One sim to rule them all, one sim to bind them? TIM ROBINSON FRAeS casts a critical eye over the latest 2020 reboot of Microsoft's long-running Flight Simulator series. Why is this one so significant?
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Steam £59 Standard/£79.99 Deluxe/£109.99 Premium Deluxe
The big news is PC flight simulation is that after 14 years, software giant Microsoft has returned to flight simulation – a genre that it first pioneered back in 1982.
Its latest offering, developing by French games studio Asobo, features 30 aircraft in the Premium Deluxe edition, ranging from the Zlin Savage Cub and Cirrus SR22 to the A320neo and 787 Dreamliner. Meanwhile more than 37,000 airports and airfields across the entire globe are modeled – with 40 hand-crafted ones including global hubs like JFK, Heathrow and Dubai in the Premium Deluxe version, as well as smaller but iconic ones such as Courchevel, Gibraltar and Aspen.
But why is this version causing such a stir? Lets take a look at the top ten reasons.
1) The entire world to explore in VFR flight
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Athens and the Acropolis in MSFS - note how the autogen AI renders the buildings as typical Mediterranean sun-bleached white.
The last Microsoft flightsim, FSX, was released back in 2006 and though add-ons, spin-offs (FSX: Steam Edition, Lockheed Martin's P3D and the ill-fated Dovetail Games entry) the jump in PC graphics, processing power in the past 14 years has meant the Asobo has been able to produce a truly next-generation flight simulation that is not only the best looking sim available, but possibility the best looking video game as well. In screenshots it is sometimes impossible to tell apart from a real photo.
Key to its appeal is how it deals with scenery allowing for low-level VFR flight anywhere on the globe, but using Microsoft's Azure Cloud AI, Bing aerial and satellite images and Black Shark AI to create a immersive and highly realistic world – that is so detailed that you will be able to find your street and house.
Photo or satellite scenery is not new, but used to be limited to 2D overlays over 3D terrain meshes. In recent years, sims like FlyInside, and community add-ons like X-planes OrthoXP have tried blending generic autogen buildings with satellite imagery, with varying results, as one style of architecture looks completely out of place in other parts of the world. Using AI though, you can train the sim to interpret and recognise not only houses, flats and factories and render their shape, but also to know that a middle-eastern dwelling will be different to a LA suburb and apply details. The result then is spellbinding with red tiled roofs in Italy, slums in Mumbai, chalets in Switzerland and so forth. Night lighting too has been carefully colour-matched so that a UK city at night looks different that Singapore, for example.
Some 300 cities, (such as New York, Las Vegas) also benefit from additional photogrammetry which uses low-level oblique aerial photos taken from various angles to construct a virtual 3D model of the city. This means, that in for example New York, if you fly low enough you can recognise billboards on the side of buildings.
However, the biggest stumbling block to using high-resolution satellite images in flight sims until now has been disk space on peoples' computers. The solution (also used by FlyInside) is to stream the data directly from cloud servers – allowing simmers to fly over any part of the world in incredible detail. On Microsoft's cloud system, there is two petabytes of satellite data that covers the entire planet. (One petabyte is 100,0000Gb). This obviously needs an always-on online connection for it work properly, but the sim can be run offline, in which case it reverts to FSX-style 'autogen' scenery.
However, this does not mean that the scenery is perfect and much amusement can be had by finding glitches in the terrain and rendering, including a giant tower in Melbourne, roads that go vertical and buildings that the AI renders as vegetation. In particularly, the AI seems to have difficulty in recognising bridges, cranes, aerials and vertical objects – church steeples for example in the UK and northern Europe are missing. There are also bigger omissions. The date of the photo imagery means that a couple of very new large airports such as Istanbul and Beijing as also missing – until the developers or third-parties adds them in.
These however are minor quibbles and make no mistake - MSFS is an absolutely jaw-droppingly beautiful piece of software, prompting a huge surge in PC hardware as people rush out to upgrade their computers and explore the world One estimate that this could lead to $2.6bn in PC hardware and peripherals. Joystick and HOTAS systems are already reported to be out of stock – an indication of the impact this is having.
2) Weather is now scary
Weather and cloudscapes are not only stunning graphically but are dangerous to fly through with icing and turbulence.
If terrain looks amazing – the lighting and weather system is phenomenal – with atmospheric scattering and 3D volumetric clouds that make the landscape change with the weather. Breaking through thick overcast into bright sunlight and seeing towering canyons of cloud around you produces a 'wow' moment similar to the real experience. What's more, is there are no sudden transitions from fog to clear skies - everything is natural. Hit the right conditions and rainbows will appear.
However, perhaps the biggest change is that the weather now demands your utmost respect as a virtual pilot – especially in light aircraft. In previous versions of MSFS, without third party add-ons and setting weather to extreme levels, it was pretty easy to ignore bad weather, clouds and storms. In MSFS – however, even the hint of dark clouds on the horizon becomes a cause for concern – especially if you are flying in a small aeroplane with 'live weather' drawn from real-world weather stations. Can you fly through? Go round? Divert? Venture into clouds or storms and you can enter a world of hurt. The aircraft shakes, the airframe creaks and icing can obscure your vision and build up on your wings. MSFS becomes an interactive lesson in the dangers of scud-running.
