Before we move on, a few notes. I know it’s a bit of a big intro but please, bear with me and do read on because it is important, and I will tell you where to get more stuff that I wasn’t able to ask or won’t cover in this article as I am trying to keep it as related to helicopters as possible – even if I do cover some general areas of the sim, of course.
During the Global Preview Event for MSFS 2024, we were assigned some slots to interview a few key elements (more on this later). Those time slots were not extensive, and we were assigned in pairs, meaning that 2 of us would be in the room asking questions, which cut things even shorter for us.
This means that we couldn’t possibly fit all the questions we would like to ask in the timeslot provided. It would be hard even if we did have the full slot.
Knowing this, I thought about a compromise, on one hand, and, on the other hand, I got very, very lucky.
A few days ago, I asked the Helicopter Flight Simulation community for questions about MSFS2024. Folks didn’t know back then, but I was getting ready to head out to the Grand Canyon for the MSFS 2024 Global Preview Event, where Microsoft and Asobo would present the sim to media outlets and journalists and allow us to try the sim.
I knew we would be limited by time so I would have to make some tough choices. Some of the questions asked were about VR, which is perfectly relevant to the helicopter flight simulation world, but I found out my good friend, Jose (theVRpilot) was going to be there, and I knew he would cover that matter so I told him to just do his thing and I would nudge people his way. Therefore, you will find no remarks about VR in this article as Jose will be doing the honors.
You can find his thoughts here.
Now about the lucky part: I was paired with no other than the amazing Calum Martin of FSElite, with which I am also good friends. I have known Calum for a long time and we always got along very well.
Knowing this, we decided to split the interview time between each other. One of us would do the first half, the other one the second half and we alternated between who went first.
You may find some repeated information here and on FSElite as well, but I think we can provide different perspectives on the same topic, which may be interesting to you. The bottom line is that both FSElite and I can give you more content because we worked together. Add Jose’s focus on VR, and we pretty much have a sort of a 3-in-1 for you today.
You can find FSElite’s article here and here (please give it a few minutes if you are reading this article as soon as it was published).
I highly recommend you check out that content as well.
All right, apologies for the long intro but I didn’t want you to miss all the information we managed to pull from these events, as a team.
One last note: the amount of information we were provided with is insane. Really, it’s a lot. I will cover only the things I find relevant for the helicopter flight simulation community and that will still make this a very long article. But what I want you to understand is that if helicopters are not your thing or if you are looking for other types of information (related to gliders, airliners, or other types of aircraft) do not assume there’s nothing for you in MSFS 2024. I am just not covering that in this article (or this website).
I have also added this table of contents so you can jump anywhere or send a link to a specific area to a friend, post on a forum, etc. Hopefully, this will help you, friends, and the community, to pass on any information you find relevant.
- The event
- My initial expectations
- The interviews
- Hands-on
- The importance of partnerships and the power of community
- My thoughts
All ready? Buckle up! We're not covering everything, but we are covering a lot.
The event
Just like back in 2019 when Microsoft did it for MSFS2020, Microsoft recently organized an event to introduce MSFS 2024 to content creators, media outlets, and journalists.
The event took place at the Grand Canyon, and we were not only able to go through a very nice presentation showing a lot (not all of it) of what MSFS 2024 brings that is new, but we also got to interview some of the team members and, yes, get our hands on the sim.
It was a full day with a few more activities, lunch, and a nice gathering at the end where we could exchange some thoughts with other of the invitees and hang around with the development, marketing, and PR teams.
My initial expectations
For those that don’t know me well, I’m a skeptical guy. I tend to keep my expectations low until I actually see something happening.
Back in 2019, I was really skeptical about what kind of product MSFS would be. And I was blown away back then.
Still, even if I got excited about MSFS2024 and the features presented at FlightSimExpo, I wasn’t sure about what we were about to see. Could it really be that much better than what it was at FlightSimExpo? Were they holding back somehow? Could it be better? What we saw back in June was already pretty good – and it even justifies a new version. So… What gives?
The interviews
We were able to interview 5 people in 4 different rooms. As I said in the beginning, we had to do this in pairs, so me and Calum headed out to meet some distinguished interviewees:
- Jorg Neumann, Head of Microsoft Flight Simulator
- Sebastian Wloch, CEO and Co-founder of Asobo Studio
- David Dedeine, CCO of Asobo Studio
- Christopher Burnett, Co-founder of Working Title Simulations, and Brandon Yaeger, Founder and Project Lead at Got Friends
I will not transcribe the interviews directly here, but I will rather use the information provided – and quotes where relevant – to paint you a picture of what MSFS 2024 will be.
