ships move throughout the world as you would in real life. You can see passengers inside airliners or moving from one location to the next in airports. And because landing just about anywhere in the world is one of the key features, due to the much more detailed environments, the development team worked closely with partners like Frontier (creators of Zoo Tycoon and Planet Zoo) to introduce many species that bring the world to life.
“We have species separated into two groups. For wild animals, we are using a fantastic database (GBIF – the Global Biodiversity Information Facility) to place animals across the world both in their appropriate habitats and in roughly appropriate quantities to get close to realistic densities. For domesticated animals, we are using our field detection (which is also used for activities like Aerial Application) to place species like cows, sheep, goats and horses across the planet. We can essentially now go sheep herding or cow herding with helicopters, which is super fun,” Neumann explains.
Powered By the Cloud
Another big area of improvement that’s planned is addressing the installation size. It’s no big surprise how much space Microsoft Flight Simulator takes up on your console or PC (it’s a lot). So, it’s refreshing to hear how this is one of the biggest things that is being addressed in Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024. By tapping into the latest cloud streaming technology, installation size has been trimmed down to about 30 GB to get you in your seat and flying as quickly as possible, streaming in the higher detailed areas that are only necessary for your flight path; why install all the data for the United States when you’re intending to just fly over Europe for the evening?
“The very important thing is overall bandwidth consumption is way down, because you only download what you really see when you see it, and we don’t pre-download at like hundreds of gigabytes,” explains CEO and Co-Founder of Asobo Studio Sebastian Wloch. “Microsoft Flight Simulator (2020) already had over two petabytes of data on the cloud. That was the whole world data. We kept adding to that, but we still had planes, airports, meshes, points of interests like castles, and textures that were all installed. That’s the part that kept growing with the marketplace content, which had grown to 2 TB. Now we integrated everything into the cloud, and it is all streamed and kept into a rolling cache on the hardware. You don’t have to install any new World Updates; they’re just streamed seamlessly.”
It’s all highly optimized and tailored to each player’s experience. For example, if you fly over a large international airport, you won’t need to have the highest quality version of the mesh downloaded on your system. The simulator is only going to pull the lowest or medium quality version, leaving the higher quality assets streamed on demand through the cloud for when you’re closer.
Another impressive addition to Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 will be its “soft body simulation” for hot air balloons. These balloons will be simulated across 6,400 surfaces giving a realistic reaction to heat density — when you turn on the heater, the air will heat up, and it’s going to inflate the massive balloon.
“You will see the balloon inflated and get lighter. Combustion happens, and the balloon goes up. Banners are physically simulated, so they will flap in the wind, just exactly like tissue with the rope attached,” explains Wloch. “Also, we now have parachutes. For example, the Cirrus Vision Jet, which you can fly, has a parachute system that can be deployed when needed.”
Attention to Detail
Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 is launching with one of the most largely diverse groups of highly detailed aircraft systems than any flight simulator has ever come with before. It isn’t just how good these aircraft look – and they certainly look fantastic – but also the care and attention that has been given to these systems.
“The reason that we wanted to focus on this experience so much and to build things like flight planning and pre-flight activities into the simulator is because we wanted to make sure everyone had the opportunity to take advantage of those kind of capabilities and those kinds of experiences,” explains Co-Founder of Working Title Simulations Christopher Burnett. “One of the things that has impacted simmers in the past is that flight simulators have often used outside tools to do their flight planning or preflight activities, and those came with some barriers to entry, things like cost or maybe complexity, that kept a lot of them from doing that.”
Now you’ll be able to go through the entire preflight experience, from planning to briefing for things like weather, and then executing that flight on some of the most detailed cockpits and avionics systems that we’ve ever seen in a flight simulator. The new flight planning tool supports anything from small flight plans all the way up to larger, more complicated paths using the same kind of tools that airline dispatchers use for their long commercial flights.
“We’ve also got several commercial aircraft systems that we’re bringing into MSFS 2024,” Burnett explains. “The 737 Max 8 avionics package is one of those. Of course, we’ve got the 787 and 747 8i as well. Then something exciting that we’re working on is the Boeing 747 400 LCF, also known as the Dreamlifter. This is a purpose-built aircraft that Boeing made to help them with the manufacture of the 787. They expanded it and now simmers can use this to fly aircraft parts around. We’ve partnered with Boeing to faithfully recreate this aircraft and the 747 400 avionics package that goes with it. We’ve got a ton of great avionics in the simulator.”
All these enhancements, from addressing install size, entirely new forms of photogrammetry and an unprecedented digital twin of Earth, the enhanced learning system, the vast and innovative Career System, were not the only things that the development team was excited about. They are, as Neumann explains, all the result of carefully listening to the wishes and dreams of Microsoft Flight Simulator’s passionate community. The community feedback was welcomed and embraced by the dev teams and became the guiding principles in the creation of Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 “We are making this new simulator for the community, and we are working directly with the community and it is through this fantastic collaboration that MSFS 2024 is able to take flight simulation to the next level,” Neumann shares.
Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 is shaping up to be the most ambitious commercially available flight simulator that has ever been undertaken – and it’s not even close. It’s fun to think about how many decades some of us have been “flying” in front of our PCs now, and it’s impressive to see how Microsoft’s longest-running franchise wasn’t content to just settle for sticking the landing a few years ago – it wants to keep soaring and bring all of us along for the ride. Time to buckle up.
Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 — available for pre-order today on the Microsoft Store — will launch in a variety of editions on November 19, 2024, and the Standard Edition will be available day one with Game Pass. All pre-orders will receive the De Havilland Canada CL-415 firefighting aircraft to use instantly in Microsoft Flight Simulator (2020). The Standard Edition comes with 70 aircraft and 150 upgraded airports; Deluxe Edition will include 10 additional aircraft and five extra airports; the Premium Deluxe will have another 15 aircraft (total of 95); and then there’s the Aviator Edition for those who want everything which comes with all of the above plus the 30 planes that have been released in the Microsoft Flight Simulator (2020) Marketplace for a grand total of 125 planes with that edition.
Aviator Edition
Explore the world with our largest fleet of aircraft and take simulation to new heights while pursuing your aviation career within Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024. The Aviator Edition includes everything from the Premium Deluxe Edition plus the entire fleet of 30 Microsoft-published Marketplace aircraft developed for Microsoft Flight Simulator between 2021 and 2024.
Fly with Purpose
· Launch your aviation Career wherever you choose in the world. Gain experience, build your reputation, and complete certifications to gain access to authentic aviation activities ranging from Medevac, Remote Cargo Ops, Aerial Firefighting, Search & Rescue and more, all the way to becoming an Airline Passenger Transport Pilot. Set out on a truly global aviation adventure with virtually unlimited missions across the planet.
· Compete against other pilots in the all-new Challenge League mode or hone your skills in dozens of Activities ranging from exciting Rally Races and Precision Landings to Low-Altitude challenges and more. Fly head-to-head in the iconic Red Bull Air Races and the legendary Reno Air Races, including the new Roswell courses.
· Be a World Photographer and travel across our beautiful planet to capture awe-inspiring natural vistas, visit famous landmarks, and record these adventures with pictures in your travel book. Unique photo challenges test your creative eye along with your piloting skills while you strive to capture the perfect moment.
Advanced Simulation
· Enhanced physics system allows 10,000+ rigid-body surfaces that enable the simulation of any shape of aircraft. Soft body physics supports cloth, ropes, balloons, and more. Improved ground and water handling further enhance realism.
· New, highly accurate aircraft systems including electrical, pneumatic, fuel and hydraulic systems, payload and passenger systems, and avionics like the Universal UNS-1 FMS and Honeywell Primus Epic 2. Preflight inspections and walkaround checks add to immersion.
· Plan your flights with a groundbreaking flight planner which supports both IFR and VFR map layers, IFR charts, route planning, fuel and payload planning, vertical profile planning, and ETOPS planning. It also provides airport information including weather and NOTAMS and is available native in the sim, on mobile devices or web browsers for flight planning outside the simulator.
Explore Our Visually Stunning Digital Twin
· Explore our most detailed re-creation of planet Earth to date. Enhanced digital elevation maps, over 500 TIN (triangular irregular network) cities and more than 100,000 square kilometers of countryside photogrammetry allow for visually stunning digital twin experiences. More than 150 airports, 2,000 glider airports, 10,000 heliports, 2,000 points of interest, and 900 oil rigs have been carefully hand-crafted while a procedural system generates all 40,000 airports, 80,000 helipads, 1.5 billion buildings, and nearly 3 trillion trees our planet.
· Land anywhere and, for the first time in Microsoft Flight Simulator, exit your aircraft to explore 27 highly detailed biomes with hundreds of species of vegetation, dynamically created details including grass, rocks, and flowers – all influenced by seasonal changes. The all-new photometric lighting system renders the world more accurately than ever before, and enhanced weather features such as new cloud types, auroras, and other weather phenomena produce fresh and compelling atmospheric experiences.
· The world comes alive with a vast array of land-based wildlife in their natural habitats and free-ranging livestock across the entire globe. The oceans and waterways are teeming with live, worldwide maritime traffic ranging from large tankers and cargo ships to trawlers, tugs, and more. A richly diverse, regionally accurate representation of humanity brings life to the airports, aircraft, and passenger cabins of the world. Enhanced real-world air traffic populates the skies and airport tarmacs with hundreds of accurately depicted aircraft models and dozens of officially licensed liveries.
Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 – Premium Deluxe Edition
Premium Deluxe Edition
Explore the world with our largest fleet of aircraft and take simulation to new heights while pursuing your aviation career within Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024. The Premium Deluxe Edition includes everything from the Standard Edition plus 25 additional aircraft and 10 additional handcrafted international airports.
Fly with Purpose
· Launch your aviation Career wherever you choose in the world. Gain experience, build your reputation, and complete certifications to gain access to authentic aviation activities ranging from Medevac, Remote Cargo Ops, Aerial Firefighting, Search & Rescue and more, all the way to becoming an Airline Passenger Transport Pilot. Set out on a truly global aviation adventure with virtually unlimited missions across the planet.
