The Return of Microsoft Flight Simulator Was One of The Best Surprises of This Year E3

Cyberpunk 2077 is not the only game that I'm so hyped for , Microsoft announcing Flight Simulator was a sweet surprise and it proves that MS heard the voice of PC gamers though the road's still long, I have a lot of good memories from playing this game with my uncle and I hope it won't the last MS title that we see coming back to PC

:)

It was revealed after Microsoft's Game Pass for PC announcement, and Spencer says Microsoft wanted to use the opportunity to put its PC games in the spotlight.

"I didn't know if the PC community was going to be watching or not, but we went Flight Sim, we went Age, we went Wasteland," he says. "We want to make sure we're building games and supporting games that the PC community... we want to respect what they love."

Yeah, it's about time we get a new Microsoft Flight Simulator. The graphics from that video presentation look a lot better than any simulator I have seen so far. Phil Spencer says that 2 petabytes of geographical data is used to seamlessly stitch together Earth. The trailer rushes past cities, swoops down so we can see elephants and giraffes hanging around and then soars the mountains for some truly incredible views.

Spencer warned the team: "You're going to have to put at the bottom that it's in-game, because nobody is going to believe that's in the game."

Indeed, been wanting MS FS on a MS console forever. Gonna rock on Anaconda. :D

On a side note, same kind of nice surprise hearing PSO2 will make it to Xbox as well.

I really hope Dovetail aren't involved. But yea, great news.

Flight-sims use to get quite abit of coverage in the 90's and 2000, now they won't even get reviewed.

It was the only game of that show that got my attention. It hope it turns out like it looks because it's pretty breathtaking. The scenery is amazing. This looks way more appealing than that X-Plane game ever did to me.

Maybe it'll be a proper flight simulator this time and not that casual arcade DLC laden crap that was Microsoft Flight, but then there's the fact that it's being advertised as an Xbox title, so...

Also notice that marketing focuses exclusively on eye-candy and doesn't say one word about flight physics.

Yawn...glad its being made for the fans but they bore me to death.

That's a good point. I think DLC spam at a high price point will be a give because, lets face it, that's the norm now regardless of game. It's shitty, but it is what it is.

Gameplay wise, this will be released on console. So that raises an eye-brow. I don't believe they can't appeal to both casual and proper enthusiasts, it's been done, but the limited controls of the Xbox pad make it impossible for anything other than a casual design unless it's allowing console users to hook up a mouse and keyboard. It's just factually too limited a control scheme.

I just hope it's a real simulator like it used to be and not a simcade version.

After Flight Simulator and Age of Empires returning I hope Close Combat is next.

Sure it was...

Mech Commander bro

'reviewer': Can you guys send me a console copy?

Publisher: Ok, sure but the game plays best on PC tho...

'reviewer': Nevermind, too much effort

They cancelled the franchise after 9/11, right? I thought I read that somewhere because trolls were crashing their planes into various skyscrapers and making videos.

Xbox been doing so many things to get me, a PC gamer, to just hype the shit out of everything they do. Hell, if I don't even buy Scarlett, I'm gonna be playing Xbox games all next gen.

I honestly didn't know what to think, I'm actually not a huge simulator guy these days, but I still love flying anything. I certainly cheered finding out it was Flight Simulator, but after reading about it, I'm absolutely stunned by this game, and type of game I'll sink endless hours into.

Day one via game pass for me :)

now to play it on PC or Xbox One X, hmmmm

The choices Microsoft offers.

Uh, no. The last game was Microsoft Flight in 2012. A game that took place on the Hawaiian Islands. It wasn't well received by the audience, and they ended up putting the series on ice until now.

This is great news. It looks fantastic and I hope it is a true sim.

Not for me but it looks great.

@BenjaminBanklin: Interesting. I just assumed the franchise was dead because I remember it being heavily marketed with new iterations.

Their were a few games that actually got effected after 9/11. Red Alert 2, Flight Simulator 2002, but MS had to change stuff for Flight Simulator 2002 like removing "World Trade Center" and remove the "crash damage" in the game. Ace Combat 04 Shatter Skies got delayed to change out similarities from World Trade Center skyscraper. Most flight games weren't cancelled or dead after 9/11, some had to take a hiatus until the world could finally move on and now it's 2019, MS can finally restart Flight Simulator from it's slumber.