The presentation
We started with a presentation where we went through an overview of the success of Microsoft Flight Simulator. It is impressive when we see MSFS reached 15 million users and over 1 billion flights were made, with around 30% of that number of flights (300.000) being made during the last 12 months.
We have been receiving update after update, the sim has been improving on many aspects, and, going forth, these advances seem to be even bigger.
A lot of these updates were made thanks to a few partnerships, that brought us improved regions of the world and aircraft, for example, as Asobo took care of the base sim. A strategy that seems to be working as teams can focus on what they do well and without any distractions.
Four main editions and new helicopters
Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 will be available in 4 editions: Standard, Deluxe, Premium Deluxe, and Aviator. As with MSFS2020 that will mean it will bring different content: aircraft and airports.
The Standard edition will come with 70 aircraft and 150 upgraded airports. You read it right. SEVENTY, of which 29 are new. With it, we will get the Bell 407 and the Cabri G2, which are part of the lineup of MSFS 2020, and 3 new helicopters: the H125 (by Asobo Studios), the R66 and the S-64F Skycrane (by Blackbird Simulations), which we already saw some some videos and an autogyro: the MagniGyro M-24 Orion (by BlueMesh).
The Deluxe edition will bring 10 more aircraft (but, sadly, no more helicopters) and 5 more upgraded airports, raising the total to 80 aircraft and 155 upgraded airports.
The Premium Deluxe version will add 15 more aircraft, 2 of which helicopters: the H225, by Hype Performance Group, and the CH-47 Chinook, again, by Blackbird Simulations. It will also bring 5 more upgraded airports, making it a total of 95 aircraft and 160 upgraded airports.
And, finally, there will be a special Aviator edition, with 30 MSFS 2020 payware aircraft, for a grand total of 125 aircraft and 160 upgraded airports.
So, in total, and depending on the version, we will get up to 6 default helicopters and 1 autogyro. But, even if you just get the Standard version, you will get away with 4 helicopters and the autogyro as well.
But you know you want the H225 and the CH-47, right? I’m looking at you, Bel Geode!
“But wait, there’s more!”
There is also a physical, edition that Microsoft seems to call the Steelbook.
Does it have helipads?
Microsoft just ruined the community joke, folks.
After many years of investigating the very secretive world of helipad databases, Microsoft managed to populate the world with helipads. This is not an easy task, mind you. While it is true that some countries have well-maintained databases with helipad locations, others don’t. In the US, for example, there are helipads marked as such in places that no longer have them for years because anyone could register their front porch as a helipad but the database was never updated and those old ones were removed.
And then there are places where the information just doesn’t exist.
But yet, Microsoft went for it and added thousands of helipads worldwide. Just look at the map below.
“Does it have helip…”. Ah, nevermind. It does.
MSFS2024 is rigged!
You heard it right. Microsoft rigged MSFS2024.
It’s a good kind of rigged, though! Microsoft also has a good database of oil rigs, and those structures are now added into the sim, natively.
Is anyone up for flying some rig crews to oil rigs on the spanking new H225 that comes with the Premium Deluxe Edition?
Just look at all those oil rigs to land on!
Boats, boats, boats!
Microsoft is adding to the livelihood of the planet with real-time ship traffic. You will be able to find container ships, trawlers, cruise ships, and all sorts of interesting maritime traffic. And, as we could see on the official trailer, it looks like we may need to rescue some sailors in distress!
Trains, trains, trains?
Trains are awesome to watch running down the tracks and following them around – especially in a helicopter – but we haven’t heard about them so far. Members of our community were also curious about them, so I asked Jorg if we were to see them in the sim.
“Trains are not an internationally standardized thing. It's the first thing you need to know. If you want to do it right, then you need to get the train tracks right, the widths as you probably know, and then you need to get all the tunnels right.”
This was quite interesting to hear. The level of detail Jorg was getting into here was quite astonishing. If you asked me what would take for a company to add trains to a flight simulator, I would say you’d just need to throw some tracks on the right position and add some trains running through them at realistic schedules. Realistic trains. The actual models, and you’d be all set.