· Compete against other pilots in the all-new Challenge League mode or hone your skills in dozens of Activities ranging from exciting Rally Races and Precision Landings to Low-Altitude challenges and more. Fly head-to-head in the iconic Red Bull Air Races and the legendary Reno Air Races, including the new Roswell courses.
· Be a World Photographer and travel across our beautiful planet to capture awe-inspiring natural vistas, visit famous landmarks, and record these adventures with pictures in your travel book. Unique photo challenges test your creative eye along with your piloting skills while you strive to capture the perfect moment.
Advanced Simulation
· Enhanced physics system allows 10,000+ rigid-body surfaces that enable the simulation of any shape of aircraft. Soft body physics supports cloth, ropes, balloons, and more. Improved ground and water handling further enhance realism.
· New, highly accurate aircraft systems including electrical, pneumatic, fuel and hydraulic systems, payload and passenger systems, and avionics like the Universal UNS-1 FMS and Honeywell Primus Epic 2. Preflight inspections and walkaround checks add to immersion.
· Plan your flights with a groundbreaking flight planner which supports both IFR and VFR map layers, IFR charts, route planning, fuel and payload planning, vertical profile planning, and ETOPS planning. It also provides airport information including weather and NOTAMS and is available native in the sim, on mobile devices or web browsers for flight planning outside the simulator.
Explore Our Visually Stunning Digital Twin
· Explore our most detailed re-creation of planet Earth to date. Enhanced digital elevation maps, over 500 TIN (triangular irregular network) cities and more than 100,000 square kilometers of countryside photogrammetry allow for visually stunning digital twin experiences. More than 150 airports, 2,000 glider airports, 10,000 heliports, 2,000 points of interest, and 900 oil rigs have been carefully hand-crafted while a procedural system generates all 40,000 airports, 80,000 helipads, 1.5 billion buildings, and nearly 3 trillion trees our planet.
· Land anywhere and, for the first time in Microsoft Flight Simulator, exit your aircraft to explore 27 highly detailed biomes with hundreds of species of vegetation, dynamically created details including grass, rocks, and flowers – all influenced by seasonal changes. The all-new photometric lighting system renders the world more accurately than ever before, and enhanced weather features such as new cloud types, auroras, and other weather phenomena produce fresh and compelling atmospheric experiences.
· The world comes alive with a vast array of land-based wildlife in their natural habitats and free-ranging livestock across the entire globe. The oceans and waterways are teeming with live, worldwide maritime traffic ranging from large tankers and cargo ships to trawlers, tugs, and more. A richly diverse, regionally accurate representation of humanity brings life to the airports, aircraft, and passenger cabins of the world. Enhanced real-world air traffic populates the skies and airport tarmacs with hundreds of accurately depicted aircraft models and dozens of officially licensed liveries.
Deluxe Edition
Explore the world with our largest fleet of aircraft and take simulation to new heights while pursuing your aviation career within Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024. The Deluxe Edition includes everything from the Standard Edition plus 10 additional aircraft and 5 additional handcrafted international airports.
Fly with Purpose
· Launch your aviation Career wherever you choose in the world. Gain experience, build your reputation, and complete certifications to gain access to authentic aviation activities ranging from Medevac, Remote Cargo Ops, Aerial Firefighting, Search & Rescue and more, all the way to becoming an Airline Passenger Transport Pilot. Set out on a truly global aviation adventure with virtually unlimited missions across the planet.
· Compete against other pilots in the all-new Challenge League mode or hone your skills in dozens of Activities ranging from exciting Rally Races and Precision Landings to Low-Altitude challenges and more. Fly head-to-head in the iconic Red Bull Air Races and the legendary Reno Air Races, including the new Roswell courses.
· Be a World Photographer and travel across our beautiful planet to capture awe-inspiring natural vistas, visit famous landmarks, and record these adventures with pictures in your travel book. Unique photo challenges test your creative eye along with your piloting skills while you strive to capture the perfect moment.
Advanced Simulation
· Enhanced physics system allows 10,000+ rigid-body surfaces that enable the simulation of any shape of aircraft. Soft body physics supports cloth, ropes, balloons, and more. Improved ground and water handling further enhance realism.
· New, highly accurate aircraft systems including electrical, pneumatic, fuel and hydraulic systems, payload and passenger systems, and avionics like the Universal UNS-1 FMS and Honeywell Primus Epic 2. Preflight inspections and walkaround checks add to immersion.
· Plan your flights with a groundbreaking flight planner which supports both IFR and VFR map layers, IFR charts, route planning, fuel and payload planning, vertical profile planning, and ETOPS planning. It also provides airport information including weather and NOTAMS and is available native in the sim, on mobile devices or web browsers for flight planning outside the simulator.