Nah, Microsoft was killing off all their PC franchises and developers because console gaming was 'the future'

@R4gn4r0k: That was also MS grave mistake, and now they see PC is becoming huge, they wanna jump back in and play nice because consoles are declining.

I disagree. They abandon the bulk of PC gaming during the 360 era and that was the time when the 360 was dominating. That foolishness would have continued if not for the hard flop the Xbox One release incurred. With that said, their new direction should've always been what the Xbox brand was and is about.

Yeah, as a big fan of flight sims back in the 90's and early 2000's, I was very happy to see that reveal.

That's why I honestly don't believe this game would have existed, or MS's refocus on gaming on PC had Xbox One been successful. Xbox consoles had to die for Flight Simulator to live. Heh heh.

Ok I take it back it' sawesome.

Talk about boring, hopefully there's an option to join the mile high club by banging a stewardess in the dunny LOL..

Banjo on Smash and BOTW 2 were bigger better surprises.

I'd agree with that. It was a total surprise for me and I thought it looked great

I plan to play this sim via game pass.

If you like Flight Simulators I guess. I personally couldn't be less interested.

Damn! If this is compatible with my flight stick on pc I think I’m getting this. This takes me back to a simpler time where I not only flew planes but also won the war against the Kilrathi furbags.

10/10 Would play. Lol

Go play some Unity3D based Japanese anime porn game. LOL. Ray-tracing mod for the RTX remake.

Does not compute, error, error...………………………….reboot

Folks doing analysis of the graphics have determined that they're not nearly as impressive as the video suggests. The textures are being pulled from Bing satellite image data and mapped over 3D objects, sort of like how Google Earth accomplishes its trick. And while it looks great from certain angles and certain times of day, there are major disadvantages to this method, such as "baked in" shadows not matching in-game lighting, and textures being oddly stretched over objects. There's also the problem of procedurally generated roads not matching the satellite images, which results in roadways hovering over the landscape, or passing through buildings, and so on. There's also the issue of putting dynamic lighting inside buildings, because unless each building is hand detailed, you're going to have lights shining out of non-existent windows. Which is to say that while a cityscape can look stunning when viewed from a distance, the illusion quickly falls apart up close.

https://www.avsim.com/forums/topic/555616-new-ms-flight-sim-shown-at-e3/?page=26&tab=comments#comment-4017251

Also the fact that they're using Bing satellite images suggests that textures might be streamed over the internet instead of stored locally. This leads to speculation that this latest version of Flight Simulator could require a subscription.

Haha, and I think for that scenario you're looking for is only available on... The Sims...

lol :P

Can you land on the Red Square like Mathias Rust?

Flight Simulator returns - Cool. Props to MS for still remembering this franchise.

Now when are they going to revive the real OG, Microsoft Combat Flight Simulator? Where the hell is my Fokker you fuckers?!

If it’s on consoles, it’s not a simulator.

Why would it need a sub for data that is freely available?

I already expected that it would use Bing as a source for the textures and whatnot. The 3D is made from a digital mesh captured by aerial flyovers with satellite photos overlaid on them. It's too much of a herculean task to do everything by hand. At the very least, they should be going for something that turns out better than Google Earth (which comes with its own Flight Sim mode, just really simple). It looks like it's using fully rendered bridges at least. All I ask is that it runs well.

Depending how the final product turns out I may pick up the Xbox One version.

Rather, I suspect that the entire "Flight Simulator" package is going to be sold as a subscription.

They really don't need to be as 95% the player is in the air far away from the textures. Pretty much always been that way even in the most visually impressive games like DCS (which still manages to look largely photographic). Just a waste of time and resources.

I think Austin Meyer hit on a genius solution with X-Plane 11's "plausible world" where everything from the terrain and up is dynamically placed using detailed assets, and the illusion is fully maintained whether you're flying at 30-feet or 30,000-feet (heck, you can even see picnic tables and barbecue grills in the backyards of houses!).

Day 1

Not really new tech. We've been using online satellite topography images since the previous decade on FSX with TileProxy. Higher-res meshes would still be a big plus.