That, in my opinion, would be enough to make it a believable world. Especially since this is a flight simulator, right?
I do realize there are different track widths, but to actually consider it when integrating trains into a flight simulator? Honestly, I was impressed by that level of detail.
Jorg continued: “It's not impossible to do if the train sim guys call us and say, "Hey, we want to integrate train sims into flight sims". I would say, "Okay, you know your stuff. That sounds great." For us to do a great job for train sims, I think it would be a big endeavor. Right now, I still don't feel comfortable. Even though I put the little thing in the trailer, I couldn't resist the banner that says, "The sky's not the limit."
That's just to say, we have an open mind.
It doesn't mean we're good at it. I think we need to be good at something because the one thing I don't want to do is make something half-hazard.
We're trying to reach a certain level of sophistication. I think we owe that to the community.
We get the flight simming component of it all correct. If I hear one more time, "This flight model isn't any good," I'm going to keep trying again and again until we have it right, and everybody says so.
I just don't really feel like the team should go off track at this point.
There might be a point in time, but this is not the point in time. Like right now, we're launching ten weeks out, not much time. We'll learn, we'll listen, we'll get feedback, we've got stuff wrong, I guarantee it. I think that is where we should spend our next few years before we even entertain something else.”
So no, folks, I am sorry, we are not having trains just yet. But hearing everything Jorg had to say about the matter, I think I want the sim to have them even more because if that level of detail is added to it, it will be something beautiful to see.
Technical improvements
Microsoft Flight Simulator is a technological wonder. It may not feel that way for some of you because of issues, bugs, and whatnot, but the truth is that the complexity of the sim, with all its different pieces, is nothing short of amazing.
All the different systems, modules, services, and everything that makes MSFS what it is, are highly complex, very technologically advanced, and something that I geek out hearing about. Especially when talking to Sebastian Wloch. Between his presentation and the few minutes I got to talk to him, I learned more about the technology, the advances, and what we can expect, as final users, from MSFS 2024.
Thin Client
Asobo worked hard to make things easier for us by developing the sim around the concept of Thin Client. But I find this name to be deceptive.
You see, a Thin Client is usually “a simple (low-performance) computer that has been optimized for establishing a remote connection with a server-based computing environment. They are sometimes known as network computers, or in their simplest form as zero clients. The server does most of the work, which can include launching software programs, performing calculations, and storing data. This contrasts with a rich client or a conventional personal computer; the former is also intended for working in a client–server model but has significant local processing power, while the latter aims to perform its function mostly locally.” [source].
In the case of MSFS 2024, what Microsoft has done is to have us install the basic sim (which should take around 5 minutes), and then the sim downloads only what we use.
Do you want to fly the Cabri G2? It will download it. You want to change the livery to a new one you haven’t used before. Yep, it will fetch it. The airport? Region of the world? Is there a Sim Update or a World Update? It will only download what needs to be downloaded when it needs to be downloaded.
And then it stores it in the rolling cache for future use.
What this does is not only create a much quicker installation process, but the sim also loads faster. The amount of space used in our drives has been reduced and even the bandwidth used is less than what we use currently.
“Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait”, I can hear some of you say. “If we’re downloading more stuff, aren’t we using more bandwidth?”
Well, that’s because we are not installing all the stuff we need to install now. We just download the aircraft, liveries, airports, etc. when we need to use it and it gets stored in the rolling cache so it’s not necessary to download it again the next time we want to use it.
The compression algorithms are also being updated to improve performance and file size, which should help with downloading times as well.
Less disk space, less bandwidth, faster loading times.
But what if the connection to the server goes down? Sebastian told us that they are “[…] trying to have that never happen. But if it happens, you get all the information you need”, and they will do that by “elegantly handling if some server is down so that you know what's going on, how long it's going to take”.
I have to say that I do worry about this. As much as developers and IT crews mean well, things can still go wrong. I love the concept of MSFS having a leaner footprint on our computers and downloading only what we need.
I uninstalled most of the fixed-wing aircraft in MSFS and the reason I didn’t uninstall all of them was purely because it was an hassle to do so. Having them not be installed in the first place is a big plus for me. But not being able to get default aircraft because of connection issues is a huge bummer. Hopefully, there will be a good strategy to mitigate these issues. Less stuff to download and an optimized compression algorithm are a great start, though.