Explore Our Visually Stunning Digital Twin
· Explore our most detailed re-creation of planet Earth to date. Enhanced digital elevation maps, over 500 TIN (triangular irregular network) cities and more than 100,000 square kilometers of countryside photogrammetry allow for visually stunning digital twin experiences. More than 150 airports, 2,000 glider airports, 10,000 heliports, 2,000 points of interest, and 900 oil rigs have been carefully hand-crafted while a procedural system generates all 40,000 airports, 80,000 helipads, 1.5 billion buildings, and nearly 3 trillion trees our planet.
· Land anywhere and, for the first time in Microsoft Flight Simulator, exit your aircraft to explore 27 highly detailed biomes with hundreds of species of vegetation, dynamically created details including grass, rocks, and flowers – all influenced by seasonal changes. The all-new photometric lighting system renders the world more accurately than ever before, and enhanced weather features such as new cloud types, auroras, and other weather phenomena produce fresh and compelling atmospheric experiences.
· The world comes alive with a vast array of land-based wildlife in their natural habitats and free-ranging livestock across the entire globe. The oceans and waterways are teeming with live, worldwide maritime traffic ranging from large tankers and cargo ships to trawlers, tugs, and more. A richly diverse, regionally accurate representation of humanity brings life to the airports, aircraft, and passenger cabins of the world. Enhanced real-world air traffic populates the skies and airport tarmacs with hundreds of accurately depicted aircraft models and dozens of officially licensed liveries.
Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 – Standard Edition
Standard Edition
Explore the world with our largest fleet of aircraft and take simulation to new heights while pursuing your aviation career within Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024. The Standard Edition includes over 65 aircraft and 150 handcrafted airports.
Fly with Purpose
· Launch your aviation Career wherever you choose in the world. Gain experience, build your reputation, and complete certifications to gain access to authentic aviation activities ranging from Medevac, Remote Cargo Ops, Aerial Firefighting, Search & Rescue and more, all the way to becoming an Airline Passenger Transport Pilot. Set out on a truly global aviation adventure with virtually unlimited missions across the planet.
· Compete against other pilots in the all-new Challenge League mode or hone your skills in dozens of Activities ranging from exciting Rally Races and Precision Landings to Low-Altitude challenges and more. Fly head-to-head in the iconic Red Bull Air Races and the legendary Reno Air Races, including the new Roswell courses.
· Be a World Photographer and travel across our beautiful planet to capture awe-inspiring natural vistas, visit famous landmarks, and record these adventures with pictures in your travel book. Unique photo challenges test your creative eye along with your piloting skills while you strive to capture the perfect moment.
Advanced Simulation
· Enhanced physics system allows 10,000+ rigid-body surfaces that enable the simulation of any shape of aircraft. Soft body physics supports cloth, ropes, balloons, and more. Improved ground and water handling further enhance realism.
· New, highly accurate aircraft systems including electrical, pneumatic, fuel and hydraulic systems, payload and passenger systems, and avionics like the Universal UNS-1 FMS and Honeywell Primus Epic 2. Preflight inspections and walkaround checks add to immersion.
· Plan your flights with a groundbreaking flight planner which supports both IFR and VFR map layers, IFR charts, route planning, fuel and payload planning, vertical profile planning, and ETOPS planning. It also provides airport information including weather and NOTAMS and is available native in the sim, on mobile devices or web browsers for flight planning outside the simulator.
Explore Our Visually Stunning Digital Twin
· Explore our most detailed re-creation of planet Earth to date. Enhanced digital elevation maps, over 500 TIN (triangular irregular network) cities and more than 100,000 square kilometers of countryside photogrammetry allow for visually stunning digital twin experiences. More than 150 airports, 2,000 glider airports, 10,000 heliports, 2,000 points of interest, and 900 oil rigs have been carefully hand-crafted while a procedural system generates all 40,000 airports, 80,000 helipads, 1.5 billion buildings, and nearly 3 trillion trees our planet.
· Land anywhere and, for the first time in Microsoft Flight Simulator, exit your aircraft to explore 27 highly detailed biomes with hundreds of species of vegetation, dynamically created details including grass, rocks, and flowers – all influenced by seasonal changes. The all-new photometric lighting system renders the world more accurately than ever before, and enhanced weather features such as new cloud types, auroras, and other weather phenomena produce fresh and compelling atmospheric experiences.
· The world comes alive with a vast array of land-based wildlife in their natural habitats and free-ranging livestock across the entire globe. The oceans and waterways are teeming with live, worldwide maritime traffic ranging from large tankers and cargo ships to trawlers, tugs, and more. A richly diverse, regionally accurate representation of humanity brings life to the airports, aircraft, and passenger cabins of the world. Enhanced real-world air traffic populates the skies and airport tarmacs with hundreds of accurately depicted aircraft models and dozens of officially licensed liveries.
In 2020, Microsoft Flight Simulator gave us the world. In 2024, Microsoft Flight Simulator is letting us live in it. I was at the preview event for MSFS 2020 back in September 2019 and I couldn’t believe what I had seen, and after playing it for several hundred hours over the last four years, I was having a hard time imagining what a new version could add that would bring the same sense of awe I had the first time I experienced the world at my fingertips. After my first time playing Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024, though, I’m honestly more excited for MSFS 2024 than I was after my initial hands-on with the 2020 game five years ago.
