Anyone with acrophobia or aviophobia might not want to go near the upcoming newest version ofMicrosoft Flight Simulator. Based on pre-alpha footage of the game posted by NVIDIA GeForce UK on Twitter Monday, it could be scarily close to the real thing.
The series ofMicrosoft Flight Simulatorgames has a long history, with the first entry appearing on IBM PCs in 1982. However Microsoft received the rights to use that simulation from the subLOGIC Corporation, which had been developing versions of the program as early as 1979 for the Apple II.
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A “next generation” version of the game was announced duringXbox’s 2019 E3 conferencewith a vague 2020 release date. The Xbox website promises the game will feature “highly detailed and stunning aircraft[s] in an incredibly realistic world,” as well as simulations for daytime and nighttime flying in different weather conditions.
The Xbox website currently hosts a number of screenshots and two videos (one of which being the E3 announcement trailer), but none of it feels quite as visceral as the pre-alpha footage from November posted byNVIDIA— A company which has been creating products like graphics cards since it was founded in 1993.
Long gone are the days of chunky, pixelated graphics that defined theMicrosoft Flight Simulatorgames of the 80s and 90s (as impressive as those were for the time). Now the world around Microsoft’s simulation has the potential to be something spectacular to behold - Particularly in real-time 4K, which the original E3 trailer wants players to know is possible in its first second.
The graphics do not look quite perfect yet. Immersive moments in the tweeted gameplay video are intercut with scenes looking out of the plane’s side window at environments that feature the kind of chunky facsimile of rooftop textures one might expect to see when zooming in onGoogle Maps.
But these kind of rough edges are to be expected from pre-alpha footage. Snippets of the video, specifically one where the plane is descending onto a runway while cars idly pass on a nearby road and another watching the plane circle around a foggy cityscape, are mesmerizing in their realness.
No doubt Microsoft is focusing their energy to capitalize on the current zeitgeist of idyllic, time-killing, and realistic simulation games. They have exploded in popularityover the last decadethanks to titles like SCS Software’sEuro Truck Simulator 2from 2012 or GIANTS Software’sFarming Simulatorseries (which has released new versions almost yearly since 2008; theCall of Dutyof agriculture).
However there’s an argument to be made that Microsoft helped create that style of relaxing game thanks to the popularity of its flight simulator series. Time will tell whether they can reclaim the glory through this new, ambitious-looking venture.
Microsoft Flight Simulatorwill be available in 2020 on Windows 10 and the Xbox One. It will also be available through Xbox Game Pass.
