Asobo Studio's Microsoft Flight Simulator will give players something to look forward to in 2024, with a plethora of new gaming features, capabilities, and modes.

At this year's FlightSim Expo, Asobo Studio showcased the physics, visual, and gameplay enhancements it intends to implement in Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024.

The update, which launches on November 19, seeks to introduce various activities that let users perceive the world more clearly, as reported by Techspot.

The company's primary focus was search and rescue, farming, low-altitude training, gliding, and other activities that brought players closer to the ground than in earlier flight sim games.

Asobo redesigned several lighting, modeling, and procedural generation technologies to enhance the detail of surroundings, especially in remote areas where machine learning will be the only means of rendering the planet near players.

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New Modes and New Sights

Ray tracing is one of the new visual features; the business verified this with a screenshot showing a cockpit with finely defined shadows. Asobo continuously mentioned better lighting characteristics, such as indirect lighting worldwide, which implies the usage of ray tracing, even if it did not mention it anywhere in its presentation.

The display also focused on getting off an aircraft and seeing the surroundings on foot. Regretfully, it is unclear exactly what function walking on foot will fulfill. Questions remain whether the new on-foot mode will be limited to pre-flight inspections outside the aircraft or will encompass additional tasks.

Along with several new partnerships, Asobo has included some new gameplay elements and planes. FlightControlReplay will add ghosts and other comprehensive replay capabilities to the game.

The game will receive real-time information on the positions of seacraft worldwide via Global Ship AI Traffic. Furthermore, Got Friends is creating systems that support gliders. 

Dune in Flight Simulator

These new game modes and quality-of-life enhancements are not the only things that gamers will look forward to. Back in June 2023, it was reported that gamers could navigate a flight to Arrakis. On the same enigmatic desert planet, the story of Frank Herbert's scientific fiction novel series "Dune" took place. 

Players will enter the Dune universe and witness the destroyed desert planet where House Atreides and House Harkonnen fought in the novel and movie.

The next expansion will center on the fictional planet that served as the backdrop for the Dune book and television series rather than Earth. Arrakis's most famous feature is its vast desert plains, where the sands are considered "spice," an essential resource in the Dune universe.

The well-known Microsoft Flight Simulator is more than just a game; it's an immersive experience that lets you take control of an airplane, travel to many parts of the globe, and experience the sensation of hijacking an actual aircraft.

Its most recent version was published in mid-2020, allowing players to play it on PC and the recently announced Xbox Series S and X simultaneously. 

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