Everything MSFS currently does well has been improved for 2024. Load times, weather effects, the physics of your aircraft – there’s just so much more now. Even the ground, which you are very much not supposed to see a lot of, has had its realism cranked up massively. MSFS 2024 took the literal globe-spanning scope of its predecessor and zeroed in on making it feel closer to the actual planet upon which we all live and breathe.
Not Just a Job: A Career
Career mode is easily the biggest addition to MSFS 2024, and it arose directly from community feedback. Simmers asked for structured challenges in MSFS, and career mode was a natural fit.
“Very soon after the launch, we did several surveys,” Asobo Studio Chief Creative Office David Dedeine said, “and what was amazing about them is everyone across the board, from super hard-core simmers to what we call digital tourists” were asking for “more purpose and goals.”
The defining mode of the new MSFS 2024 experience was originally proposed for MSFS 2020, but for a slew of reasons, it never made it into the final sim. But the seed of career mode goes back even further. Deidene said he recently found a development document from 2017 that was one of the earliest mentions of the concept.
“But we had to focus on 2020 first,” he said, noting that the early survey gave the team the proof they needed to move forward with career mode. “Everybody wants to do this. We wanted to do it. Let’s go for it.”
Career mode is much more open than I had anticipated.
Career mode is much more open than I had anticipated. There’s no pinned coordinate on the map to start your journey. You build your avatar and start at any airport in the entire world. You meet your mentor and take off on a familiarization flight. Deidene promised the openness of the mode means you can “basically play an infinite number of times.”
The interface itself is familiar to anyone who’s been gaming for any period of time: it looks like the traditional skill-tree you might find in a Spider-Man game, for example, but it tracks your aviation certifications. You’re not spending skill points to unlock a super power, but you are spending in-game credits you earn while doing jobs as an aviator. Getting your certification requires proving yourself before you’re eligible to take an exam. That examination costs “money,” earned doing jobs for your chosen career path and getting evaluated.
For example, you might be a private pilot tasked with taking a mother and her son from Aspen to LAX. A smooth flight and subsequent landing will impress your customers, and how much you earn is based on your abilities and evaluations from the simulated customers. Not only is that in-game currency system tied to your exam fees, but you can also use it to buy your own airplanes and hangars, hire your own staff, and move from apprentice to master. I’m already planning out my world-spanning commercial airline, and so far I haven’t taken a single flight in career mode. And that’s just one option! There are options for air rescue careers, racing, agriculture, and more.
It was a lot of fun and dammit if I can’t wait to race in the final game.
If you’d rather gamify the sim experience without pouring yourself into career mode, there’s a new challenge league. Challenges are something that’s not entirely new to MSFS: since the launch of 2020, there have been landing challenges as well as challenges tied into Top Gun: Maverick and Dune: Part Two. What’s new in 2024 is the specific challenge league. Every week, three new challenges are introduced, and you compete against the rest of the community for clout on the leaderboards. Scores designate what level you compete at, from bronze to gold, and each is designed to last between two and three minutes.
I tried the F/A-18 Hornet race through the Grand Canyon during my hands-on with MSFS 2024, and what I really loved about it was how, in spite of the challenge itself being somewhat fanciful (I don’t think the DoD or the National Park Service would appreciate the noise and danger posed), the flight model remains the same. The simulation of the aircraft hasn’t been tuned for a more “arcade-like” experience. You have to complete the challenges given all the aerodynamics, handling, and physics found in the greater sim. I was unable to unseat the winner from his world-record pace, but to be fair, he had an aircraft-appropriate flight stick and I was racing with a yoke. Regardless, it was a lot of fun and dammit if I can’t wait to race in the final game with my Thrustmaster flight stick and throttle.
New Airplanes Galore
As was the case with MSFS 2020, there multiple versions with different levels of content that will be available when MSFS 2024 releases: standard, deluxe, premium deluxe and aviator. The standard version alone will have 30 new aircraft, from helicopters to a personal VTOL, hot air balloons, helicopters, and more. The high-end aviator edition ships with 125 new aircraft and 160 new aiports. And all versions have upgraded versions of MSFS 2020 airplanes and airports.
One of my all-time favorites, the A-10 Warthog, is coming to the standard edition. I took some time to fly one from its home base at Davis-Monthan AFB in Tucson, Arizona and was really impressed with how it feels and flies, as well as the level of detail in Davis-Monthan’s famous aircraft boneyard, a monstrous graveyard of decommissioned airplanes inside the base.
I pumped my fist and said “yes!” when they revealed the C-17 is coming to MSFS 2024.
The deluxe and premium deluxe editions include more planes and more airports, and are totally optional, but I pumped my fist and said “yes!” audibly during the presentation when they revealed the C-17 Globemaster is coming to MSFS 2024. I’ve never flown one before, but I’ve been inside of them during my time in the Air Force and they’ve always held a special place in my heart, so I’m really looking forward to finally sitting in the cockpit and recreating my 2001 flight from Bahrain to the Azores and then from the Azores back to US shores. The one plane I had hoped to see, the Lockheed C-130, was not shown, but I’m extremely hopeful that Lockheed-Martin will eventually realize how beneficial it is to me, personally, to have their plane available as an official sim asset.
