Head of Microsoft Flight Simulator Jorg Neumann talks about the tech behind MSFS 2020, and some astonishing-sounding features coming in Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024.
www.pcgamer.com
Given all the data involved, MSFS 2020 has a substantial install size. I wondered aloud if there were any plans to attempt to shrink that down in future versions:
"In 2020, the initial install is 130 GB. Then we have 17 world updates. If you calculate it up, we're at 500 GB. And then there are 5,000 add ons that people have made, which I think are two terabytes. So if you really want to get all this stuff, it's a pretty big install.
"So for Flight Simulator 2024, we've changed all that. 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."
"This is all 2024 talk—we made every airport look much better. We added every glider airport. We added every oil rig. We added every lighthouse. It feels like whatever comes to your mind you can actually do now, if you embrace the cloud.
"The way I think of this now, it really just comes down to, how good is the data we get, and how much are we throwing at it. I mean, for example, I'm currently on the, I call it the living world. We added hundreds of species of animals that run around. I worked on things like Zoo Tycoon…we have tons more animals than the native zoo game, and it's just a tiny little feature in Flight Simulator, but it feels like, oh yeah, we can do that.
Right now, we have every ship on Earth, right? Every ship on Earth sends us a transponder signal… you can land on every ship, and it looks like a first person shooter environment. I think we're in a new era of making games that I think are going to break new ground, from a scale and complexity perspective."
And it doesn't stop there. For example, in MSFS 2024, you're no longer limited to experiencing the Earth's "digital twin" from the skies alone:
"You can now exit the plane, walk around, in 2024. 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.