Microsoft Flight Simulator was already sounding pretty damned spectacular, but my excitement levels are now appropriately sky-high following developer Asobo's revelation you'll be able to get out of your plane, stroll about the countryside (or anywhere else), and watch the sun set in your preferred corner of its gorgeous recreation of the world. That's according to Microsoft Flight Simulator boss Jorge Neumann, who shared the news while chatting to PC Gamer - after reiterating just how much additional detail is going into Flight Simulator 2024's digital version of Earth compared to its already impressive predecessor. For instance, the team has improved the look of every airport, has added glider airports, every oil rig, and every lighthouse in the world.
That's alongside "hundreds of species of animals that run around", and it's also simulating "every ship on Earth" via their transponder signals - all of which, claims Neumann, you'll be able to land on. "I think we're in a new era of making games that I think are going to break new ground, from a scale and complexity perspective." And then there are the trees.
Trees are something Neumann has discussed before, but he now says Microsoft Flight Simulator has the capacity to feature every tree on Earth. "We have a machine learning look [it] up," he explains, "and then we know what the tree is, even down to the point where we know what the species likely is..
. and then we plant trees, literally trillions of trees, and it's all don.