When Microsoft first began releasing the World Updates for Microsoft Flight Simulator, they were venturing into territory that hadn’t yet been fully realised. The concept for simmers was still fairly new. Japan and North America came before the UK and Ireland World Update, but the trend was starting to really gain momentum at that time.
During 2021 when World Update III was released, some areas lacked the quality we have come to expect. Parts of London looked like a post-apocalyptic, melted mess and the data itself was not to the standard that was hoped. It may have taken 3 years, but World Update 17 is here to right those wrongs and make an update focused on the United Kingdom & Ireland actually being more representative of the whole of the United Kingdom & Ireland.
Just before the release of this new World Update, I sat down with Jorg Neumann, Head of Microsoft Flight Simulator to see why they felt it was important to return to the UK & Ireland. Part of that reason is technology progression and new hardware enabling the Bing team to capture highly detailed data.
“Honestly, the flight sim team can’t take credit here. This is the Bing Maps team,” Jorg said. He added that the technology is just so much more optimised now that provides much cleaner data to use. “So you can see the buildings are straight off the roads are flattened and it’s also when you look at the polygonal makeup of the thing, it’s a lot cleaner. So this is all as I said, I always feel like I said for the beautiful thing about this digital twin is that it will grow with technology over time and technology is only getting better. Sensors are only getting better. This is it’s what happens when you go fly those cameras over the countryside. It just looks near perfect.”
From the screenshots and trailers, it’s obvious just how far it has come. POIs look far more realistic, the included photogrammetry cities are richer in detail, and the colourisation is much more vibrant than ever before. The million-dollar cameras used to capture all are really beginning to demonstrate just how much difference it can truly make.
But it goes further than just improvements in hardware. All these teams within Microsoft are collaborating to ensure that skills are best utilised to provide even more realism. Jorg explained:
“So also the Bing team did something called shadow removal, which is basically the analyze the imagery, figure out exactly where the dark areas are, brighten those you know, two pretty large extents. And then the natural lighting actually will cast a shadow.
So this whole double shadow stuff is gonna go away, which is cool and it’s not done yet on the cities, but we can at least look at that again because we tried that in 2018 or something well before we shipped in Seattle.”
He explained that in cities with loads of tall towers, double shadows would appear and spoil the immersion. “What’s going on?,” users would ask the Microsoft team. “We’ve been trying for a while to get get rid of this shadow-casting stuff that you get out of photogrammetry. And I think we’re making progress for it’s gonna go out countryside 1st and then it’ll go to the hopefully this is the cities later.”
As to why this was a World Update and not a City Update, Jorg said he wanted to right a wrong from the original UK & Ireland Update. At the time, data was pretty limited so it felt like it was more like an England update despite some representation in Scotland, NI and Ireland. This time, with more time and information, Microsoft were able to provide a more rounded approach to this World Update.
“I look back in 2021 when we did the Third World update, you know I called it UK and Ireland and there was literally not an Irish city in 3D. There was nothing in Scotland. There was nothing in Wales
There was a real imbalance between everything and that’s not at all what I want, so I was like, I need to re-do this.”
A short while back, Euopre deregulated much of its data providing it would prove useful for the general public, and so, vast amounts of data could be obtained for free. This new access meant that areas across Europe, including England, now had much higher quality data to make the forgotten parts of the update to now be digitally recreated in the simulator.
And to help simmers explore all parts of the UK & Ireland update, a range of airports were picked to help encourage vast exploration. Stansted to appeal to those wanting a big airport to do airliner flying in England, Sumbrugh Airport for a taste of Scotland, Cork to bring people to Ireland, Cardiff to represent Wales, and finally Farnborough to celebrate the real-world aviation event happening this week.
Part of the reason these World Updates are so packed with content is thanks to the support of the third-party developers who help to bring this all to life. iniBuilds and Gaya Simulations are credited with building POIs and airports for this World Update. I asked how much influence Jorg has on what appears in each World Update. He said that fundamentally he lets the creators bring ideas to the table, and if there’s passion and reasoning, then it gets the green light.
“It’s all collaborative, right,” Jorg begins. I hardly ever say specifics about what airports to make to the likes of Gaya [Simulations]. The cool thing about them is they know a lot more about airports than I do, quite frankly, and so they make suggestions.
I have a certain budget that I have in mind for how much I want to spend on the world update. But after that, it’s just a collaboration and then we have fun doing the research for each update.”
As for how the research goes, Jorg told me that he usually starts with the Microsoft team and then it just grows from there. Soon, he’s emailing tourist bureaus asking what they think would make for some interesting POIs and locations. All of this gets put together and then trimmed down to make the content list for the World Updates. This is a multi-year process and Jorg is already thinking about 2028’s content.
One thing Jorg was really keen for people to know is that he hears the community’s cries for locations in other parts of the world, like South America and South Africa.
“I care about South America,” he explained passionately. He explained just how complex the operation is for capturing this data. “We could never get permission to fly some of the cities because there’s there’s oftentimes because an ATC that controls the airspace and there’s sometimes military airports, at which point the military has to clear it. And then the weather needs to be right, needs to be in the right season. Because if the sun is not too low, all the buildings cast shadows and it doesn’t look good. So the the window is pretty small and then and then in Brazil it’s raining, it rains all the time.
