Just before the Christmas holiday, the developers behind Microsoft Flight Simulator launched a new free update for the cutting edge platform. He introduced virtual reality to those with state-of-the-art machines and also added real-time snow effects around the world. On Monday, the team released a new luxurious trailer showing its virtual snow machine, and it looks nothing short of magical.
Flight simulator extracts from more than two petabytes of images from Bing Maps, including satellite and photogrammetry, to create a realistic simulation of the surface of the entire planet. But that kind of data can only be captured clearly on clear, sunny days. This limitation has effectively blocked the world in an endless summer since the game’s launch in August 2020. Now, the Asobo Studio team has guessed a way to map virtual snow on top of these summer landscapes in real time. It is a remarkable technical feat and makes the already beautiful game much more inspiring to look at.
The next step will, of course, be to add autumn colors to the map. Asobo could add that with one of four or five updates worldwide or three major simulation updates promised over the course of 2021, all free for owners. The next major update will add more details to the UK. Microsoft Flight Simulator it should also be released for the Xbox Series X in the summer.