Aerodynamics
This is one of the most important aspects for a lot of us which is relevant to the flight dynamics and how an aircraft flies.
Sebastian told us about the increased amount of surfaces that are now present on aircraft, which are 5 times more than in MSFS 2020, with portions being able to be as small as 10 centimeters (~3.9in) and as big as 1 meter (~39in).
The CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics) engine, which calculates how the air flows and how it interacts with surfaces (and vice-versa), was improved, being now multi-threaded [a note: out of curiosity, the CFD was developed for helicopters but the technology was later expanded to be used by all aircraft in the sim]. Oh, and by the way, there is no limit on the number of cores MSFS 2024 will use. Do you have a CPU with 30 cores? Yep, MSFS 2024 will make good use of them.
This means there is potentially more that the CFD algorithm can do, which should result in better physics and flows calculations. Add that to the fact that we will now have fuselages being broken into more pieces, and it should be very interesting. Unfortunately, I did not have enough hands-on time to full grasp the differences, but they are there. And that actually threw me off a bit when I tried the sim.
Multicore CPUs have started to become increasingly important. And flight dynamics, in general – and for helicopters in particular – should be vastly improved. Even more so with the inclusion of the ability to use complex model shapes, something that was quite limited in MSFS 2020.
Back at FlightSimExpo, Sebastian showed a small clip of wake turbulence, and he mentioned it again. It also benefits from multithreading and has no impact on performance it’s something all aircraft have, and it can last up to 8 minutes so make sure you pay attention to where you are flying and try to avoid wake turbulence in general, especially from the big aircraft!
Atmospheric airflow was also improved, with better calculations for updrafts, turbulence, and wind shear.
Sebastian moved on to talk about soft body simulation. How they have created a way to show realistic balloons, which inflate and deflate and are subject to pressure. Banners, which is something we already saw on the MSFS trailers, can also be made using the new engine but also things such as parachutes (and yes, even ones that are present in the Cirrus aircraft, for example) and pitot flags.
No, I’m not joking. According to Sebastian, you can even judge the wind by looking at those now.
Turbine helicopters
One of the things developers ask me the most is about turbine helicopters. The template they have to work with is for a piston helicopter and there are some issues with turbine helicopters in general. Sebastian told me that Asobo now has “another physics engineer who worked a lot on turbine. And there's also the transmission. And there's the […] governor. We have another physics engineer who is much more specialized on turbines than me. So, I did a lot of work on the clutch and the piston, and the Cabri […]. But the turbines, someone else took that over”.
It looks like good news and, hopefully, if this is still not a perfect implementation, it will be a great first step towards it and Asobo will be able to get feedback from developers and use it to further improve things for helicopters.
Helicopter autopilot
Ladies and gentlemen, it’s coming. Sebastian Wloch developed autopilots for helicopters – which are being used by the AI and we can actually see it in action on the trailers that have been released.
But here’s the catch: the autopilot does not have navigation implemented. The systems to control the helicopter are there. The autopilot can hover the helicopter, it can move in any direction, and it can do altitude control by using the collective and speed by changing the pitch or do the opposite: altitude control by using pitch and speed by using the collective.
I can hear some of you saying, “What’s the point, then?”. I hear you. And, in a way, I agree with you, and I get why you are asking that. I would love to see a default autopilot on one of the default helicopters, even if it was a simple one.
But the fact is that we have something usable right now, where developers can tap into, and implement their navigation system.
Starting from a parking position, with the engines running
Once again, I reminded Sebastian about the fact that it would be very handy to start from a parking position with the engines running.
Let’s be honest: sometimes we don’t want to occupy a runway, and we don’t want to go through the start-up process. Having the ability to start from a parking spot and immediately take off would be great.
Sebastian confirmed that the feature is actually implemented in the sim as he uses it all the time for testing purposes, so it’s a matter of having it added to the UI.
Ground effect – and grid helipads
Sebastian and I had talked at a past event about helipads with grids and how that affects the ground effect. It is something he will look into since it’s not hard to implement, but it is not part of the build yet.
But Sebastian said that it would be easy for him to “get a grid material and just ignore it. That's easy”. However, the implementation needs to be a bit different because a grid doesn’t let all the air flow through it. There’s always a percentage that doesn’t. So the approach may be to actually cheat by “moving the ground lower, like one foot, two foot, three feet, something like this”.
