Jorg Neumann explains how it all came to be.
Microsoft Flight Simulator hit at a perfect time in a not-so-perfect world. As a Canadian-Australian living in Melbourne and bound by some of the worst COVID-19 lockdowns seen across the world, I relished in the chance to fly over world landmarks. More importantly, I indulged myself and stabilised my mental health somewhat by flying over various sites in Saskatchewan, the province I grew up in. It’s literally the focal point of my review.
Lockdowns have come and gone and Microsoft Flight Simulator remains, but as someone who did all the flights of fancy and landing challenges offered by the sim, I’ll admit that my interest in it has waned. In short, I need a little direction.
As it turns out, I’m not alone. According to Flight Sim head Jorg Neumann, Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 offers players of any talent or experience more direction and “something to do”, at their own request.
In conversation with Stevivor, Neumann explained that surveys sent to Flight Simulator’s player base, he and his team identified three main streams of players. He also explained that everyone – from the hardcore to the virtual tourist – were all asking for “something to do”.
“There was this group of core simmers — it’s not surprising, right? It’s all about their instruments and accuracy of the—gotcha,” Neumann said, detailing the first group. “Yep. Yes. You’re the core of the core, and we need you, and we love you and it’s important.
“But then there’s the gamers,” he continued. “A lot of them came in through Xbox — some came in through [Xbox or PC] Game Pass right — which was a nice, sort of almost democratising channel of influx of people. And they’re like… ‘now what? I did the landing challenges and… I don’t know, then you move on to the next game.”
Neumann says the “largest group” of players are what he calls “digital tourists”, and from the way I played the original, I’d imagine that’s the group that I’d be slotted into.
“In our surveys they actually said, ‘yeah, aeroplanes. I’m actually kind of afraid… specifically the airliners, they look really scary in the airports,” Neumann said. “’I don’t know how to talk to the ATC and any of these things, but I love the planet.’ They also wanted something to do.”
For that largest group, direction is certainly key, but for the hardcore, Neumann says Flight Simulator 2024’s new stance will help them with “the role-play in their head” that they’re already doing.
“We looked at the franchise history – Flight Sim X had missions, but it was like, I don’t know, 30 or 50 or some such thing,” Neumann continued. “If you played a long weekend, you were done. That’s not really anything, because that’s not the experience that anybody wants.”
“So people had already said, ‘hey, we really want seasons’ and we tried it in Flight Sim in 202[1]. You can… half-ass seasons and we said we don’t want to half-ass seasons, let’s do it right. So our leaves really fall, our trees… actually go through the whole season thing, the grass changes colour… all that stuff is actually working.
“But then, the missions have to react to the seasons — in the winter, somebody breaks their leg on the ski lift. In the summer, it’s some hiker guy, or somebody fell through something.”
Now, Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 will sport worldwide, seasonal missions that Neumann said embrace “the truth of aviation, meaning like real careers in the real world”.
“You’re not just doing firefighting in France or Spain,” he said. “How about firefighting in Australia or Thailand?
“We now have this system that is basically — we say it’s 3 million missions; this is a guess. I mean, honestly, we don’t know because we generate them under so many parameters. But it’s basically… endless. It’s a truly dynamic sandbox where you can opt into whatever the heck you fancy.”
Neumann also detailed new systems that will sort out the virtual tourists.
“I based [new functionality] on Animal Crossing and Pokémon Snap, because Animal Crossing is all about… collect[ing] everything,” Neumann said. “So we came up with this thing called World Photographer and it puts you on missions to… [for example] find 5 wild animals in the cat species.
“We give you … a region and it says a snow leopard has been seen here recently, but it’s like hundreds of square kilometres. The really rare things are really rare. Like really, really rare.”
You can watch our full, twenty-two minute interview with Neumann above.
Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 heads to Windows PC, Xbox Series S, Xbox Series X, and Xbox Cloud Gaming on 20 November.
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Microsoft Flight Simulator 202420 November 2024PC Xbox Series S & X
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