How Microsoft Flight Simulator returned to the skies:
Let's play a quick game of word association: Microsoft — Windows? Excel? Xbox? All solid answers. But for me, for a while in the '90s at least, I would have immediately answered "Flight Simulator." Microsoft Flight Simulator is the very first thing I can remember ever doing on a computer, sat on my granddad's lap as we soared across blocky landscapes together with a Sidewinder joystick. It is one of Microsoft's all-time iconic brands.
It's also a brand that the company has more or less ignored in the past decade-plus. The last release, Flight Simulator X, came out in 2006, and a few years later, its developer, Aces Game Studio, was closed as part of widespread layoffs at Microsoft. A 2012 free-to-play spinoff called Microsoft Flight was less than well-received.
In just a few weeks, though, Microsoft is releasing perhaps the biggest upgrade to the series in its 38-year history. The new title, developed by French studio Asobo and simply called Microsoft Flight Simulator, is an ambitious attempt to leverage Microsoft's Bing Maps data and Azure-powered procedural generation technology to render our planet in unprecedented detail.
I've been playing a pre-release alpha version for a couple of weeks, and it's frankly astonishing. This is a full-throttle effort from Microsoft to re-create the natural world and the magic of flight. And while it carries the weight of an iconic series, it feels like it came from nowhere. Why is Microsoft reviving Flight Simulator now?
So my dear Soylentils, how many of you have played Microsoft Flight Simulator and if so, what did you think?
(Score: 2) by SDRefugee on Tuesday August 04 2020, @09:10AM
GOOD question.. I've seen this new version and Holy Chit, Batman!! If there was ANYthing that would entice me to go back to Winblowz after 100% Linux for the last ten years, THIS would be IT! It would ALMOST be worth having another machine, with a castrated to hell and back install of Win10 JUST to play this sim..... I'm gonna go out on a limb and bet it WILL NOT "work in wine".. So much is the pity..
America should be proud of Edward Snowden, the hero, whether they know it or not..