That should do the trick. Hopefully, it will be in the sim before the release, especially since we now have a whole bunch of oil rigs to land on and a lot of them use grid surfaces!
Sebastian also told us that there were issues with the CFD and platforms as when the helicopter exited the platform, things weren’t “working that well”, so the team now fixed it.
Ground and scenery
Asobo has also been working on a better world in general, with scenery/the ground seeing vast improvements. According to Sebastian Wloch, the ground is now 4 thousand times more complex, meaning it can have up to 4,000 times the number of polygons. And with the use of displacement maps, to add rocks, grass, and bumps, things can get really interesting at ground level.
Top left: previous ground detail. Top right: current ground detail. Note the amount of polygons that are now possible to show and how much more complex the ground is.
This has an impact on friction, take-off distances, and how you approach your landings when flying outside airports.
That cool helipad in the wild? You now have to scout it before putting your skids (or wheels if that’s your thing) on the ground. Oh yes, just like in real life. You don’t want to slide down a slope or damage something.
Speaking of damaging something, there are new and improved systems that may get damaged by rough ground operations or landings.
Sebastian has told us about new and improved systems which now include a payload and passenger system as well as a wear and tear system, for example.
Another cool thing is the fact that aircraft can now leave marks on the ground/snow/grass. In the top image, you can see the marks of the wheels on the snow and in the image below, you can see the effect of rolling through grass.
Particle effects
Asobo reworked the particle effects, especially the particle dynamics, which will be responsible for showing dust and sand being affected by wind – and rotor wash.
The new system works and looks fantastic already making brown and whiteouts much better and more realistic. I was impressed with what they showed us and Sebastian said that the system is not even finished.
“They don't spin yet. But they will take the spin of the vortex. So, it's going to look even better, right? Right now, it was OK. I was happy to have it. But the spin is going to be a very important effect”. And it will make things look even better and more realistic.
Walk around (and the importance it has)
One of the things we saw on the videos – and that Microsoft already told us it would be possible to do, is to walk around the aircraft and do all the pre-flight procedures.
As with the regular “cockpit checklist” we are used to, we can use the checklist to do what we need to do around the aircraft and, if something is missing, there may be consequences. Forget to take the pitot tube cover and you may not get a speed reading for example.
Keep that in mind!
Flight planning
Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 will include flight planning tools. Good tools, developed by Working Title Simulations, will stop most of us from having to rely on external software.
We will be able to plan all sorts of different flights from inside the sim and fly those plans. I know I am giving you a very quick and non-interesting description here but I didn’t dive too much into it myself. More on why, later.
(New) ways of flying
This section could also be titled: “OMG THEY HAVE TURNED MSFS INTO A GAME, NOT A SIM!!!”
Because having options is terrible.
Yes, I am being a passive-aggressive twat now. I’m usually just a twat. Now I am being passive-aggressive as well. Because we know, there will be people saying this, right?
We just know.
Free flight
All right, first of all, free flight, also known as “the stuff we have been doing so far” is still present. Don’t want to do the other stuff? Don’t. Leave it alone, and do your thing.
It’s really that simple.
I’ll go back to being a regular twat, now.
Career mode
This is probably one of the most exciting new features of the sim. At least for me and I know that it will for a lot of people out there that have been looking for ways to have engaging things to do in the sim.
There are good and bad things about it, in my opinion.
First of all, we will need to create our own character for this side of the sim. We will have to select a face, body, clothing, etc. (“OMG A CHARACTER??? MICROSOFT MADE THIS A GAME NOT A…” Awww, shut up, already. Yes, I lied. I am still acting like a passive-aggressive twat. But I will stop now, for real.
Once we create the character we will be able to select where to start our career. And by that I mean, anywhere in the world. Including your home town.
We will be transported to a hangar, where we will meet a manager and we will have to fly for a bit before progressing. And here’s where some things I didn’t like about it come into play. This first flight is made using a fixed-wing aircraft and we need to do it to move on.
After this first flight, we will then have to go through some certifications, that will eventually open up mission types for us. The first certification is for… Fixed-wing aircraft.
From there, we can get other certifications for different types of aircraft, number of engines, and mission types, which will open up all sorts of different jobs or missions.
These jobs are procedurally generated (meaning they are not scripted but created on the go) and they come and go. If you don’t pick up a customer to fly to a different location, that person won’t be there after some time, for example.
This ensures that we will always have something to do and that jobs will be different and in different locations.
As we progress through jobs, we will gain (or lose) reputation and virtual currency. Reputation gives us access to more difficult – and even some secret – jobs, and money will allow us to eventually purchase our aircraft and create our own company.
This is exactly what I see a lot of folks asking for.
Now, what I didn’t enjoy hearing about.
I don’t fly fixed-wing aircraft and the career mode, which is the way for us to access missions, forces me to do so, which is frustrating for me.
I told that to David Dedeine and he told me that I would “be frustrated maybe half an hour. […]” since that is about the time it takes to get through that first certification and then we can go into our certification path, and helicopters is right there.
The way the career system is built, forces you to go through that first certification to make sure that you know what you are doing. I can understand that. A lot of people get frustrated because they jump into an aircraft to do their stuff but they don’t even know how the basic things work.
But a lot of us are not exactly new and I definitely don’t feel like having to fly a fixed-wing aircraft to be able to do my helicopter flying.
I can appreciate what the goal is: ease people into flying, and then into particular aircraft or mission types. But this will mean that we will need to spend time in a process that, for a lot of us, will not teach anything that we don’t already know. Will I want to go through the process of getting certified to fight fires in a helicopter, for example? Perhaps. Perhaps I feel like I have something to learn in that area.
Do I want to have to go through the process of learning how to fly a helicopter? Not really.
And I definitely, positively don’t want to have to fly a fixed-wing aircraft before I can even do that.
I would prefer to have a way to unlock everything in career mode through one of the settings in the options, for example.
Challenge League
Something that is not new is challenges, but the way they are done now seems a bit more interesting since they seem to change more often. In a nutshell, check out the available missions, fly them, get some points, and see your name on a board.
For some, it will be a great way to brag about their flying skills. For others, it will be a way to challenge themselves.
World Photographer
I was really happy that this was added to the sim.
There are some photography challenges (not related to the Challenge League), where you will be given something to photograph.
Once you accept the photography challenge, you will be placed near the location of your subject so you can do your thing. Find whatever you need to photograph, enter photography mode (which will pause the sim), get your angle right, and take the photo.
The sim will then evaluate your photo. If you did everything right, you’ll be all set.
This can be as simple or as complicated as you want. Every photography challenge assigns 1 to 3 stars and there are 3 rules. You will get 1 star per rule to follow. So, things can be as easy as “photograph a mountain” or a bit more complex such as “photograph a mountain, during sunrise, with the sun on your back”.
David Dedeine called it a “chill way” to sim and I agree with him 100%. I can see myself doing this a lot.
In case you are wondering, we can select which aircraft to use, so we are not stuck with flying a specific aircraft for a specific challenge.
I think I will spend a lot of time doing this.
Another cool detail: if you are free flying (outside of the World Photographer mode) but you use Photography Mode (which is always available) and you end up photographing something from a World Photographer challenge, you will be assigned that challenge. Pretty cool.
The marketplace
I don’t want to go too deep into the marketplace but there are some interesting changes that I want to cover quickly and there’s something that we have been wondering about for a long time that I also want to touch, and I did ask Jorg about it.
Tryouts
The first thing that I want to cover regarding new features of the marketplace is tryouts.
With tryouts, developers can now set a trial for their products in which folks can give it a try, for free, for a given time.
Are you wondering if a certain addon is for you? Even if people tell you to get it? We all like different things and perhaps what is right for some, it’s not right for you.
If that addon has a trial period, you can try it out. Perhaps it was really good and you need to have it. Buy it! If not, you can always try another one!
I am wondering (and I didn’t remember to ask Jorg, I admit), though, if these trials will be reset per build. What happens if I try a product and I don’t like it, but after a few days or weeks we get a new version? What if that version adds something that I felt was missing or fixes an issue I found to be a deal-breaker for me? It would be great if we could try it again.
Rentals
Aside from the free trial, another cool we learned about is the fact that it will now be possible to rent add-ons from within the marketplace. Jorg told us he thinks, “People have different price resistances in their hearts when they say, "Do I really want to buy an airport?"” and that may just be true.
