Flight Simulator [OT] See that mountain over there? You can crash into it!

Microsoft Flight Simulator is the next generation of Microsoft’s oldest gaming IP. From light planes to wide-body jets, fly highly detailed and stunning aircraft in an incredibly realistic world. Create your flight plan and fly anywhere on the planet. Enjoy flying day or night and face realistic, challenging weather conditions.
Travel the world in amazing detail with over 37 thousand airports, 2 million cities, 1.5 billion buildings, real mountains, roads, trees, rivers, animals, traffic and more.


Developer: Asobo Studio
Publisher: Xbox Game Studios
Platforms: Microsoft Windows | Xbox Series S|X
Pricing: 60-120

Features

World

"the world is really big."

Bing maps provides 2 petabytes of aerial imagery and elevation data for the whole world and 3D photogrammetry scans for a number of cities. It matches the real world so that now VFR (visual flight rules) flying is available for everywhere. Asobo and partners developed AI routines to procedurally place trees, grass, buildings, traffic and animals. This data is streamed from the Azure cloud as you fly in your plane over the world.

Aeodynamics

Asobo build FS 2020 on the base of the simulation of aerodynamics and physics in Flight Simulator X and improved on and reworked key aspects. The big change to the system is the new aerodynamic simulation which now fully calculates 1000 surfaces over the geometry of a plane (FSX had one). Asobo also implemented a new worldwide atmospheric air mass simulation on the entire planet to match the air flow in the world to the clouds and 3D environment and simulate such things as turbulences in volumetric clouds or the air flowing over a mountain.
The physics simulation for terrain and tires now handles sloped surfaces so you can land on sloped runways or fields. The simulation works now more realistic and on a higher rate so it is much more smooth and behaves less on rails and more like a real plane. Flaps and external gear are now calculated aerodynamically. All aircrafts have been reviewed with the help of professional pilots.

Weather

Asobo developed a new atmospheric engine to unify the rendering in the sky and provide realistic lighting in all weather conditions and time of day. The new technology provides volumetric 3D rain, fog, clouds and rainbows. Icing is now simulated realistically depending of the actual humidity of the air.

Pilot have the option to seamlessly change the time of day and weather on the fly in real time or use live real world weather data form partner Meteoblue.

Airports

Bing provides the data for all airports and landing strips on earth, so you can start and land on around 40 thousand of them. Asobo has a special tool to correct and align the landing strips by hand (watch Discovery Series: Airports). There are 80 special hero airports with more detailed modelling. The most iconic airports with lifelike presentation are the 20-30 airports in standard, deluxe and premium edition.

Multiplayer

You can group up with other pilots in one single shared online world. The server will show you the 50 closest players. The sim shares the same multiplayer world, content and services for all players on all store fronts so players from Steam and Microsoft Store can fly together. There are also weekly challenges with a worldwide leaderboard where you can compare your landing scores.

Editions

You can choose from 3 editions - Standard, Deluxe and Premium. They differ in the number of available aircraft and high fidelity airports. And best of all: Standard Edition is included in Game Pass!

Storefronts

Flight Simulator 2020 is available on the Microsoft Store for Xbox and PC and Steam. The standard edition is included in Xbox Game Pass for PC and Xbox. Its a Play Anywhere title so your purchase and progress carries over from PC to Xbox and vice versa.

MS Store: Standard Edition, Deluxe Edition, Premium Edition

Steam: all Editions

Specs

You also need extra space on your drive for cached data from the cloud.

On Xbox you have to install the 42 GB main game assets to your internal or external SSD. If you want to fly without the power of the cloud you have to install an additional 56GB download for offline assets. If you stream assets from the cloud this is done to a cache partition on your SSD which takes up additional space up to 16GB. Asobo does regular world updates, these have to be downloaded and are around 4GB for each fo them.

Trailers

Additional Information

Learn more https://www.flightsimulator.com/
Watch Feature Discovery Series on Microsoft Flight Simulator - YouTube
Ask questions monthly on Twitch

FAQ

Can I fly offline?
You can but you get lower fidelity on the terrain and buildings without the cloud data.

