Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024: Adding gliders, bush planes and pre-flight planning

Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 is so sophisticated as a simulation that its leaders say it is the most realistic flight simulator ever created and that the virtual world is like a digital twin of the whole Earth.

The detail in the 2024 version is also 4,000 times more dense than the 2020 version, and the entire game is computed in the cloud and then downloaded in real time to player’s computers and game consoles. That gave the team plenty of room for expansion, and that’s how the new version has gliders, bush planes and even pre-flight planning to add to the realism and versatility of flight.

I recently joined the Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 leaders at a briefing at the Grand Canyon, where we flew a jet and played a preview of the game, which comes out on November 19, 2024.

As part of the presentation. I was paired with game journalist Samuel Stone of Den of Geeks for an interview with Brandon Yaeger and Christopher Burnett, who both led teams that were part of something like 800 people who worked on the project over as much as four years. Yaeger is founder and project lead at Got Friends, while Burnett is cofounder of Working Title Simulations.

As developers, they and their teams had to pore over the details, like getting the paint schemes right on bush planes, finding all of the glider airports in the world (2,077), and calculating how much fuel was needed for a flight plan to a distant airport. They even had to collect as much (forensic) detail about Mike Fahey’s Draco X bush plane, which the pilot crashed in 2019.

Here’s an edited transcript of our interview.

GamesBeat: Can you give a quick summary of what gliders could do in 2020 versus 2024?

Brandon Yaeger: Obviously in 2024 the aerodynamics and flight dynamics are so much more detailed. When you have something as intimate as a glider, where it really does focus on the weather and every little bit of lift matters, it truly makes a significant difference to the flight model. Gliders in 2024 are some of the most realistic gliders I’ve been able to personally field in a long time. They’ve done a fantastic job.

Working with us, as the glider developer we’ve been able to do a lot of innovation on that side. Bringing the new navigation unit, making sure we stay true to conventional means like winching and towing. It’s awesome to see all those custom winch vehicles. It’s really cool. Gliding was kind of a niche in 2020. I hope that all the advancements in 2024 bring it more into the limelight, because it truly does make the pilot experience flight in such a raw form. A lot of countries use gliding as your initial introduction to flying. I love to see it coming to 2024 in a similar manner. I’m excited to see people get their hands on it.

Samuel Stone: Flight Simulator has always used a wealth of real-world data. Having access to all that data – environmental conditions, weather conditions, geographic conditions, the physics engine – how do you take all that and make it work for gliders and bush planes?

Yaeger: I’d like to talk about bush planes first, because it’s crazy. The amount of ground detail we get in 2024 is huge. Specifically with bush planes, once again, another aircraft where you’re very intimate with the ground–you’re not just landing on a runway. You’re landing on a grass strip or some patches of mud or even a little riverbank. It’s nice to see that change between 2020 and 2024, where a stick does matter. Hitting a rock does matter.

Not only for realism–you need to make sure that airfield is clear before you attempt the landing, because you’re going to damage your landing gear. It’s a nice repetition tool in that way. But it’s also just a nice thing to have in the simulation. Your landing technique does matter. It’s not just landing on a flat piece of mesh anymore. You’re truly landing on the world, as close as possible to a digital twin.

With weather, for the gliders, obviously we have big increases with that. Not just the flight dynamics, but weather and all this other stuff that plays a huge role in gliding. Just the fact that the mountains and the ground detail are so much more accurate. That helps with ridge lift and all these other models that work off that for the CFD as well.

Stone: What has it been like working with Asobo Studio to bring the aircraft in 2024 to life?

Christopher Burnett: We work very closely with both the team at Microsoft and Asobo. It’s great. I don’t have anything negative to say about it. They’ve been super collaborative. The relationship with Microsoft is definitely one of collaboration. They come to us. “What should we be doing? What should we think about?” When we started talking about 2024–it’s a unique relationship in that way. They recognize our subject matter expertise.

Jorg talked about that in their presentation. They wanted to bring in more people. Trying to do something at this scale required 800 people, not 200 people. Bringing experts together has been important. But certainly we work with Asobo all the time as well. They’re a fantastic group to work with. I see the collaboration every day between our team members and their team members, working out issues, particularly with the flight planning. The EFB is a collaborative project. They’ve done a bunch of work on the EFB. We’ve done a bunch of work as well. That only works if we can work closely and put those pieces together.

GamesBeat: You talked about pre-flight planning. Is there a particular loop of fun in that? I suppose you could really mess up your flight if you do that wrong.

Burnett: In the real world it’s always an important part of planning your flight. The good news is you’re in a sim, so you can’t really hurt yourself. Hopefully that helps you learn if you get it wrong. It’s meant to help you figure out–hey, I want to fly from here to here. How much fuel do I need? How much weight can I take? Those are the kinds of things where it does those calculations for you. It should simplify that.

Simmers have used tools outside the sim to do that before. If you try to take a flight in 2020 and just plan it on the world map, it can be hard to determine how much fuel you might need, especially taking the winds and weather into account. We try to close that gap. The flight planning, you can do it outside the sim in a web browser, a phone, or a tablet, and then it’s available in the sim to import into your avionics. That’s a cool process. We like it a lot.

GamesBeat: The Vision plane we flew today seemed like it automated so much of this. I imagine these planes now do a lot of that work for you. With older planes that are also simulated accurately, does it get harder to do all the pre-flight work?

Burnett: It’s still the same process in terms of the pre-flight planning. The planning engine will have a performance profile for the aircraft. It’ll know how the plane behaves, how much fuel you’ll need. But you’re absolutely right. When you get into an older aircraft with less advanced avionics, you’re going to be faced with a situation where you don’t have a G3000 or G1000 to copy your flight plan over. You’ll have to fly it.