What if I am flying around the world and there’s an airport I’d like to use for a leg but I don’t want to pay just to be able to use it that one time? Or perhaps I want to explore a new area and there’s an airfield I could use for a few days, at a lower price. As Jorg puts it, “What if you can rent it for three days, and it's like a buck?”.
That’s a great way to improve the scenery, even temporarily for a certain goal.
And if you want to buy the addon after renting it, the amount you have paid for the rental will be deducted from the addon’s price! So, if a given addon costs US$20, you paid US$3 to rent it, and you decide to buy it, you can now get it for US$17 instead.
That’s good service.
Freeware
Something that we have been asking Microsoft for a long time is for the ability to have freeware in the marketplace.
“There is freeware.”, Jorg noticed, “You can get it right now. For example, the seafront simulation guys have their standard ship models. It's in there. It's free. You don't have to buy it. You just download it.”.
Jorg says to be “one of the biggest proponents of freeware” but he notices that “there are some things that we have some restrictions on, which have something to do with sharing.”.
Will we ever see a huge freeware collection in the marketplace? Perhaps. But it seems like this could be quite hard, mainly because of potential legal issues: “The lawyers, I've got to have to listen to them. They're there to protect us all”.
Hands-on
Now for the fun part.
Unfortunately, we didn’t have a lot of time to try the sim, and it wasn’t the perfect environment to do so, with well over 20 guys hammering the internet connection and using a test build that had an issue or two. Some of the things were still locked so we couldn’t use it but we managed to give it a go.
A new UI
The first thing that hit me was the new UI, which I wasn’t expecting. I like the new design a lot. It’s cleaner and simpler than the MSFS2020 one, so I found it less confusing. In an age where monitors are huge, having the main menu items grouped in a smaller area of the screen goes a long way as we don’t have to scan the whole monitor but just a smaller portion.
The UI was responsive and the visual feedback was quite nice as well.
Let’s fly
I tried some free flying in the Azores (a place I always use as testing grounds to check out the scenery as it’s usually a place easily overlooked). The scenery wasn’t perfect but it was nice.
I took off with the H125 and flew a couple of patterns, immediately noticing that the flight dynamics seemed quite different from what I was used to. I landed, tried the Cabri G2 instead and I could feel some differences. I can’t put my finger on it yet (I need more time in the sim – which unfortunately will probably only happen after the release), but there’s something different, that goes in line with what Sebastian said in the interview. Something did change.
I went back to the H125 and tried ETL and ground effect. I wasn’t very convinced with the ground effect, I have to say, but I believe there is a bug with that algorithm right now. I tried landing at a platform (one of the challenges) and got some weird behavior as well, which made me think something was not right. I talked to Sebastian about it and he said he would take a look at it.
I flew around a bit more, closer to the ground to see the interaction between the rotorwash and the grass. I have to say it’s pretty cool. Seeing the grass move as we approach the ground is so nice. Dust went off as well and I had a big grin on my face by this time.
I only got to fly the Cabri G2 and the H125 and I did some testing but I also wanted to check out the other modes. I started career mode but – very honestly – I didn’t want to fly the Cessna so I bailed out (hey, I’m not a fixed-wing guy).
Challenge League was fun but I did find the bug I told you about. The challenge had to do with precision landing, at a lighthouse. But every single time I was about to touch down, the helicopter was thrown upwards and to the front. No, it wasn’t IGE (In Ground Effect). At least not your usual IGE. It was something else as it was quite violent and propelled me out of the landing pad.
World Photographer, though, was where I found my calling for this session. I took a few cool photos and, as I said before, I can see myself doing a lot more of photography and accepting those challenges, to see more of the world – including new places. I hope Microsoft and Asobo add a ton of these over time but I would also love for the community to have the ability to make their challenges and share them in-game.
The same with any other type of mission, really. I would love to have a HeliSimmer.com mission set for our members and everyone else to check out and try.
I wish we had more time to try the sim but what I would like would be to be able to access it outside of the event so we could put it to its paces.
We had a little over an hour to give it a try which felt very, very short. Don’t get me wrong, I am nothing but honored that I was invited to the event and that I could be one of the first in the world, outside of Microsoft and Asobo, to test the sim. I am extremely grateful for that.
But I would like to be able to do more testing, get a closer look at some of the areas – eventually even… Sigh… Flying the dang Cessna so I can check out the missions (I suspect Microsoft and Asobo did that on purpose to force me to fly fixed-wing after being a pain in their behinds always asking about helicopter stuff).