It’s true also for England by the way!”
And whilst there is a plan, Microsoft is open to shifting things if it makes sense to do so. “When somebody says, hey, there’s an air show in, it just says South Africa or somewhere, I don’t know if there’s one, but let us say there is one, I would suggest ‘OK, let’s let’s, let’s move that [world update] to that time.’
So we have enough puzzle pieces to actually make the whole thing work, but yeah, roughly.”
I can only imagine the size of the spreadsheet Jorg must have with all these details.
“There’s lots of airports going and local legends going and POIs. If the research is done of thousands upon thousands of POIs, then we get all this stuff in production and at some point, you sort of wrap it all up and make it make it nice and ship something.”
Since Jorg mentioned Local Legends himself, it would be rude to not find out what is going on with this one. During the most recent livestream, Jorg said that they were not able to disclose much due to licensing issues. At the time of writing, this appears to still be the case, but Jorg is confident that it will be resolved soon.
“I still think we’re gonna ship tomorrow because we just talked this morning. [Editor’s note, this interview took place on Monday, 22nd July 2024].
They really wanna do it. It really is like it’s it’s just it’s just humans, right? We all want to do it and we all think it’s cool, but the lawyers need to also be happy and do their work. So it’s in the final sign-offs. I have a trailer. Everything’s done. This is as close as it’s gotten to release. Sometimes it’s not obvious to everybody to see what’s going on underneath, but yeah, sometimes all this is signed off a few weeks before we release. But this one? Yeah, the day before, we’re still talking about the license.”
So whilst we wait to hear officially what the next Local Legnd will be, I took the chance to ask Jorg a little more about the process of picking these aircraft to represent these regions and how they work with their partners to bring them to life. It all starts with passion.
“I always say that whatever you do, be passionate that you need to, because you’re gonna take it as far as you can take it.” Jorg continued by saying that he gives teams some options, but most of the time, those teams immediately have a favourite and a good reason to work on something. He’ll always ask why a team is passionate about a certain project and it often comes down to there being a personal story behind it.
He said it starts out with a developer being passionate about a certain plane. Whilst a few names have appeared alongside a number of planes already (Aeroplane Heaven, Carenado, iniBuilds), Jorg is open to others throwing their hat into the ring. That said, there are still standards that Microsoft expect.
Regardless, what Jorg loves most is the fact that local legends truly represent their local regions, even if the rest of the world is unaware of those particular aircraft. He started by saying, “This is all about the people in the country, right?”
It makes me proud that their country is represented, that the airports are represented, that they are, they are, you know, landmarks are represented and that the aircraft are represented.”
Jorg then went on to reveal some other aircraft series’ that he had envisioned.
“That’s the word famous, and some of them are huge production numbers and some of them are the record setters are actually used to have like a category that I want. I wanted to call him record setters and nobody liked it. Like everybody in the firm was like, that’s not a good name.”
It may not be the best name choice, but I can certainly see what he is looking to achieve. That said, he did reveal a new series that may actually be a future aircraft type.
“Should I tell you this?” he started to say. “Go on…” I replied, itching to learn more. “Uhhh…”, a hesitant Jorg began. “It’s called ‘Unfulfilled Dreams’’.”
Jorg did not dive too deeply into the meaning, but we can only envision it’s to do with those aircraft that either never really entered mass production, or were close to entering production, but never crossed the line. Regardless, Jorg clearly has lots of ideas and plans in mind for future aircraft.
I was curious as to whether Local Legends saw better sales in specific regions, so I asked Jorg if that was reflected in the data through Marketplace.
“I think that’s true. I mean, what I would say, if anything so far we have gone, we’ve done a like it’s mostly based on the data we have honestly like you know States, Western Europe or Australia, you know those are big aviation countries.”
Going back to future World Updates and the plan to tackle regions and areas that some simmers felt are underrepresented. “I’m happy that we have a plan in Africa now so we can get some cities going and all that.” Great news for those awaiting on African cities. We also hear the cries of people wanting more in South America, and Jorg is just as desperate. It just comes down to the data, Government approvals and getting those multi-million dollar cameras into the region. Microsoft and the Bing team aren’t ignoring those areas, it’s just a matter of logistics.
And with that, we ran out of time. As usual, Jorg expressed his desire to really make sure that World Updates continues to bring value to simmers and also open up more discovery for all. “I think we can we can do some good here to bring flight sim into the entire planet and that’s that’s what I’m hoping for to some degree with these world updates.”
It’s evident to us that World Updates are a big part of the future of Microsoft Flight Simulator and the upcoming Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024. The consensus we have seen so far from the community is that World Update 17: United Kingdom & Ireland is a real step up from the one we saw 3 years ago, which demonstrates just how the new technology and data have improved things.
It really brings us full circle as to why Microsoft returned to the UK and Ireland for the latest World Update.
A huge thanks to Jorg for taking the time to chat to us.