Even in clear conditions, fly too close to mountains and updrafts and downdrafts can catch you - and the developers have now modelled the air mass reacting with mountains, terrain and even buildings. There are also subtle visual cues on the strength of wind. Waves and whitecaps at sea give an indication on speed and direction, while wind turbines also give a clue to strength. For hands-on, seat of the pants flying in a small aircraft, windy and stormy conditions constitute a real challenge.
Some users, predictably, have already used the 'live weather' setting to go 'virtual hurricane chasing' flying into real world storms to capture some incredible screenshots and video that the weather engine generates.
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You can of course, set whatever weather you like, and part of the fun of of this for many is playing 'weather God' and creating the perfect conditions for screenshots
One or two minor points remain. Ground fog or CATIII conditions seems difficult to achieve in the custom settings – a visibility slider to set the exact distance would be welcome, although low visibility seems to work fine when using live weather. Oddly, despite the amazing cloudscapes, high-level cirrus clouds seem to be missing. An oversight that hopefully will be rectified in a future patch.
3) Improved FMs
Individual surfaces are now modelled allowing for spins, flat spins and realistic stall behaviour. (Microsoft Flight Simulator)
Perhaps the weakest part of Microsoft's previous FSX vs its X-Plane rival was in the flight modelling. Previous legacy editions of the sim featured look-up tables that meant that as long at the virtual pilot kept within the centre of the flight envelope, a convincing recreation of aircraft climb, top speed and published performance figures could be simulated. However this started to break down where stalls, spins and unusual attitudes at the edge or even beyond the envelope occurred. It was left for third party developers to improve and produce more aerobatic aircraft.
In MSFS, this has now been rectified and aircraft are now split up into 1000 surfaces - each reacting with airflow, air pressure and temperature separately. This approach of 'blade element theory' allows wings to stall and rudders to be blanked. The result is that aircraft now demonstrate convincing highly dynamic and fluid manoeuvres in a much wider envelope. Stalls and spins are now possible and aerobatics (a Pitts Special and Extra) a joy to fly and experience.
On larger aircraft such as the business jets and airliners, however, this is more of a work in progress. Some seem overpowered and have a disinclination to lose speed, even with the throttle in idle. The glass cockpits, autopilot and FMS systems that are included in many of the aircraft are extremely useful, but do not have the deep systems modelling of some payware add-ons – and some functions seem to be missing. In short, the heavier iron, which relies on autopilot and FMS needs some more work to be fully usable, but the GA aircraft FM's are far improved and a real delight.
(Word also needs to be made of the fantastic and external and internal graphics modelling of all the included default aircraft - which are in some cases indistinguishable from the real thing.)
4) Regular updates to look forward to
Photogrammetry of Portsmouth - more cities are likely to get this treatment as Bing maps and data sources get updates.
Another way in this differs from previous versions is that it is a living, evolving product Unlike previous boxed versions of the sim, the 'always on' broadband world we now live in means that MSFS can be constantly upgraded with regular updates, patches and improvements. In fact it is designed this way. The navigation data from NavBlue for example, will be updated (in line with real-world flight data) every 28 days. The satellite and aerial photography too via Bing maps will only get more accurate and higher resolution over time. Some of these may not be apparent, even to the developers, unless you are flying over a remote part of the world that has had new more recent satellite imagery added. The developers meanwhile say they plan to enhance and support MSFS in the future focusing on certain regions and perhaps even types of aviation, filling them out with additional landmarks and so forth. The massive and highly talented flightsim community too, is also expected to also fill out missing landmarks, bridges, castles, extra aircraft, and indeed this has already started. In short, we can look forward to years of support and this simulation only getting even better.
5) Integrated marketplace
The in-game marketplace streamlines hunting for new add-ons and means keeping these up to date will be easy.
For third-party developers too, MSFS represents the next level and a massive opportunity to put your airport, aircraft or utility in front of many more customers with an in-game marketplace. Previously the huge ecosystem of thousands of add-ons that MSFS required either the consumer to buy hard copies in the form of CDs or DVDs to install, or more recently digital downloads. However installation could be tricky, and keeping it up-to-date was often a chore. While more experienced users can still download and install from third parties, there is now an inbuilt marketplace that allows new simmers to quickly and easily browse and buy add-on content. Spotted your favourite airport or aircraft in the in-game shop? (Almost) One click and you can add it to your base game and never have to worry about extra add-on codes, passwords or keeping it up to date. Already since its launch there are several new airports, scenery packs and at least one new aircraft in the in-game shop and this is expected to grow and grow as existing and new developers port their add-ons whether they are aircraft, scenery, missions or airports to MSFS.
6) Living world, multiplayer
Airport ground vehicles, marshallers can be seen going about their business at airfields.
This edition of MSFS also fills out the simulation to create an living breathing world, with AI aircraft, cars, ships, airport ground vehicles and even herds or flocks of animals to share your flights and find. Again this is nothing new and 3rd party add-ons in previous versions could enhance your simming experience by adding real-world airliners and their schedules. However with MSFS this has been taken to new heights by pulling live ADS-B data into the sim to generate AI traffic in the world. You can thus hear other aircraft over the ATC being given instructions. Should you not wish 'live traffic' then the sim will generate AI flights based in real-world schedules.