From the Ground, Up
When I say everything has been improved upon, it doesn’t really do justice to the scale at which MSFS 2024 builds on its predecessor. For one thing, as I mentioned earlier, the ground has been massively overhauled for MSFS 2024. The detail on the ground in any given area has increased 4,000 times over 2020. What that means for you and I is basically a lot of places we can land in now in MSFS 2020 aren’t going to, uh… fly… in MSFS 2024.
Detail on the ground in any given area has increased 4,000 times.
As an example of just how much of a difference the new ground modeling makes, Asobo Studio CEO and co-founder Sebastian Wloch showed us a small hill at the end of a runway as it currently appears in MSFS 2020. It has the contours of a skate ramp, something you could almost certainly roll up fairly easily if one were so inclined. He then showed us the same location in MSFS 2024. That gentle bowl shape was now littered with uneven knobs and protrusions, looking more like a partially-covered rock formation than a smooth and even surface. In other words, if you tried to roll over it, you’d almost certainly do a whole lot of damage to your aircraft.
Because of the new level of detail afforded by the MSFS 2024 engine, landings now need to be more purposeful. Soon the days of landing the Boeing 747 in a random field will be but a memory, because in addition to the surface modeling bringing rougher and more realistic terrain to MSFS 2024, the ground itself will react more realistically.
Snow, mud, even grass will show wheel marks if you roll through it, and if you try and land a massive aircraft on a muddy river bank, it’s going to react in the way you’d probably expect it to: not well. This rougher terrain will even affect your aircraft. We saw a brief glimpse of a bush plane with its over-sized tires caked with mud. I wanted to know if that was just an illustration or an expected behavior, so I asked Wlong if mud really sticks to your tires. “Oh yes,” he confirmed.
“The planes will wear and tear. They’ll get dirty.”
“The planes will wear and tear. They’ll get dirty,” Wlong continued. “The way you fly or hard landings, the way you brake, these things will impact the systems and instantly affect performance.” As an example, Wlong explained the braking system in MSFS 2024: “We simulate carbon or metal brakes. They both react completely differently to braking.
Carbon is more efficient hot, metal brakes are less efficient hot.” Depending on which your plane has, you need to brake differently. “Basically, the temperature is going to build up during your braking,” Wlong continued, and the more they’re used, “the more they wear, the less efficient they get.”
This means there are both short and long-term impacts to your aircraft, and not just on the brakes. “We have that for tires, for engines, for many things,” in MSFS 2024. “Over time, the quality of your flying, hard landings, stuff like that is going to affect the aircraft.” But fear not, you won’t have to watch your favorite plane deteriorate over the next several years. You can repair the problems. Unfortunately, I didn’t have time to ask if this feature can be toggled on or off, but given how attentive the team at Asobo has been to satisfying the needs of the hardcore simmers and the “digital tourists,” I’d be surprised if shutting it off wasn’t an option. We’ll see when the final sim comes out in November.
The Winds of Change
Another massive overhaul in 2024 is the physics system. To demonstrate, the team showed us the effects of rotor wash and wake turbulence. In real life, when an airplane takes off, it moves a lot of air. That air doesn’t magically return to normal once the plane lifts off, it leaves a trail of rough air behind it known as wake turbulence. If you’ve ever wondered why planes don’t just take off one right after another in rapid succession, wake turbulence is the answer. That unstable air can, and sadly has, led to disaster. In Flight Sim 2024, every aircraft has a path of wake turbulence behind it, and not only that, the wake turbulence is affected by the ambient weather. At an airport with two runways parallel to one another, for example, a cross-wind can push the turbulence from one runway to the other, and in MSFS 2024 that behavior is also present.
Helicopters suffer from an enormous downrush of air known as rotor wash – fast moving turbulent air generated from the lift of the helicopter’s spinning blades. We were shown a demonstration of this effect in the sim using simulated smoke and a hovering helicopter. It swirled and bellowed realistically, sometimes enveloping the helicopter almost entirely before unpredictably whooshing away and coming back. This, and the wake turbulence of a helicopter underway, are part of the updated simulation engine in MSFS 2024.
“Someone suggested that we plug the wake turbulence onto big boats,” Wloch said, meaning chasing down a container ship or cruise liner in a helicopter would introduce a new and realistically challenging condition. That feature won’t be in MSFS 2024 when it releases “but it’s coming,” he said.
Which is awesome because the team has integrated real-world ship tracking into MSFS 2024 using readily-available transponder data. I took a flight around my home airport in Maine and had forgotten that a rather large cruise ship was anchored in the harbor nearest to my house. I remembered once I saw it sitting in the exact location in the sim as it was in real life at that very moment. The ship transponder data is updated in the sim every 30 seconds, which meant I was able to fly over the Maine State Ferry Service ferry from the island on which I used to live. Right on time.
Water physics have also been improved.
