The builders of Microsoft Flight Simulator have lots to be pleased with. Final month, on the FlightSimExpo 2024 in Las Vegas, representatives crowed about their 15 million customers and one billion flight classes logged — numbers Asobo Studio claims put them on the prime of the heap because the most-played flight simulation ever revealed. Now the studio is again on that grind cranking out Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024, due out this fall. Asobo calls it “essentially the most bold sim ever undertaken,” and given its observe report, I’m inclined to imagine them.
The prolonged discuss, delivered by head of Microsoft Flight Simulator Jörg Neumann and Asobo Studio co-founder and CEO Sebastian Wloch, stretches over an hour and a half. However these 90 minutes embody a number of scrumptious morsels for devoted digital pilots — enhancements akin to app-based offline flight planning, elevated density of floor site visitors at main airports, and the flexibility to really step out of the cockpit to carry out pre-flight checks in first-person.
However the tidbit that ought to flip PC and console participant’s heads essentially the most is the invocation of a brand new accomplice, an organization that Microsoft not too long ago acquired referred to as Vexcel Imaging.
Vexcel is a groundbreaking imaging firm identified for its UltraCam line of aerial survey cameras. These multi-spectrum arrays embody extra conventional RGB colour sensors alongside near-infrared sensors. Mixed with their software program, the result’s a dramatic improve within the decision of picture information being shared with the workforce of designers at Asobo — as evidenced by MSFS 2024’s latest teaser trailer, proven on the Xbox Video games Showcase.
Neumann used a little bit of his time on stage at FlightSimExpo to let followers peek backstage, so to talk, at what was truly being proven in that trailer — particularly in its opening moments as a single-engine airplane flies over Monument Valley in Arizona.
“The pure environments are one thing that folks have by no means seen earlier than,” Neumann stated. “Not on this scale, actually not on this degree of element.” Then he handed the reins to Wloch to go just a little bit deeper. You possibly can watch the complete section across the 14-minute mark.
What’s essential to grasp is that beforehand, Microsoft Flight Simulator had been making use of three-dimensional property — issues like homes and bushes — automagically on prime of two-dimensional information. However there’s solely to date you’ll be able to take that sort of automation, which is why the primary time I flew over the Nice Pyramid at Giza, the advanced of pyramids was surrounded by a forest of oddly brown deciduous bushes as an alternative of sand dunes. Utilizing UltraCam information to do photogrammetry — that’s, 3D reconstruction of real-world components from nothing however picture information — provides Asobo’s terrain-rendering software program much more to work with.
“We now have the bottom, which is all 3D, as an alternative of […] 2D with a texture,” Wloch stated. “There’s a whole lot of completely different 3D supplies [including] the grass, the rocks, and the bushes. Every part is now 3D […] and all the pieces is procedurally generated on prime of the world information.”
However Vexcel’s digital camera expertise isn’t standing nonetheless. This summer season, the Austrian firm is including LIDAR to its arrays as effectively. That can probably add altitude and relative distance to the info being shared with Asobo along with graphical information. And that, my buddies, might allow procedurally generated environments the likes of which nobody has ever seen in a industrial flight simulator.
Count on extra on Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 forward of its Nov. 19 launch date, when it’s going to develop into out there for buy and as a part of Xbox Recreation Go.
