Hello and welcome onboard Rock Paper Shotgun,
I am your captain Matthew Castle and I regret to inform you this is my first time in a flight
simulator. So I hope none of you are holding scalding
hot drinks. Now, maybe it’s because this is my maiden
flight, but I’ve spent the last week exploring Microsoft Flight Simulator before its August
18th release, having my mind endlessly blown by what developers Asobo Studios have built
here. Considering that the last game of theirs I
played was rat simulator, A Plague Tale, this new software has really scaled up, zooming
out from the forests of rural Bordeaux, to all of Bordeaux… and the rest of the world
beyond it. Yes, they are playing god, and god are they
good at it. So let’s look at all the ways Microsoft
Flight Simulator took my breath away. In case of boredom, your emergency exits are
here, here and here. And please hit the like and subscribe buttons
before adjusting the oxygen mask of any other passengers. Now, come fly with me... When you ask the team the first place anyone
should fly in Flight Simulator, they make like Kenneth Branagh in Dunkirk: HOME. Yes, you can see your house from here. This here is the house I grew up in, and this
is me second before crashing into the house I’m currently living in. Given that the game draws its landscape from
aerial photography, I’m surprised it didn’t interpret the massive weed growing from my
patio as a tree. One day my pretty, one day. The fact that Flight Simulator is able to
show us childhood homes or other cherished locations... is down to a combination of aerial
data from Bing maps, magicked into a virtual globe with help from cloud processing from
Microsoft’s Azure tech. Considering Bing maps has two petabytes of
aerial data - to put that in context, half a million of these promotional EA flash drives
- cloud tech is also used to stream in local specifics while you’re playing. Play offline and the level of detail is pared
back to roads, coastlines and trees - enough landmarks to pilot by visual flight rules,
but not the same magic as seeing a procedurally generated model of the school field you broke
your arm playing rounders. Most of what you’ll see in Flight Simulator
are what they call augmented aerials, landscapes calculated rather than built from photogrammetric
measurements. You’ll see in a second the gulf between
the approaches, but these are still an artistic triumph. You see, the game sucks details from those
images to give roofs the right colour and even match broad architectural styles, so
that you can clearly tell the tall Parisian buildings from the sea of terracotta of Dubrovnik’s
old town slash Kings Landing. Okay, leaving it to an algorithm does up some
loopiness: weirder structures, like gas holders, are turned into baffling street art - not
helped by being next to an incredible hand modelled Millenium Dome, in this case - and
when you get close up you’ll spot mad houses that appear to stretch for miles, or fold
in on themselves like the morphing architecture of Inception, but considering it’s mostly
a computer doing an impression of the entire earth, it holds up remarkably well. And the really crazy thing is that it’s
a world that can keep up with the real thing, as Asobo are able to internally rebuild the
world - that means redetecting trees, houses, etc - in just a couple of weeks and update
the whole simulation if they wish. Over fifty thousand cities are rendered using
augmented aerials, but as mentioned, there are also cities based on precise photogrammetry,
allowing for far greater accuracy and texture. There are over 400 of these cities in Flight
Simulator and you know them when you see them as they’re real showstoppers - we’ve all
seen New York filmed from the air about a million times, but once you see that iconic
skyline ahead of you you find yourself spending hours doing fly-bys and tinkering with the
camera to frame your own cinematic masterpiece. But get up close, in a low flying Cessna,
for example, and you’ll see just how accurate it is - right down to branding on buildings
- like this tiny H&M logo or glimpses of Lion King on Times Square billboards. Sadly, Times Square’s iconic Naked Cowboy
Does not make the cut - while the game does include road traffic, it draws the line at
simulated people. For me, it’s these cities that feel of the
next generation - something I’ve never seen before. Flying down the Las Vegas strip and seeing
all the individual hotels, and adverts for Cirque Du Soleil is pretty insane. If I was feel braver i’d have done it in
a bigger plane to recreate the end of Con Air. There are a hundred little tricks bringing
these cities to life - the way skyscrapers accurately cast shades onto one another, or
the deep shadowy crevices that lie in the canyons between these buildings. One recent development is giving a sense of
3D depth to these towering architectural brutes - there’s a sense of rooms inside buildings
like The Shard. Mad considering the closest most of us get
will be several thousand feet. And best of all there are more to come - we’re
told many cities possess their own photogrammetry data, so more of these photorealistic sprawls
will be added over time. Whether you’re flying over photogrammetry
or not, night is the great leveller. The team wanted to punch up nocturnal flights
not just to beautify the game - although these are arguably some of the most photorealistic
sights in the whole thing - but to better support Night Visual Flight Rules, which allow
pilots to navigate by sight, not just instruments. This means light scattering in the atmosphere,
such as Las Vegas - basically a million watt lightbulb in city form - practically turning
night into day. But it extends to individual bulbs in the
world, with a big focus on accurate colour temperature - the obnoxious glare of a sportsfield
is very different to the spooky murk of an empty parking lot or the warmer lights of
residential areas. And yes, skyscrapers also have improved window
lights and are topped with the all important red light to avoid horrendous near misses. I love how practical features that will speak
to simmers also double up as nice eye candy for more casual dabblers like me. Speaking of nice things for easily impressed
dummies: look at the water! Again, Asobo’s technical leaps and bounds
are motivated by wanting give pilots visual information: shorelines are more accurate
to aid navigation and ensure that you nail the correct moment to start sobbing patritorially