Water physics have also been improved, which will affect take-off and landing distances for seaplanes and other craft capable of landing on the water. The MSFS 2024 team doesn’t yet have a solution to realistically pitch big ships, so you won’t be able to practice your carrier landings in the F/A-18 Hornet in pitching seas quite yet, but given how much and how often MSFS is updated, I’m sure it’s just a matter of time.
How It All Ties Together
Every helipad on the planet is now in MSFS 2024. That’s over 80,000, a number that includes all 941 off-shore oil rigs. The team also called, or wrote, to every glider airport in the entire world and created the first database to track them. Tall structures that pose an aviation hazard have what’s known as an “OB”, “obstruction light” on the top. You know those red lights you see on radio towers? Those are OB lights. MSFS 2024 has modeled over a million of them now, all across the planet.
Every helipad on the planet is now in MSFS 2024. That’s over 80,000.
“Flight Sim always wanted to have all of Earth as real as it gets,” head of Microsoft Flight Simulator Jörg Neumann told me during the event.
The quest for realism in MSFS 2024 and its predecessor has not only been one of the defining features of the franchise since 2020, but its vast data is making an impact internally, within Microsoft itself.
“It’s just knowledge that gets shared” around the company. I asked him if this means something like the Forza team.
“Absolutely,” he replied.
“I think we reinvigorated Bing.”
“I think we reinvigorated Bing,” he said of how the MSFS commitment to realism has most paid off for the company as a whole.
“I had an interesting phone call with Bill Gates where he said, ‘you took two franchises that were sort of on the downtrend,'” –Microsoft Flight Simulator and Bing search– “‘and you put them both back up on the uptrend.'”
“When we make trees, Bing gets our trees,” he said. “I’m like, ‘Hey, I’m flying to Brazil. Do you want those cities?’ OK, here’s the Brazilian cities. What else do you want?” Neumann said every piece of data they get, they share back with the Bing team, or at least what the Bing team will accept. “Obstacles like power lines…do they need that in Bing? No, but it’s not bad for Bing. It’s actually kind of good because it’s a richer experience.”
It’s not just the aircraft and the physical world they inhabit that’s had its realism ratcheted up from MSFS 2020. People and animals, too, have been revisited and improved with an eye towards recreating the world as accurately as possible.
People are dressed in clothes and styles matching their countries of origin.
People are dressed in clothes and styles matching their countries of origin. They speak in the language of their home countries. Flying from the US to Finland on a commercial plane? Walk through the cabin: you’ll hear both English and Finnish being spoken by the passengers.
Neumann, who has a supervising producer credit on 2013’s Zoo Tycoon and a degree in biology, has a soft-spot for animals and wants to make sure they’re also being more realistically simulated in MSFS 2024. “I really didn’t like the implementation of the animal flights in 2020,” he admitted. “It really bothered me, it was like, ‘Hey, find the elephants!’ and there’s a stick in the UI and there’s three sad-looking elephants.
“There’s an open source database that has all wild species, extinct and living, and it has distribution maps with density over time,” Neumann continued. Asobo is drawing from that database to make sure animals are exactly where they’re supposed to be, and that they have the correct population densities. In different locations throughout the year, “you will find different stuff, but also they’re migrating,” so where you spot a herd of wildebeests or caribou one day might not be the same place you find them the next.
Animal behavior is also closer to reality, not just where to find them. Hovering over rural Australia in a helicopter and you spot a herd of sheep? Go ahead and herd them with your helicopter. That’s just old-fashioned Aussie fun, mate. Neumann stopped short of saying exactly how many animal species are coming to MSFS 2024 when it releases in November, but he did say it will be “a lot.”
“I want to do butterflies. I wanted people to get out of the plane and do butterfly collections and stuff.”
“I want to do butterflies. I wanted people to get out of the plane and do butterfly collections and stuff,” he said. While that isn’t yet an official part of the MSFS 2024 experience, “something like that people can do with SDK,” or the software development kit.
A Learning Experience
Of course, animals and virtual people are amazing additions to bolster the realism, but MSFS 2024 in all its modes is ultimately about the experience of aviation. When MSFS 2020 came out, there was a worldwide shortage of 800,000 pilots.
“I can really tell you that the aviation industry is in an open crisis,” Neumann said. “It’s not that well discussed.
“They need pilots to be trained up from a younger age,” he added, and building the real-deal simulators can cost as much as $40 million. But thanks to the popularity of MSFS 2020–Asobo said they have over 15 million simmers–people are able to approach aviation from their living rooms on their Xbox and then move up from there. This ease at which people can get acquainted with flying, and the detail at which they can experience it, means aircraft companies are more than happy to work with Asobo and the Flight Simulator team.
“All of them with one exception has called us and said, ‘Please help us with recruitment,’ like we need to get people in.” Neumann said. This two-way relationship helps not only with an industry struggling to meet the demand for pilots, but it also helps MSFS become a better and more realistic experience. “When I say, ‘Hey, I need help from you guys,’ they’re like ‘You got it.'”
This constant improvement to the simulation from the aircraft manufacturers coupled with the community feedback means tutorials are out.
