Microsoft Flight Simulator is one of the most advanced and beautiful flight simulators released in early 2020. Its advancedness is reflected in the ability to visit the entire world: every continent, airport, city, river and even forest with extraordinary details and realistic environments.
Game development
The development of the video game itself was not at all simple. Namely, Microsoft's flight simulator generates its terrain from a collected database of satellite photos and with the help of photos taken from the air. The "virtual world" itself is stored on Microsoft's servers and contains over two petabytes of data.
However, such a large amount of data was not enough to create a living world. With the help of artificial intelligence (AI) and partnership with Blackshark.ai and Asobo Studio; Microsoft has successfully created a vividly convincing and photo-realistic world that even includes cars, dynamic weather changes and convincing graphics, as well as realistic rendering of details.
You might be wondering how many gigabytes this game contains? At the time of writing, two things are required to download the game: 200 gigabytes of disk space and a solid internet connection. Therefore, Microsoft's flight simulator actively downloads the entire "terrain" from the server and provides the user with the ability to "travel" through space.
Where would you go first?
Upon the launch of the game, players had unlimited freedom to travel wherever they wanted - whether it was the Grand Canyon, Paris, Rome or Antarctica. However, what is somewhat not surprising is the fact that 75% of players on their first flight, bearing in mind that they have all the freedom to go wherever they want, went nowhere else but to "their home".
So, after taking off from Golubovci airport for the first time, I made a sharp turn to the right and headed towards Podgorica - to see how it was presented in the game.
The first emotion is definitely euphoria - the possibility of flying over your city. With photo-realistic textures spread across the city, the game looks convincing. But as they say, the devil is in the details. At first glance it looks spectacular, but as we get closer and closer to Podgorica, it is not difficult not to notice some minor flaws. One of them is that the current version of the game does not have the Millennium Bridge. In addition, all buildings are not completely identical as in reality.
Do we need to vaccinate?
Although the game itself strives for realism, we have to forgive it if some detail is missing and look at the bigger picture. It is not entirely possible that every building and every tree is copied as it is in real life. The reason for this is very simple. In order for Podgorica, as an example, to be replicated identically, a team of designers is necessary to refine the details "by hand".
I think that this is an excellent simulation and despite these flaws, it offers countless possibilities from the physics itself to communication with the control tower, the range of planes and other aircraft and the possibilities provided by AI.
A little further south, I also visited Tivat Airport, which also offers an unforgettable landscape.
Help is on the way
The development of this game is not only based on Microsoft and partner companies, but also on users who voluntarily modify parts of the game to beautify, improve, etc. We call them modders and they are certainly present in Microsoft's flight simulator.
Players have the option to download the "edited" version of Podgorica and thus complete the realistic representation. Admittedly, some of the "add-on" packages are free, while some can be purchased. In my opinion, they certainly look better and the price itself is completely correct.
You can play Microsoft's flight simulator on XBOX and PC devices, and it is also available on Game Pass.
Bonus video:
