I had the opportunity to sit down with Jorg Neumann, Head of Microsoft Flight Simulator at Microsoft to talk about all the latest excitement surrounding Microsoft Flight Simulator. This includes an accurate and highly detailed model of Washington D.C. for simmers to fly over thanks to the latest photogrammetry technology. This arrives in the latest City Update IX: Northeast United States which covers a large portion of the Washington D.C metro area, along with Buffalo, New York; Allentown, Pennsylvania; and the East End of Long Island, New York.
One of Microsoft’s partners for Microsoft Flight Simulator is Vexcel Imaging which uses its aerial cameras for photogrammetry and allows the Microsoft Flight Simulator team to convert that imagery data into highly accurate models. While speaking with Jorg, he mentioned how Vexcel and its evolving camera technology plays a critical part in providing these detailed city updates to Microsoft Flight Simulator.
Vexcel is currently using newer and enhanced cameras that have 3 times the increased resolution for capturing terrain. The old data would cause some buildings to look “melted” and have a loss of detail when getting an up-close look, but now this is no longer the case with the latest cameras. Jorg knows that the world needs to continue to look much better moving forward as players explore further and land everywhere. With the evolution of camera technology, it’s only going to get better. This will enhance the experience for both Microsoft Flight Simulator and Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024.
The continuous improvement in camera technology and how that enhances the experience in Microsoft Flight Simulator is very exciting for all of us simmers out there. City updates are only going to get more impressive from here on out. The nice thing is that this will also include cities that were captured using older camera technology. This means some of the most popular cities will get a fresh new coat of paint in the future! So, continue to keep an eye out for the latest city and world updates moving forward!
For the latest city update, which was captured using the newest cameras from Vexcel, Jorg wanted to work on the Northeast United States. The team selected cities they haven’t captured previously, bringing realism to Buffalo, Allentown, the Hamptons, and the massive Washington D.C. metro area. Capturing Washington D.C. has been an ongoing discussion for nearly four years due to the highly restricted airspace that requires communicating with Federal agencies to get approval. The other challenge was due to sun placement and needing to make sure they can capture the terrain at a specific time of day so there are limited shadows being cast by buildings and trees. It was a yearly discussion before finally getting approval earlier this year and now we can all now enjoy flying around the entire Washington D.C. metro area in such glorious detail! If only I could have easily flown around the area when I lived there so I could have avoided driving on the 495 and 270. I don’t miss you at all…
By the way, it’s amazing how quickly production can move as the Vexcel team just captured the Washington D.C. terrain in April and the Microsoft Flight Simulator team converted the data and shipped it in just over 2 months’ time. Nicely done!
Another fun feature now available in Microsoft Flight Simulator as part of the update is fireworks! With the 4th of July just two days away, every major US city will experience a fireworks show in the sim. So, if you are flying in real time, make sure to be near a major city at 10pm local time to start witnessing a beautiful fireworks show!
If you’re like me and have other plans on the 4th, you can always set the time and date to whenever you want to fly so you can enjoy the fireworks on your own timeline. I told Jorg I would have to do that since my wife has plans for us that day. However, he did suggest that my wife and I just have our date in Microsoft Flight Simulator. Talk about a fantastic idea, right? I asked my wife if we should do that instead of our original plans and that’s when my plane got rerouted to the doghouse – thanks, Jorg! (joking, of course!! Kinda…)
The City Update IX: Northeast United States is now available for free for all simmers on Xbox Series X|S and PC with Xbox Game Pass, PC Game Pass, Windows 10/11, Steam, and Xbox Cloud Gaming (Beta).
More to come on my talk with Jorg Neumann. Thank you again to Jorg for taking the time to chat with me and to Bob and Hollis for your support with making this happen.