Top Gear
The latest aviation kit, impartially tested and evaluated
Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 From £59 | Manufacturer www.microsoft.com
B
ack in September of 2019 I joined a handful of journalists, sim pilots, aviation influencers and #AvGeek buffs who were invited to a secret preview for the next generation of Microsoft Flight Simulator. Along with the standard non-disclosure agreements there were other secrets like, ‘what kind of computer does it take to run this?’ and ‘how on Earth are you doing all of this?’. We were all provided with our own station with yoke, throttles, rudders and the mysterious classic black PC case, which we weren’t allowed to open. It would be almost a full year before Microsoft and Asobo, the developer, would release the specs needed to run this amazing world at home. I was floored from the outset. The entire world appeared in front of me, rendered in a mix of satellite and 3D data gleaned from Microsoft’s Bing database and rendered offline using its Azure Cloud Computing. We had free reign to
64 | FLYER | October 2020
go wherever we wanted. Go see where you grew up, they suggested. Find some landmarks that you’ve always wanted to see, and so on… As my commercial flying job takes me around the world, I dived right in trying to find some of the more obscure airports that I’d flown into or seen around the world. Mongolia, Hong Kong, Singapore, Dubai, Lukla, Guatemala City and even Area 51. They were all there. Every single one of them. The data wasn’t complete yet, but I could travel anywhere and see every corner of the planet. Not only could you fly anywhere, there’s actually enough ground level detail to taxi almost anywhere. At one point I even found myself taxying out of Heathrow Airport and onto the Old Bath Road where I continued right past the familiar line of hotels, among the cars and buses. Fun like that aside, a lot of time was spent with the developers talking about how they were mating the concept of the virtual world as seen through Bing with a truly modern flight simulator program.
Trees, water, volumetric clouds, rain that produces rainbows and even individual blades of grass. It all seemed impossible, but yet I had just seen and flown it with my own hands. I took a Cessna and flew a stall, spin and recovery. As near as I could tell the aeroplane responded just like the real thing, reflecting the development time they had taken to model the physics of flight over the wings and control surfaces.
Next step…
It was a frustrating wait. We were provided with full 4K clips of some of the more amazing parts of the program and sent home. I made a few videos for my YouTube Channel AIRBOYD and basically waited for the next step. Fast forward to mid-2020 and Asobo and Microsoft were well into the Alpha Program. I was waiting desperately for the NDA to allow me to use video and show the world what I had seen. Microsoft released three versions of
