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For Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024, this is a reasonable question. Is it a game, a simulation or reality?
On the reality side, the previous version in 2020 was played by 15 million people, and it spurred a desire for flight that is much needed in our modern society. Since we’re all flying around the globe so much, there’s a shortage of around 800,000 pilots.
The simulation is also so detailed — with 4,000 times more ground detail than the original game, that it has to be computed in Microsoft’s Azure cloud, which consists of a global network of data centers that can computer the game and its imagery and send it down in real time to each player’s PC or game console so that they may not realize that it wasn’t computed on their home machine.
It’s funny that one of the development leaders — David Dedeine, creative director — told me that when he flew over the Grand Canyon in real life, he finally realized his art director was right. In building the game, Wloch thought there was too much greenery around the desert-like canyon. Above the canyon, he realized that it was surrounded by forests and had trees growing out of cliffs with greenery aplenty. That means that the data that the company had collected from its real-life data sources like satellites, flight cameras and more — all of that was right.
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GamesBeat Next is almost here! GB Next is the premier event for product leaders and leadership in the gaming industry. Coming up October 28th and 29th, join fellow leaders and amazing speakers like Matthew Bromberg (CEO Unity), Amy Hennig (Co-President of New Media Skydance Games), Laura Naviaux Sturr (GM Operations Amazon Games), Amir Satvat (Business Development Director Tencent), and so many others. See the full speaker list and register here.
And on the game side, there’s a recognition that just flying a plane — and not really fighting a war with it like in many video games — can be boring and not so fun. So the team stayed busy creating three million challenges for players to play in the game so they could be excited about the product. …