First announced at the 2023 Xbox Games Showcase, Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 will include career mode-style quests, from aerial firefighting and search-and-rescue missions to cropdusting and cargo transport. If that wasn’t enough, players will be able to get out of their planes to explore the world on foot.
In an interview with PC Gamer, Jorge Neumann, the Head of Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024, detailed the new feature coming to the game when it releases this November.
“You can now exit the plane, walk around, in 2024,” Neumann said. “You can literally walk your favorite mountain path to your favorite hut in the mountains. Sit on the lake. See the sunset. It is truly a digital twin you can absorb.
I think everybody has their own sort of emotional place… when MSFS 2020 came out, everybody flew to their house, and then the house where they were born, and then the houses where their friends are, their family. I’m very curious to see where people fly, because we improved the world so much in 2024 that it’s worth revisiting, and there’s some features we haven’t talked about yet that I think are going to make that fascinating.”
The 2024 release will include an improved physics engine with smoother flight dynamics, multithreading for better performance, and improved electrical, pneumatic, fuel, and hydraulic aircraft systems and avionics. Additionally, the game will take up much less space than the 2020 release.
“[For Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024] we basically went for a thin client architecture, and we’re not done yet. We’re shipping in November, but we think we’re going to be…I’d say 50 GB or less, but with tons more data, because we are offloading more to the cloud,” Neumann explained.
Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 will be released on November 19, 2024 for PC and Xbox Series X/S.