The importance of partnerships and the power of community
I didn’t want to finish this article without mentioning this. I don’t want to get away too much with providing my thoughts on the actual product but I do need to address it and I will probably cover this more extensively in the future.
A lot of what makes Microsoft Flight Simulator what it is today has to do with the work Microsoft and Asobo are doing with partners such as Working Title Simulations, and Got Friends. Not just these 2 companies, of course, but a whole small army that is working to make MSFS a better sim. Be it developing new aircraft, improving scenery, making tools (such as the aforementioned flight planning tool), etc.
Partnerships help Asobo focus on the main sim and for other companies to add what they do best to the sim natively, with full support of both Microsoft and Asobo, making it a better and richer sim.
These companies usually come from a background where their members started as passionate flight simmers, got into developing for the sim they love, and, eventually, got so good at doing that that their work became part of the product they love. That we love.
So, to them, a big, a huge, thank you.
My thoughts
After seeing their presentation at FlightSimExpo 2024, and talking to Jorg and Sebastian, I started to get very excited about what MSFS2024 could bring to the table. And then, when I was invited to this Global Preview Event, I was wondering what could it be that they could have for us that could beat what they had talked about already.
So, yes, just like back in 2019, I was still skeptical, even if I wasn’t expecting anything bad. But I wasn’t expecting anything particularly spectacular either.
And, just like back in 2019, I saw what Microsoft and Asobo did and I believe I understand what they have done, where the product is going, and I realized that MSFS2024 is so much more than I expected and much more than we had seen Microsoft and Asobo show so far.
I was quite surprised by what we saw and experienced. We knew we were going to have missions but we didn’t know about the complexity behind it. The new Challenge League is very interesting, and the World Photographer mode, for me, is a fantastic excuse to explore the world even more.
The technical advances are staggering. The world looks so much better and alive than before, and the promises of interaction feel unreal. I didn’t get to try everything as I said, but I did get a glimpse at some of that – and I saw videos of some of that stuff in the presentation.
A lot of what I mention here in this article comes from the community. People asked for technical improvements, better flight dynamics (that’s yet to be seen if I am being honest), and more to do in the sim. People want to learn how to fly and what to do.
I believe that if we teach people how to fly and give them things to do, we will get a growing community. Especially for helicopters. Helicopters are hard and as much as we try to help them learn how to fly them, not everyone will know about this website. But they will probably be using MSFS and the sim will have some lessons. I am super-curious to see those as well.
And then, after learning how to fly them, we have to use them. Helicopters can transport people from point A to point B but they are capable of doing so much more. MSFS2024 will allow people to get into those missions and give virtual pilots some purpose, without taking away anything of what everyone is doing today already.
The new marketplace features will benefit everyone: the developers, the consumer, and even Microsoft. Users may be able to try products before investing in them. Or perhaps micro-investing by getting a certain addon for a small amount of time for a specific purpose. I like that idea very much.
Will MSFS2024 have issues? I am sure it will. It’s software, after all. And a highly complex one with lots of moving parts to create this stunning product. As someone with a technical background and over 30 years of experience with sims, I can’t stop myself from being marveled by what Microsoft and Asobo are managing to pull with the sim.
Microsoft and Asobo built upon what we already had, improving and expanding the sim’s capabilities, so those who don’t care about the new modes can do what they normally do, taking advantage of everything else.
Those who want to use the new mores and features can do it, without hurting those that don’t and vice-versa. We all win.
There are a lot of things I am not covering in this article as it is way too big already, but I am sure others will. Things like the ability to use your voice for ATC or the co-pilot, for example. Another example is the localization of the manager name in the career mode, the diversity of people both in accent, clothing, and physiological traits – meaning you’ll find characters that look more like the people you find in the country you are in in the sim.
The list goes on and I am sure all this information will pop up on other media outlets and videos.
I am very excited about MSFS2024. I think it’s the right (big) step in the right direction. Even if there are some choices that I wouldn’t have made regarding some of the modes, I can’t wait to start using it.
You can preorder MSFS2024 here.
If you want to learn more and ask the team your questions, don't forget that there's a Developer Stream coming up on September 25 at 10:30AM PT / 17:30Z on Twitch.