Is there a career mode?
No, but Asobo and Microsoft are working on some kind of progression system. In the meantime you can link third party systems like https://www.fseconomy.net or https://www.neofly.net on PC.

Which peripherals are supported on Xbox?
You can connect a USB keyboard and mouse and use Thrustmasters or Horis flightsticks for Xbox. Other manufacturers will release their products later in 2021 and 2022. More information here and here.

The world is soooo big. Where should I fly?
https://flightspots.co got you covered. Also watch the world updates where Asobo highlights new improved locations. You can also check out RPS list of photogrammetry cities here.

Will there be additional planes or DLC?
For sure, this is a flight sim. Have a look at the integrated marketplace. I hope your wallet is ready.

I only see planes, what about helicopters?
It’s on the wishlist and will come later. There are already some helicopter mods on PC.

Is HDR supported?
Yes.

5 Likes

“the world is really big”, lol.

I’ve never played a flight simulator game before, but I honestly can’t wait to try this out.

Thanks for the OT. I played the old versions way back in the day with a flight stick on PC, can’t wait to check it out on Tuesday. I really am excited for an Xbox Series X version at some point just to relax flying around the world on my big screen TV in between other gaming sessions.

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This is a great article linked here, just sounds incredible what this team went after with this.

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I’ve freed up the space on my PC. Just… with the temperatures outside I feel bad for my PC.

My CPU can barely play the game on minimum. Rest of my specs are at recommended.

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Looking forward to seeing what folks think on release. I’ve been playing it a lot over the weekend.

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I don’t have a PC to play this - please come to XSX ASAP!

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Wow IGN gave the game a 10/10

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Wow I did not expect this high scores :o

Matt and Phil at Asobo right now

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I mentioned this before but I might as well mention it again. Asobo made a very smart and common sense business move here. Don’t sell right away, wait for your big hit and THEN sell when you have clout and someone is willing to pay 5x more to acquire you

Asobo absolutely murdered it this gen with Plague’s Tale and now Flight Simulator. They’ve proven to be a top tier developer and now if an acquisition does happen (and I believe it will) they can probably get 5-10x as much as before.

Devs that drop 90+ rated games are a very rare commodity

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Who knows, maybe MS has already begun discussions with them for some time now.

Could this game be a 1st party XSX launch title system seller?

It’s completely unconventional as far as a system seller goes…but I’m getting 1997 Gran Turismo vibes here. A game that isn’t your typical game but looks so impressive that you’ve got to buy the console for that experience.

I’ve been watching Twitch streams of this game in the last couple hours in the background, while checking out the reviews, and I’m floored. I want this game, and I want it at the fidelity seen on the PCs of those Twitch streamers. 4K really benefits this game, as does 60fps.

The Asobo purchase talk likely belongs in its own thread but I just wanted to add: one reason why you’d also want them is because their games are consistently impressive visually with their own custom game engines and can assist other MS 1st party devs in their efforts. Playground Games wants to recreate Japan in its entirety for FH5? Asobo can help. Need better hair rendering in Halo Infinite? Plague’s Tale had some of the best hair in any game. Your bringing in a lot of knowledge that benefits all of MS’s studios.

Rock Paper Shotgun interviewed Asobos Martial Bossard and Microsofts Jörg Neumann about some interesting details and future plans

They intentionally didn’t set a release date for the Xbox version. They have other priorities right now.

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Sadly doubt my PC will handle this game, especially after learning the file size is almost 100 GB, so Ill probably have to wait till a console release, but this is a game i really wanna play. Wanting to do a 24 hr flight from my homeland(UK) to New Zealand just to see how brutal that will be

Also I would like to see supersonic aircraft added to this game, would be the only way to experience such aircraft in some capacity. Hopefully they’ll add the Concorde or something as DLC later

I expect this thread to turn into screenshot porn one pretty quickly.

It’s 150gb unfortunately, I had to uninstall some things on my laptop lol.

Hnet-image (1)

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Well I enjoyed what I played but I sure do suck at it lol. Def gonna take a while to be able to get good at the game. I pass the tutorials, but when I’m on my own, I can’t seem to land a plane to save my life lol.

Need to make some room for this beast. Never played a flight sim in my life, good thing Game Pass is opening up the chance of playing one without risking any money on it.