“The world, especially the Big Data world, between Microsoft Flight Simulator (2020) and Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 will be shared,” explains Head of Microsoft Flight Simulator Jorg Neumann. “We are not going to have two different digital twins — cities like London are going to be shared, POIs are shared, the height field (DEM) and aerials are all shared. What’s different in MSFS 2024 is we have optimized how the data is brought to the player. So, there will be a lot more in the Cloud, which allows us to do more. Instead of 23 species of trees, we now have something like 200. And ultimately with that it allows you to be a lot more accurate. There will still be trees in both worlds, but one will be a little bit more generic and the other more sophisticated, but the worlds will be the same.”
Sophisticated is a key word when it comes to describing what’s involved in the latest World Update XVII for Microsoft Flight Simulator. From utilizing improved cameras to more accurate levels of data, the whole project behind this update is driven by utilizing the latest tech which wasn’t available the first time these regions were mapped. It’s not just that this update has been long requested by fans, but it has been identified by the flight sim team as a project they’ve wanted to tackle for a while.
“We had photogrammetry (for the regions), but it didn’t look particularly good. And I think that’s what people saw, right? Sure, the city was there, but it was dark, the building shadows were way too black, and there were all kinds of issues,” explains Neumann. “London was highlighted from the community as a ‘Please, please update London.’ So, I always had that on my mind, that we’ve got to do something with London. And as I was working with the Bing team, we’d talk about it a lot, about wanting to do England correctly.”