Powered by MOMENTUM MEDIA
australian aviation logo

Microsoft Flight Simulator to feature enhanced Sydney Airport

written by Adam Thorn | July 20, 2020

Microsoft Flight Simulator Rio (Microsoft)
The new Microsoft Flight Simulator will recreate the entire globe in detail, allowing users to pick a spot and begin flying (Microsoft)

The much-anticipated new version of Microsoft Flight Simulator will feature a “hand-crafted” replica of Sydney Airport, as well as the ability to take off and land from 37,000 airports in the world.

The game, released on PC on 18 August, is believed to be the first in history to recreate the entire planet in detail, allowing users to pick any spot on the globe and then begin flying.

Users can either download the game upon release or buy a physical version that will come on 10 double-layered DVDs. The game itself will be 2 petabytes in size, or roughly 2 million gigabytes.

Sydney is one of 40 airports to be recreated in particularly high detail, with animated windsocks that react to real-life weather; staff going about their work and accurate signs and taxiways.

The game will uniquely use Microsoft Bing Maps – its rival to Google Maps – to recreate the entire planet accurately. That includes 1.5 billion buildings, 2 trillion trees, mountains, rivers and roads with cars and real-life activity.

==
==

The game will allow users to experience real-time weather conditions, wind speed, temperature, humidity as well as night and day flying.

Players will be able to fly around this world in up to 30 aircraft ranging from the A320neo to a Cessna 152 and 747-8 Intercontinental. All feature accurate cockpits with realistic controls and instrumentation.

Developer Aerosoft has promised virtually every airport in the world will feature – a feat made possible by studying photos from Bing Maps alongside radar information showing exactly where aircraft take-off, land and are stored.

The game, only announced late last year, has been shrouded in secrecy with Microsoft scrambling to remove videos of it from the web uploaded by players testing out early versions. It represents their big investment in their billion-dollar battle with rivals Sony and Nintendo.

The game will come in three versions, ranging from US$60–US$120, with the Deluxe and Premium editions including more planes and airports.

You need to be a member to post comments. Become a member today!

Comments (9)

  • David Palmer

    says:

    The developer of Microsoft Flight Simulator is ‘Asobo Studios’ and not Aerosoft.
    2 petabytes sounds excessive to install on a PC too.

  • Ben Lim

    says:

    Aerosoft is the European publisher, not the developer. Asobo Studio is the developer.

  • Richard Brailsford

    says:

    ” The game itself will be 2 petabytes in size, or roughly 2 million gigabytes.”

    I think someone may have got that wrong, one hell of a download if it is, and Ill need a few, about 200,000 10 TB HDD’s to store it in my data centre

  • Philip Gauci

    says:

    Some corrections to article.
    You referred to the sim as a ‘game’ no fewer then seven times. We flight simmers prefer the term Simulator or simply Sim. The accuracy and depiction to its real life counterparts place it far above a mere arcade game.
    The developers are Asobo Studios of France. Aerosoft are simply distributors and also producing a DVD version for sale in Europe.
    Thr sim itself weighs in at about 150GB after purchase and installation. The referred 2 Petabytes are stored on the server and accesed on the internet during a simulation session.

    kind regards

    • Adam Thorn

      says:

      I think it can be both a game and a sim (in fact, I suspect it will also be made accessible to more casual users, with different difficulty levels). I’ve answered the 2 petabytes question above but that number came from Microsoft itself. Yes, they are being a little bit clever here in that the main game won’t be that big, so I think that larger number refers to what happens when it streams information from online for weather etc.

      Thanks,

      Adam

  • Dylan Way

    says:

    They said that in building this map of the world, they would be tapping into more than 2 petabytes of data from bing maps. However, they clearly just chose to describe it in this manner because of the marketing boost from using such a large number. It does not mean the actual map is two petabytes. There has been no word on how large the file size of the map will be.

  • Richard Brailsford

    says:

    “The game itself will be 2 petabytes in size, or roughly 2 million gigabytes.”

    2 Million Gig ?? you might want to check that

  • Richard Brailsford

    says:

    The game itself will be 2 petabytes in size, or roughly 2 million gigabytes.

    I don’t think so LOL

    • Adam Thorn

      says:

      Oh, it actually will! Though, that will include the potential information that will be streamed online as you’re playing. So not all at once, but does go to show the ambition of the team who have made this.

      Thanks,

      Adam

Comments are closed.

You don't have credit card details available. You will be redirected to update payment method page. Click OK to continue.