Microsoft Flight Simulator France and Benelux Trailer Launches

Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 is continuing its trend of frequent updates just three months into 2021. Following Microsoft Flight Simulator's major VR update at the tail-end of 2020, the game has continued to receive updates that flesh out the world, add new planes, and implement various changes to the gameplay systems.

Now, Microsoft Flight Simulator's official Twitch channel debuted a teaser trailer for the game's next world update during a live developer Q&A session. This new Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 teaser trailer is just under a minute and a half long, but shows off scenery from France and the Benelux area, including landmarks such as the Eiffel Tower and the Arc de Triomphe.

Though there is no set release date, this new content will be a part of the World Update 4 coming to Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020. Recently, Asobo Studio released World Update 3, which showed off landmarks from the United Kingdom and Ireland. While some of the surrounding buildings may not be fully textured and detailed the landmarks themselves are incredibly well-realized. Though this fact has probably been stated before, the game really does appear as if it were real-life at times with how impressive the overall graphical fidelity is.

Aside from the World Update 4 content, the team also plans on adding things other than landmarks to the game in the near future. Recently, Asobo Studio announced Microsoft Flight Simulator would get its first commercial passenger jet for players to purchase and fly around the game's world. All in all, it seems that Microsoft Flight Simulator players have a lot to look forward to.

Game Rant recently had the chance to speak to James Gwertzman, the head of cloud gaming services at Microsoft. Gwertzman was one of the early pioneers in making cloud technologies specifically for video games, and since his company, PlayFab, was acquired by Microsoft three years ago, he has worked to improve the ever-expanding online components of countless titles big and small. In our interview with Gwertzman, he covered many topics from the future of machine learning to views on console exclusives, but an early discussion of Flight Simulator revealed one of his most interesting predictions for the games industry.

Microsoft Flight Simulator was one of the standout games of 2020 simply because of the scale of its ambition. Many people played it, whether hardcore simmer or not, just because of the staggering feat of re-producing the entire world, trees, houses, and all in a video game. Not only that, but real-time weather data, real-time commercial flight data, and regularly updated satellite imagery and landmarks lend this simulator an almost absurd level of realism.

The game is so large that,even with a massive download, most of the data has to be streamed to users in real time as they fly along. It seemed at the time that few companies other than Microsoft—with its access to so much data and technology—could make something of that scale and deliver it to so many users. Gwertzman, however, believes that won't be the case for long.