The AI routines powering this simulation seems to be intelligent enough that it also avoids things that break the immersion. For example, while there are roads near Chernobyl, no cars can be seen in them – perhaps some inbuilt setting that allows the AI to recognise remote areas where it should not spawn traffic.
There is also multiplayer – which has expanded massively in the past 16 years. People now want to game, share, stream with their friends. It is no surprise that multiplayer is included allowing people to fly with their friends. Of course, you can turn it completely off to fly solo, or there is a third setting that locks any human players in the world to use the same real-world time and live weather settings.
However, while players can fly formation, perform landing challenges and have virtual fly-ins together, one aspect of FSX is still missing is shared cockpits – allowing players to share the same aircraft.
7) Professional applications
Worldwide VFR terrain means that flying clubs all around the world could potentially use this for familiarity of local areas.
Although Microsoft has sold the licence for professional commercial usage of its previous sim, FSX to Lockheed Martin to develop into P3D, it in not hard to foresee that real-world aviators and aerospace industry could take advantage of this sim - whether is using it to brush up knowledge of VFR landmarks at a local flying club, licensing the Azure Cloud AI and graphics for another simulator, or using the amazing graphics to market airline livery designs or new aircraft concepts or renders of airports. However, as yet, MSFS, unlike X-Plane 11, does not count towards flight training hours, even if it were installed on a fixed-based simulator device. Some people have already investigated whether MSFS can be used as an opensource software tool to geo-locate detention facilities, with mixed results.
With a flight sim that allows global VFR flight, this may also could have some applications for example, for mission rehearsal for special forces and military aviators, who perhaps might want to familarise themselves with remote regions of the world or airstrips that are not included in their full-size simulator database. The possibilities could be endless.
8) Potential to inspire – wider audience
MSFS is a breakthrough product that is set to expand the number of people interested in aviation.
One of the most exciting aspects of this latest incarnation is that it is causing jaws to drop of gamers and consumers who would normally steer well clear of anything marked PC 'flight simulation' in online stores. Media coverage has hit the mainstream and the sim is also set to be released on the Xbox – potentially opening up thousands if not millions of young eyes to the beauty and magic of flight. For an industry, that pre-Covid-19, has been struggling with a pilot shortage this is welcome shot in the arm that makes the flightdeck office look like an incredible place to work. It is also worth noting that as grim as the job cuts are at moment, that this situation could well return in the future, once demand for air travel returns. Many pilots, furloughed or laid off and those older ones at the very end of their careers could never return to the airlines, creating a sudden shift in demographics and seniority. Fresh blood then could well be needed in a few years time.
The sim not only has the potential to inspire pilots, but also engineers, designers, AI experts and those that find themselves captivated by this presentation of flight. Erp exam part 1 books.
(Indeed the potential of flight simulation to reach those that previously might not consider the pleasure or freedom of flight is something that the Royal Aeronautical Society is highlighting through its 'Falcon Initiative 2' project where school children will design and build specially adapted flight simulators for the UK's disabled flying charity Aerobility.)
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9) VR is coming
Aerobatics over Dubai - imagine this in virtual reality!
MSFS has also been released at a very exciting time in that it is set to take advantage of the second generation of VR devices such as the HP Reverb G2 that are set to be released this autumn. These feature a higher resolution than the original Oculus devices and thus are even more suited to flight simulation where complex displays are present. In particular the clouds, terrain, airports and cockpits of MSFS in virtual reality will take this already stunning simulator to breathtaking levels. Flight simulation fans already have been eager adopters of VR for sims such as DCS World, IL-2 and X-Plane, but so far VR has been missing a 'killer app' that rewards the cost and bulkiness of headsets. However, judging by the response to MSFS already, this well could be the software product that sends VR sales through the roof as it is likely (providing ones' PC is powerful enough) to provide an unmatched sense of immersion.
10) A taste of the freedom of flight
Pyramids at dusk - MSFS reminds us what many of of us took for granted - the freedom to travel and explore our world.
Finally, there is also the fact that MSFS comes at a time when much of the world is restricted from travel, especially internationally. Holidays have been on hold and people have been yearning for a taste of the freedom of flight that is now denied. Indeed, whether it is jumping in a Piper Cub to fly around a local area, or staring out of the window of an airliner on your way to your holidays, both experiences tap into the freedom to travel and escape that flight provides. MSFS then, does not replace actual travel, but for millions of us it does remind us of what we are missing. Virtual aerial tourism around the globe thus provides a powerful stimulant for our craving for travel and also provides people with fresh new ideas for holiday destinations and visits once they can take to the skies again.
In summary, then MSFS (or FS2020) is a landmark for PC flight simulation and video games and something that is right at the start of a very exciting journey. In these dark times, it also has the ability to excite and create a wonder about flight that could well inspire a whole new generation into learning more about aerospace and aviation. The technology – drawn from AI, satellite and aerial photos also has other applications across aerospace and beyond.