The EFB really helps with that, because you can track your progress. You have your plan now, right here in the EFB. You have the VFR maps, IFR maps, the charts in the EFB as well. You can just follow along. Then it’s up to the simmer. Do they want to pretend like it’s 1960 and not use that at all, just use VORs and dead reckoning? Or do they want to “cheat” and use the map and just follow along? Either one works.

Yaeger: That’s what I’m enjoying about 2024. All the new tools, there is structure and fun to it, like careers, but they’re also adding new things that just turn it into a bigger sandbox than it was before. There’s a lot of fun to be created by the user, but there’s also now just a ton of fun to be created by the simulation as well.

Stone: Every aircraft has its own charm, its own beauty and attention to detail. Let’s talk about the Draco X. That’s one of the flashiest, coolest aircraft you get to control in 2024. What was it like mapping that into the experience?

Yaeger: It’s kind of a crazy story. If you’re not aware, Mike Patey did crash his original Draco in 2019. Unfortunately most of that data is just gone. We’ve been working hard with Mike. He’s been thinking about the Draco X, collecting pieces and parts. He’s even bought a Wilga 2000 that he’s going to convert into the final Draco X. But it’s still just a visionary project at this point. He’s a wonderful innovator. Tons of ideas. Working with him has been a unique experience. Not only are we creating his vision of what he wants in the future, but we’re experimenting as well.

We’ve been able to experiment with the airframe, relaying some information back to him. He’s been able to relay information back to us, like how the shocks should be inline shocks. We test it in the game. With all the new advancements we can see that it does actually improve. There’s this weird cohesiveness there which is really cool to see. It’s almost like he’s innovating with the Flight Simulator as well as within his own work.

Recently we’ve been making changes with the paint scheme or the livery on it. Of course we’ve been going back and forth with him. He says, “Is it really that easy? Can you change these colors so I can see how it looks?” Yeah, we can. Here’s what we think this will look like. It’s been an awesome experience working with Mike. As far as the data points on that, he does have a ton of data that we’ve been able to collect. It’s still based on a Wilga 2000 frame, so there’s tons of data out there to gather. Also, once again, it’s another turbine engine, the PT6A-140. We have data for that.

When we mash it all together, that’s where the simulator really shines. You can put a power plant on an airframe and it maps so well around them that you truly can get the flight dynamics and the feel for it. Then you add that extra layer of coding and accuracy. It becomes a great montage at the very end of it all.

GamesBeat: With a glider, in theory you can land anywhere. How do you pick a place to land?

Yaeger: Gliders are known for that. Once again, very intimate with the ground level. With gliders, too, a lot of them–the gliders we’re developing for Flight Sim are double wheelbase, so they won’t tip on their wings. But a lot of gliders just have skids on the wings. You’re not landing on asphalt runways, because you’ll scratch your wings up. It can be damaging if you land wrong. They’re kind of an outcrop landing aircraft.

You definitely want to plan before you get in the air in a glider without an engine. Most people know where they’ll end up – unlike bush aircraft, where you say, “Well, I want to end up right around there.” With gliders you should plan out where you’re going. But that’s why the ground detail is so exciting for gliders. You don’t want to scuff up your glider. You want to land on a nice soft patch. It’s really cool seeing the grass change as you’re coming in for a landing.

Stone: Flight Simulator is more than 40 years old now. What is it like to contribute to this ongoing legacy?

Yaeger: It’s a dream, to be honest. I never thought I’d come here and work. This is just a hobby to me, doing some freeware with my friends. Now I’m working on the most fantastic simulator of my age. It’s wonderful.

Burnett: It’s been a great experience. I can’t remember if I told you this, or it was another interview, but I’ve been using Flight Sim since Flight Sim 4, the early ‘90s. I’ve been there for the ride all along. When the announcement for 2020 came out, it was amazing. This is going to be, knock on wood, even more amazing. It’s not something I ever imagined I’d be doing. Total fairy tale.

Stone: Coming from a fan perspective, there was a big gap between–was it 2006 or 2007? And then 2020. What is it about this resurgence that Flight Simulator has had? Finding that 15 million user audience. What makes this second wind distinct?

Burnett: I think some of it has to do with fidelity in general. The quality of game graphics, just the progression of technology from that time to now–the expectations were so much higher for the visual fidelity of the simulation. 2020 met those expectations. That pulled a lot of people in. We think that maybe a third of that group are the core simmers, the people who love aviation. They get into the sim. But then this whole bigger group is new and accelerating, people who didn’t start with a passion for aviation. Maybe this creates that passion.

Because of the digital twin element, there’s so much more to do. Even in FSX, but certainly if you go back further, the world is a handful of polygons. It wasn’t great. If you weren’t into flying, there was nothing else to do. It sounds funny, but I’m excited to go up in the balloons and airships. I haven’t tested that out. But just floating around and seeing stuff, because the fidelity is so amazing. To me, that’s what pulls people in.

Also, the cross-platform play. Being available on the Xbox platform certainly helps. That infrastructure lets people try it out and see if it’s something they think it’s cool. There’s a lot of democratizing going on around Flight Sim because it’s more accessible.

Yaeger: Just the increase in technology in the last few years, that’s what takes 2020 to 2024. It’s incredible that it’s advanced to such a degree. The ground level is 4,000 times higher in detail. It’s crazy to me. I’m a fan just like you guys. When I see that kind of thing, it’s incredible.

Disclosure: Microsoft paid my way to the Grand Canyon.