as you glide over the white cliffs of Dover. Er, although they’re a currently a bit more
like the green cliffs of Dover. Bing has its limitations. Likewise, wind impacts wave size, which can
inform eagle eyed pilots of choppy conditions or just let you have fun playing as Poseidon
by using wind sliders. More on this weather magic in a second. But for simple sky gawkers like me, it’s
the way the engine captures water colour that most impresses. Not just reflecting and reacting to the sky
- giving Britain’s beaches their iconic shade of yuck, for example - but capturing
the silt-y browns of churning rivers or the almost neon blues and greens of the Bahamas. Asobo also admitted to flattening lakes, which
sounds like the work of a mad god, but actually means you can land on any lake on earth using
the amphibious Icon A5 - here’s me plonking down on Loch Ness. And no, they didn’t simulate the monster. As essential as the Azure streaming is to
Flight Simulator, I’m more interested in cloud technology of a fluffier kind. Clouds here are fully three dimensional creations
- light scatters through them as it should and there’s a real sense of changing density
as you suddenly punch through the other side and see the colour of the world bleed back
into sight. At moments like this I wonder if this might
be the best looking game I’ve ever played. And they’re not all benign marshmallows. You can hit rainclouds, which gives Flight
Simulator’s windscreens a chance to shine as water droplets accurately snake across
the glass. And there are thundering great storms that
are hellish to be trapped in, but good fun to observe from afar. Such is the physical accuracy of the weather
systems that you’ll even get rainbows forming where they naturally should, which is pretty
magical. You can even cook up double rainbows, for
fans of ancient memes. And if the world isn’t serving you up skybox
to your liking, you can manually edit the clouds by raising and lowering individual
layers, letting you force those ludicrously pretty moments where clouds shadow each other. I feel like Ed Harris directing the Truman
Show, but for the whole planet. It’s unreal. When it comes to control, Flight Simulator
doubles as Zeus Simulator, too. All elements can be tweaked in real-time. The weather widget lets you set time of day
or whizz the bar left and right for your own time lapse show - even the stars in the sky
are accurately mapped to the date you’re looking at. Selecting weather presets gives you a decent
flavour of them all, but then you can go deeper and adjust your perfect conditions. I think you could probably just boot up Flight
Simulator as a weather sandbox and have a good time - giving your house the white Christmas
it never normally gets, or thrashing some forests with a mighty gale. It’s something you can find yourself tinkering
with for hours, as you create perfect sunsets to take photos of, or land in some serene
valley, set the mood and watch the world go by. When the game gets VR support in a later update
this year, I think there’s a good chance I’ll step into this world and never return. And if you want a more realistic flight you
can opt for live conditions. They come fitted as standard, with Flight
Simulator using real-time weather data from MeteoBlue to ensure the skies mimic those
above us. Again, it’s the perfect feature spread to
accommodate everyone from hardcore simmers to cloud-watching romantics. And perhaps the biggest surprise of them all:
I was actually able to play this. I think there’s a lot of people out there
who’ve bounced off these games and never returned - I don’t think I could even take
off when I tried Flight Simulator 95 as a child. Perhaps it’s the console influence of this
Flight Simulator eventually coming to Xbox, but Asobo have made a very accessible game. There’s a great suite of tutorials that
introduce enough of the basics for you to start touring the world in ten minutes, and
if you aren’t kitted out with the yoke peripherals and rudder pedals, you can easily steer a
plane with an Xbox controller. That isn’t to say the simmers are getting
a bad deal - there’s a sea of buttons in every cockpit that I’m terrified to touch,
in case they make the wings fall off - and the meat of Asobo’s recent introductory
presentation focused on vastly improved aerodynamics. As a self confessed newbie, a lot of this
stuff went over my head - I mean, quite literally - but that I’m sitting here telling you
now that this is one of the best gaming experiences I’ve had in a few years, hopefully speaks
to the amazing job Asobo have done. Given that this will hit Xbox Game Pass for
PC on August 18th means there’s no excuse for subscribers not to give it a go. I think you’ll be as dazzled as I am. Obviously, there's a lot more to be explored
in Flight Simulator - stuff that I’m still figuring out as I muddle through. I wanted this video to explain the things
that blew my mind and made me want to dig deeper into it - because that first hook is
everything. So let me know in the comments what features
you’d like to know more about, or if there’s anywhere on earth you’d like me to film
for the next video, and I’ll be sure to do it. I really hope you enjoyed flying with RPS
Airlines today - apologies for the lurches as we tried to line up nice shots. And I hope you’ll fly with us again - just
hit the big subscribe button in the middle and a member of our cabin crew will deliver
new videos to you throughout the week. Thanks for travelling with us, and hope to
see you again soon.
Any rumors of Microsoft bringing back combat flight sim?
Does anyone have a list? I don't really have the time to watch a 15 minute video for 8 things at the moment.
YOU WON'T BELIEVE NUMBER 6!!!!
The 9th is their dollar-to-euro conversion. One easy trick to convert 60$ to 70€ that you just won't believe!
I have really been looking at this and it is so darn pretty. I am definitely excited for what it has to offer.
There should be a big list with locations that you might want to visit.
Anyone else refuse to click on videos with titles like this no matter how interested you are?
That clickbait title though. Took me right back to 2001. Almost expected the preview to say something in the lines of "single moms in your area hate him for it! All you need to do is..."
Nice feature highlight. Every time I see a new video on this game it seems more impressive.