Microsoft Flight Simulator devs outline plans for helicopters, historic planes, and Australia
The granddaddy flight sim’s 2022 roadmap is coming into focus.
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Microsoft and Asobo Studio have detailed some exciting changes coming to Microsoft Flight Simulator over the course of 2022 in adevelopment updateandattending Q&Aon YouTube.
Perhaps most notable was their further elaboration on plans to officially bring helicopters to the game by the end of the year. Modders haveimplemented helicopters previously, but Microsoft Flight Simulator’s impressive reproduction of the physics behind manned flight actually makes it difficult to get helicopters working in the game. The simulation was developed with planes in mind, and the modders of the Hype Performance Group’shelicopter packused a brute-force approach in the current framework. For their official implementation, Asobo will be first testing a more granular air simulation on some upcoming planes, before putting out their officially-sanctioned helicopters.
Much of the body of the Q&A was devoted to Microsoft Flight Simulator’s upcoming world updates 7 and 8 for Australia and the Iberian Peninsula respectively. The game’s world updates are bespoke touch-ups of areas on Microsoft Flight Simulator’s map, whose base form is generated from Bing maps data. We werepreviously quite impressedwhen the UK and Ireland got this treatment last year.
The video also outlined plans for more historic planes coming to Microsoft Flight Simulator, such as theSouthern Cross, the first plane to ever successfully make a transpacific flight.
Asobo has provided adetailed roadmapfor the first quarter of 2021, as well as a more nebulous outline for the entire year in the Q&A video. Microsoft Flight Simulator remains an impressive feat of simulation and graphical fidelity, and it’s exciting to see its continued support.
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Ted has been thinking about PC games and bothering anyone who would listen with his thoughts on them ever since he booted up his sister’s copy of Neverwinter Nights on the family computer. He is obsessed with all things CRPG and CRPG-adjacent, but has also covered esports, modding, and rare game collecting. When he’s not playing or writing about games, you can find Ted lifting weights on his back porch.
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