Microsoft Flight Simulator Mod Adds Helicopters

Microsoft continues to add a ton of new content to its most recent iteration of the popular Microsoft Flight Simulator, from commercial jets to updated, hyper realistic versions of France and Benelux. Some fans have specific wish-list items for the game, however, and when Microsoft does not provide, they take matters into their own hands. Such is the case for the modders adding helicopters to the game.

Microsoft Flight Simulator currently does not support travel via helicopter, and the official plan to add them into the game will not be implemented until 2022. For the mod team Hype Performance Group, known for an Icon A5 mod that improved the performance of the plane, this was simply too long a time to wait.

The team's newest project adds the Airbus H135 helicopter to the game. While previous fan mods have added elements as inspired as giant PS5 consoles to the Microsoft Flight Simulator city skyline, because of the challenges associated with getting a helicopter to feel like it should, the Airbus H135 project is actually the first time a helicopter mod has been successfully attempted.

The mod is still a work in progress however, and while some issues do persist with the controls and performance of the H135 helicopter, it is certainly starting to look as detailed and realistic as any official Flight Simulator vehicle. With other Microsoft Flight Simulator mods including a stuck Suez Canal Ship, and with tons of official content planned for years to come, Microsoft Flight Simulator and its community will be around for a long time as Hype Performance Group continues to perfect the Airbus H135 mod.

In the last week, the world's economy went into its own lockdown. A huge freighter ship, the Ever Given, blocked the Suez Canal trading passage. The Suez Canal is infamous in world politics for its various historical crises. In 2021, The Ever Given gave the world a brief break from worrying over a pandemic to laugh at a really clumsy boat.

For every global comedy that runs amok, gamers are always quick to add their own humor to the situation. Unsurprisingly then, the gaming community has latched onto this crisis and released a huge swathe of game memes about it. However, not content to leave gamers to make the memes, even developers jumped on the sinking ship of Suez Canal memes.

Despite the level of meme production coming from corners of the gaming community, the event is having an impact on gaming. In fact, the famously scarce PS5 stock might be affected by the ship stuck in the Suez Canal. As such, even developers involved themselves in the meme creation. One Destiny 2 visual designer dipped their toe into the Suez Canal meme game on the 27th March. In response to a week of non-stop news about the trapped boat, he tweeted the following image and caption:

With 11 thousand likes, this attitude was certainly popular. Some commenters wondered how much health the Ever Given would have as a Destiny 2 Raid Boss, whereas others focussed on the actual weapon that Elliot Gray appears to be wielding in the picture. The gun in question is the Gjallarhorn. "Gjallarhorn" is the name of a sounding horn used to bring on the Norse apocalypse, but in Destiny the weapon its known for an incredible destructive power due to the splitting rockets it launched. Despite being such an immensely powerful weapon in the first Destiny, it did not carry over to the sequel.