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INTERVIEW // Since its launch on PC in August 2020, the new iteration of Flight Simulator welcomes changes and additions at a breakneck pace – which it intends to maintain for the months and years to come. We discuss it with his director.
Microsoft Flight Simulator
On August 18, Microsoft Flight Simulator was celebrating his first birthday. However, simulation is still in its ascension phase today. Showing up at Gamescom for some important update announcements to come in the coming months, it still sees itself evolving at high speed for many years to come. We were able to discuss it with Jorg Neumann, its director.
“I remember a year ago when I said with great confidence that we would be releasing a major update every month. Even the Asobo team [le studio bordelais en charge du développement de la simulation, NDLR] was a little worried. They were like, “are we really going to do this ?!” But today, we are about to launch our 11th update. We kept up the pace! “ Up to now, they are divided into 5 simulation updates – improved aircraft behavior, real-time weather and air traffic transcription… – and 6 world updates. These consist of the recovery of a particular area of the planet, reworked from top to bottom to be reproduced with extreme authenticity in the simulation. “We are extremely proud of these world updates. They now cover about twenty major cities, something like a thousand points of interest… I was very happy especially when we were able to have France and the Benelux , and Paris! “
For this 6th update, available free from September 7, Germany, Austria and Switzerland are in the spotlight – a choice of region that could not be more appropriate for an announcement made under of a German trade fair such as Gamescom. This area of the world now benefits from cities reproduced with an accuracy of 7 cm, as well as new topographic data allowing a much better representation of the reliefs. “At launch the Alps weren’t very well done. But now if you know these mountains you can see they look exactly like the real thing!”, enthuses Neumann.
Collaborative work with institutions around the world
As always, this update represents a real technical feat, and is the result of highly collaborative work. “None of this would be possible if we were all alone, the Flight Simulator team and Asobo.” Help is therefore needed, primarily from internal Microsoft, but not only. “We work with the Bing Maps team, who provide us with the data they have. But that is not always enough, because their job is not the same as ours. We are aligned with our needs for aerial photos and imagery. high-quality satellite; on the other hand, on topographic data, Flight Simulator needs a lot more accuracy than Bing Maps. Sometimes they have contracts with companies that can provide us with that data, but not always. “
“In the case of France for example, they had nothing. But we wanted to make France, not only because that is where Asobo is located, but above all because it is an important country for history. aviation. So in these cases, I will look for the data elsewhere. I am in contact with a lot of governments around the world. Often, they redirect me to their geographic or town planning institutes, because these are usually they have the best data available. It is not NASA, it is not Airbus, it is these local institutions, because it is they who have the use of it. For France, it is IGN which was able to provide us with extraordinary data – and not only for the metropolis, but also for the overseas territories. “
This map data is a valuable tool for Asobo, but it is not enough to automatically create the 3D models used in the simulation. “For cities, we use infrared imagery, called DSM (Digital Surface Models) and DTM (Digital Terrain Models). The former are made with rays that bounce off the first surface encountered, the latter with rays that penetrate down to the ground. This allows us to essentially create a 3D photograph of the city. Again, Bing Maps is not always able to provide us with all this – for Paris, for example, they do not ‘had nothing. So I’m going to find companies that have this kind of data, and I just buy it from them. Then we have to conform the data so that it works with our pipeline, we remove the trees to replace them by ours, which are prettier… So there is a bit of manual work to be done, which takes us a few weeks. “
“In total, an update of the world is something like a year, a year and a half of work – not 100% of our time obviously, but in parallel with other things. Today we are already working on updates to come in 2022 and 2023. “
Make simulation more affordable, but without compromise
To highlight the locations affected by the update, the update also incorporates new related activities, including new “Discovery Flights”. The latter, inducted at the end of July at the same time as the launch of Flight Simulator on Xbox Series X / S, offer to simply release the player instantly in flight over a city, a monument or a remarkable natural place, without any other form of complication. They help make the simulation much less austere and demanding, especially for a first contact. But there is no question of sacrificing the requirement and the authenticity of the product.
“From day one I started defending the project, I said we wanted to do a simulation for the simulation fans – the ‘simmers’ as they are called. And we never deviated from that. simmers are our core audience, we have to make them really like the product. They are our priority. But Flight Simulator is not a game. There are no missions, no goals, nothing that usually makes a game. It’s a totally different structured product. “
In fact, Jorg Neumann refuses to use the term “player” to refer to users of Flight Simulator. “The only categorization I use is that we have simmers, and we have visitors. Visitors are people who were drawn to a trailer, who came through Xbox Game Pass a lot of times. . Our job is to make them fall in love, and if they fall in love, then they will stay with us. “
This is the role of these discovery flights … whose idea comes in part from a die-hard player, and not just any: Phil Spencer, the boss of the Xbox division at Microsoft. “Phil is a big player, but he’s not a simmer. And I remember him saying to me a few years ago, ‘Ah, I would love to be able to just play the trailers!’ didn’t want to go through the airport, do all the procedures… He just wanted to fly. And in truth, that’s exactly what a first flight is in real life. The instructor takes the plane off, and a once we’re in the air, he puts us in the pilot’s seat, and we hardly do anything! We play with the stick a little, and that’s it. But it’s an amazing feeling, we really have the feeling of flying, of learning something, and that’s where we fall in love. That’s how we all started. And we try to replicate that with these flights of discovery. “
Virtual museum
So since he refuses to be a game, Flight Simulator will be something else: a celebration of aviation, of its history – perhaps even to the point of becoming a virtual museum. In any case, it is in this direction that another novelty inducted with this 6th world update goes: the “Local Legends”. Under this banner, the simulation will regularly welcome new historic aircraft, often famous in their country of origin, but not necessarily outside these borders. The series begins with the Junkers Ju 52, a German transport aircraft launched in 1930, and affectionately nicknamed “Aunt Ju” in her native lands.
“We are making a huge effort to include these planes in the simulation,” Jorg Neumann prides himself. “We do scans of the interior and exterior with an accuracy of one millimeter. For the Ju 52, we worked with an organization that owns and preserves one of the very last examples in flight condition. We scanned it, we took sound recordings… We were also able to work with a pilot who flew it, and who gave us feedback on its behavior in flight. “
“It’s one of the most exhilarating parts of my job, being able to talk to the Conservatives. These planes are their babies, their lives. And when they see us coming with our scanners, they understand that, while real devices will inexorably deteriorate, we will be able to preserve them indefinitely in digital form! We give them our scans, so they can use them as they want – and also the money that goes help them preserve the real device. “
These planes will be offered as additional paid content, “but at a price as low as possible”, Neumann promises us, “so that as many people as possible can access it.” And then ? “We already have a list of a hundred devices that we would like to make, and I’m very excited, because it’s celebrating aviation history in a way that’s arguably only possible in Flight Simulator. “
Top Gun and online shopping on the horizon
And these are not the only news to come in the next few months for Flight Simulator. In addition to content related to the film Top Gun Maverick Coming out in November, we’ll also see the addition of a new mode this fall, created in partnership with Reno Air Races. This will be the very first appearance of a multiplayer mode in the history of the series. Flight Simulator. An excellent demonstration, for Jorg Neumann, of the scalability of the simulation that he praises so much. “With updates like this, we’re really expanding what the platform is capable of doing. Gamers are going to take it over, we’re relying on modders and third parties to create some crazy things with these new possibilities. J can’t wait! “
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