2 weeks Ago By Anthony Garreffa
Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 is shaping up to be an incredible experience, where the game is a complete overhaul and upgrade of Flight Simulator 2020: but it's so, so much bigger . Check it out: One of the biggest changes that Flight Simulator 2024 delivers is that the game's computing has been shifted from your PC, to the cloud. There are massive amounts of data -- 2,500,000GB of aerial data to be precise -- that will be streamed from the cloud and onto your PC in real-time.
Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 used a hybrid structure that streamed data from the cloud, but also used the local compute resources (PC or Xbox Series X/S) as well, this meant that downloads to your system were up to 500GB, which is a huge cry from the much, much smaller 23GB install for Flight Simulator 2024. That doesn't mean you're going to lose detail, in fact there is 4000x more detail in Flight Simulator 2024, a full-fledged single-player Career mode, and ungodly amounts more. The detail of the virtual environment of Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 has been increased by 4000x, with the 800-strong developer team building a " digital twin " of the Earth, just like metaverse-focused companies like NVIDIA have been doing.
The new world was created with more realistic physics, more accuracy, and systems for things that affect things like flight, ground activity, extreme weather, fuel and cargo, turbulence, and more. There are even hot air balloons in Flight Simulator 2024, simulated across 6400 surfaces with a realistic reaction to heat density, so when you turn on the heater, the air will heat up, and inflate the balloon in real-time. It's an impressive thing to see.
Enhanced digital elevation maps use more than 100,000 square kilometers of countryside photogrammetry to enable 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 on our planet.
There's a new Career mode that lets you try out authentic aviation activities including 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. The enhanced physics system allows for 10,000+ rigid-body surfaces that enables the simulation of any shape of aircraft, with soft body physics supporting cloth, ropes, balloons, and more.
There's also improved ground and water handling that further enhance realism in Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024. Head of Microsoft Flight Simulator Jorg Neumann, said: " Since we launched Microsoft Flight Simulator in 2020, we have seen 15 million people come to the simulation and be interested in what we do. When you compare that number to the previous biggest launch we had, which was Microsoft Flight 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] ". On the graphics: 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 Neumann explained: " We can basically get every rock on Earth now; it's unbelievable.
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 ".
Microsoft explains the visually stunning digital twin in Flight Simulator 2024: Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 launches on the PC and Xbox Series X/S on November 19, 2024..
