I've been a flight simulator 'pilot' ever since my parents bought a Commodore 64 sometime around 1984. Over time, as computer graphics improved, Microsoft improved the quality of the sim. Things progressed until around 2010, when they abandoned the product. At that point, the simulator was decent, but it still looked pixelated, and not all that impressive.
Fast forward 10 years.
Microsoft and their development partner have been working on a new version for the last 5 years, and the result is nothing less than stunning. I'm not sure how they will ever improve on it, honestly. The youtube trailer announcing the product release date (Aug 18) has people salivating. One guy said tongue-in-cheek (I hope, anyway), "I'd sell my right kidney to buy the hardware to run this thing." Several others commented how the video brought them to tears. A few reasons why:
The trailer:
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TYqJALPVn0Y
For comparison (Flight Simulator through the ages, starting with version 1.0):
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Pd-4PouHM4
Fast forward 10 years.
Microsoft and their development partner have been working on a new version for the last 5 years, and the result is nothing less than stunning. I'm not sure how they will ever improve on it, honestly. The youtube trailer announcing the product release date (Aug 18) has people salivating. One guy said tongue-in-cheek (I hope, anyway), "I'd sell my right kidney to buy the hardware to run this thing." Several others commented how the video brought them to tears. A few reasons why:
- 1.5 trillion trees were identified in satellite imagery and placed into the game
- You can fly in and out of all 40,000 airports worldwide
- Virtually the entire earth is simulated in such detail that it defies belief
- Real time weather (clouds, temperature, rain, wind) is fed into the game - if its 60 and raining at LAX in real life, it will be 60 and raining at LAX in the game
- Real time air traffic also appears in the game
- 2 petabytes of graphics data are used, and then streamed to your computer as you fly. (thats 2000 normal-size 1-terabyte hard drives)
- I dare you to distinguish much of the trailer from real life video
The trailer:
For comparison (Flight Simulator through the ages, starting with version 1.0):
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