The latest installment in the popular series of flight sims was announced at the June 2023 Xbox Games Showcase. This year's edition of the same event saw Asobo Studio treat Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 to a new gameplay trailer and release date, November 19.
And while the game has been touted as the best and most realistic series entry since its reveal, it would appear that its developer might still have undersold the sheer scope of its ambition. That's suggested by a recent PC Gamer interview with Head of Microsoft Flight Simulator Jorge Neumann, who revealed that the upcoming title will boast some truly unprecedented features. One of them is the ability to exit a plane (after landing) and just go on a stroll wherever. "You can literally walk your favorite mountain path to your favorite hut in the mountains; sit on the lake; see the sunset," Neumann exemplified.
The ability to walk around won't be just limited to solid ground, as players will also be able to land on ships, Neumann said, presumably referring to vessels like aircraft carriers. The industry veteran likened the experience of walking around on ships to "a first-person shooter environment." This unprecedented level of scale and world complexity will largely be achieved by importing topography data from Bing Maps. The previous series entry already did something similar, to the point that Microsoft Flight Simulator players can find their real-world houses in the game.
You can literally walk your favorite mountain path to your favorite hut in the mountains; sit on the lake; see the sunset.
But Asobo Studio put even more care into processing that data for the upcoming sequel. Aside from more detailed topography, Neumann also promised that Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 will deliver more realistic flora and fauna. That's primarily thanks to machine learning solutions used to populate the developer's digital elevation map, which essentially acts like the game world's height field. This process sometimes requires manual bug fixing, like removing a lush forest from a region that doesn't have it in the real world, Neumann explained. But on the whole, the technology promises to help MFS 2024 to deliver a combination of scale, detail, and overall immersion that no other flight simulation game has ever approached.
Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 Will Have a Smaller Install Size Than MFS 2020
Another big technological leap concerns the way the game handles asset streaming, which will now be largely reliant on the cloud. So, instead of taking 400–500GB of storage space like its predecessor, Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 will only require "50 GB or less." It is currently unclear whether the company plans to offer an option to install the entire game locally for those who have a spotty internet connection or prefer to game offline whenever possible. As is the case with the vast majority of complex AAA simulation games, MFS 2024 is expected to require a high-end CPU for the optimal gaming experience.
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Source: https://gamerant.com/microsoft-flight-simulator-2024-walking-around-landing-map-feature/
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