“This whole thing of tutorials going bye-bye? I kind of love it,” he admitted, saying he wasn’t a fan of the tutorials in MSFS 2020. “I fly a fair bit, but not like jets and stuff in the real world. So I had to take those tutorials and I didn’t really retain any of it.” The philosophy now is rather than rote tutorials, MSFS 2024 “is a way to really plug you into a path that is a real world path of aviation.” Career mode in particular will teach people a lot through the experience of doing, rather than through the traditional check-list-like system already in place with MSFS 2020’s tutorials. “I took them, I did them, I don’t remember it,” Neumann said about the original tutorials.
“I think we’re doing a better job helping people become aviators in the real world. I think that’s cool because it’s the only game I ever made any kind of real world connection [with].”
I was able to take on some of this training on piloting a helicopter. I’ve never really gotten the hang of it in MSFS2020, but Microsoft had a complete control set-up in place at the preview, accurate to what you’d find in an actual helicopter training class. Now, as was the case with 2020, you don’t NEED to have all the gear to learn to fly. I personally recommend getting whatever you can and building up, but if you have nothing more than an Xbox controller or just a mouse and keyboard, you can jump right into the lessons. It’s a very traditional route to learn to fly, but the new career mode gives stakes to this experience. “Why am I learning to hover? Oh right, because I need to swing a scaffolding into place with my sky crane later on in my career.”
Heavy Loads
Even with all the upgrades to the graphics and physics, MSFS 2024 promises to be a lighter experience on your hard drive than MSFS 2020 currently is. If you’ve ever changed the drive location of MSFS, or had to re-download it, you know the pain of pulling down hundreds of gigs of data. Even the major updates are 20-30 gigs, and sometimes it feels like half the hours I’ve spent in MSFS have been either updates or load times.
MSFS 2024 promises to be a lighter experience on your hard drive than MSFS 2020.
Thankfully, MSFS 2024 addresses these problems with cloud streaming. If you’re not going to fly around the whole world, why do you need to download it all? Same with airplanes: if you tend to only fly one or two, there’s no reason to have the entire fleet living on your drive. The updated cloud system means you only download the data you need. The rolling cache, as well as the physics, are on your local client, so the lift on your data is much lower. Great news for people with slow internet speeds, bandwidth caps, or anyone who might be running low on storage space.
Graphically, it’s really hard to say authoritatively just how much of an improvement it will be on my personal computer, but I can say, on the monster machines at the preview event, the level of realism massively exceeds MSFS 2020. I flew the Grand Canyon races multiple times chasing that world record, and the level of detail is astounding. I’ve flown biplanes into the Canyon in MSFS 2020 and the difference between the two is almost like the difference between PS1 and PS4. Whereas before there were smooth walls with textures approximating the rocky cliff walls, in MSFS 2024 those cliff walls look like actual rocks. The details, the shadows, the way it all moves and changes in the lighting, it’s fantastic. Even though I’m not running a top-end gaming rig, I’m really looking forward to seeing how it runs for 2024.
Is It November Yet?
Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 officially releases in November, and for me, a person who spent a lot of the pandemic (and the years since) obsessed with Flight Simulator and aviation as a whole, it cannot come soon enough. I am suitably impressed with what I saw, and I didn’t think they’d be able to improve on MSFS 2020 much more than an iterative update, but this is a reimagining of the entire franchise. Everything good… is better now, and everything new looks awesome and fun. I can’t wait to build my fleet of world-dominating commercial aircraft, rescue hikers stranded on the sides of mountains, and just fly the same flight path off the coast of Maine I’ve flown a million times before. I’m more excited about 2024 than I was about 2020, and from me, the guy who gave Flight Simulator 2020 a 10 out of 10 review score, that’s saying something.
Rather sheepishly, I must admit that my own experience with Armenian art begins and ends with System Of A Down. Cheers then, The Bird Of A Thousand Voices, for showing up in my inbox and giving me a second reference point next to Sugar. This one’s a simple though very striking platformer, inspired by folk legends and scored by composer Tigran Hamasyan. It’s part of a multimedia project based Armenian folk tale Hazaran Blbul (Firebird). It’s completely free, and you can find it here.
The mad lads at Square Enix have released a demo for their remake of 90s RPGRomancing SaGa 2: Revenge Of The Seven, in which you play a whole dynasty of customisable protagonists fighting vengeful ancient heroes. It’s a turn-based battler with an empire-building component in which you play as several emperors in succession, passing on abilities and knowledge to your heir. In what I consider to be a poetic complimentary flourish, you can also pass on save data from the demo to the full game. Look, this is what counts for “poetic” just before lunch on a Thursday.
To celebrate the 20th anniversary of Pokémon Emerald for the GBA, 130 artists have collabrated on a project to redraw the sprites for all 386 Pokémon included in the game (thanks, gamesradar).
Not only that, but the revised sprites have been implmented into a fully playable ROM hack called Pokémon Emerald: Respirited, so you can try it out yourself and check out the new representations (we won’t provide a link to the download directly here, but locating it won’t prove particularly difficult).
