Early on in Terry Pratchett's novel The Light Fantastic, a spell is cast to map the world. It begins as a "fireball of occult potentiality," dangling in the Great Hall of the Unseen University, which evolves into a ghostly "embryo universe." The embryo expands "lightly as a thought," with spectral continents "sleeting" through walls and people. It surges across the landscape until the entire population and geography of the Disc is exactly duplicated and enclosed by a shimmering shadow-self of "shining threads that followed every movement."
]]>London Gatwick Airport is a rare shade of brown, known to neither science nor art. A brown that doesn’t appear on the light spectrum. No easel contains it. It is a dusty brown, a damp brown, a hot and earthy brown that hums with the stinging malodour of disturbed ancient moss where once old forests stood. Descending into Gatwick’s cloying brown from 33,000 feet is like flying under and up Gandalf’s wretched cloak and landing in one of the several horrible little magic pouches he keeps by his balls.
Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 captures Gatwick’s brown perfectly. Next to the stupefying natural beauty of Yosemite, the imposing imperial skyscrapers of the Manhattan skyline and the surging majesty of the Alpine peaks, this local rot-tinged patch of West Sussex is the most impressively realistic depiction of a place I have seen in a game.
]]>I've been looking forward to Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 since it was announced, but I might wait a while longer before trying to play it. It launched yesterday and currently sits at "overwhelmingly negative" Steam reviews due to long loading times caused by server issues.
]]>Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 launches on Steam and the Microsoft Store today. Developed once again by Asobo - otherwise celebrated for their stinking rat hordes - it builds upon the 2020 game by "[taking] advantage of the latest technologies in simulation, cloud, machine learning, graphics and gaming", in the words of the launch announcement release.
We've got a review in the works, but code has landed late, so our write-up might take a while. In the shorter term, I thought you might like to know how, exactly, MFS 2024 makes use of "machine learning" technologies, taking into account the energy cost of such wacky gadgetry and the creeping relationship between increased reliance on automated tools and laying people off. More immediately, you might like to know how much of your internet package it'll devour as you play.
]]>Me, I'm a simple sort. All I want from my flight simulators is an unerringly accurate recreation of dozens of aircraft, a perfect physics model that includes the spectacle of relevant weather events, and a complete, photorealistic and 1:1 scale depiction of the entire planet earth.
You, you might be one of those fancy types, you might want to be able to get a job in your flight simulator, like crop duster or fire waterer. That's what Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 is adding to the package when it launches in November. We now know its system requirements.
]]>I love me a Flight Simulator, but never more when there's some dramatic structure to my flight. That's why I've long been looking forward to Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024. It takes the staggeringly detailed world and flight model of Asobo's Flight Sim revival, and adds a job system on top. And now it has a release date: November 19th.
]]>When is a game not a game? When it’s a sim, according to the head developer of Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024. While we quickly agree on a "fair enough" response to this assertation of non-gameyness, we also can’t help but spend much of this latest Electronic Wireless Show podcast remembering the most fun we’ve in the diverse world of sims, be it some actual flight simulating or merely bullying smaller dinosaurs. Also: we chat about how big a deal it is that the Metal Gear Solid Master Collection might not support mouse and keyboard on PC, and discuss what we’ve been playing this week.
]]>FlightSimExpo is underway in Houston, Texas, and yesterday Microsoft and Asobo delivered a lot of new detail regarding the recently announced Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024, its new aviation activities, and changes to its physics simulation and performance.
]]>It's probably quite difficult, after you've mapped more or less the entire planet, to work out what to add to a Microsoft Flight Simulator sequel. The answer turns out to be: jobs.
Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 was revealed at tonight's Xbox Showcase and it'll include the ability to not only fly all sorts of aerial vehicles, but to fly them with purpose - whether an air ambulance, aerial firefighting, crop dusting, hot air ballooning, or about a dozen other roles.
]]>I wouldn’t call it a new year’s resolution – mine for 2022 are learning piano and using fewer dashes – but generally I want to try new things with my PC. And one such opportunity recently presented itself via the new Turtle Beach VelocityOne Flight yoke controller: I was going to learn how to fly.
In Microsoft Flight Simulator, obviously, but this honking great console of handles, buttons, joysticks and levers definitely looked like the right tool for the job. A simple flight stick this is not: there’s a full 180-degree yoke handle, an integrated display that can data like flight times, and a modular (but included as standard) throttle quadrant. The kind of thing you might own if your PC resembles a bisected turbine.
]]>One of my favourite games ever is 2007’s Attack On Pearl Harbor. It was an arcade WW2 dogfighting game, that managed to cunningly strip away all the technical complexity of flying a plane, and just have it be pure shooty fun. I’d love to recommend you play it too, but it has entirely vanished from existence. Once on Steam but there no longer (due to “various legal and business reasons” I was once told), I’ve deliberately kept it installed on my PC so it cannot disappear from my account. I am one of very few people who can play this game, and that’s a crying shame.
So it was with buoyant heart that I noticed developer Björn Larsson, then of Legendo Entertainment, now of Ace Maddox, has returned to the genre with the Early Access release of Flying Tigers: Shadows Over China [official site]. It was last year, but I just noticed. Well, he only just told me. It’s his fault.
]]>During the 1990s, cloud flanks were still blank, soft drinks came without A numbers, and the first Sutton Corp BrandGnat had yet to take flight. If you wanted to publicize your latest vehicle simulator, your best best was renting a page or two in a games magazine. Pulp-based periodicals like PC Gamer, PC Zone and Computer Gaming World came crammed with tempting ads for winged and wheeled fare. Looking back on those ads today, certain things stand out like Shermans on a skyline.
]]>...is now open! I'd like to thank everyone who contributed images and recommendations. The Hanging Committee's job was an absurdly difficult one. Beyond those burly security guards is a selection of exceptionally fine simulator screenshots (Wargames will have to wait their turn). Grab a complimentary flute of fizz and an Avro Vulcan shaped vol-au-vent and go gawp at the enlargeable masterpieces.
]]>The IL-2 Sturmovik series is one of those rare sims which stretched beyond its nerdy remit to attract an audience of people who'd never normally clamber into a virtual cockpit. Now developers 1C Game Studios are teaming with the Russian Military Historical Society to produce ILya Muromets, a new flight sim set during World War 1. It's set during the Eastern Front air war and named after the first airliner, and one of the first large bombers in aerial warfare. There's the first set of screenshots below.
]]>Last week's Flare Path contained a thorough report regarding Air Marshal Stone's experiences in French fantasy flight simulator BOMB. As bold as its capitalised letters, the game is an alternate history explosion of air buccaneers, sky pirates and casino-baiting. Robbing a casino with naught but a biplane and my wits ranks fairly high on the bucket list and while BOMB doesn't have a heist component, it's feats of derring-do invoke memories of Crimson Skies' roguish charm. The game is now available, although it's set to be released in five stages. The current build contains the first act (six missions) of the campaign, a skirmish mode, and multiplayer deathmatch, with a team variant. It's currently £7.75 through Desura and updates are planned monthly, through to June.
]]>Any game described "fwooshy" will immediately take up space on my hard-drive, and if it's also described as a "feel good flight sim" then I am down with it. That's what Sky Rogue is: a procedurally-generated arcade flight-sim painted in that happy blue that doesn't exist in nature (the one that Billy Connolly describes as "Fuckin' BLUUUUUEEE!"), but the blue that I think of when I think of Sega Dreamcast games. In that bluingest of blues you'll pick your aircraft, kit out its weaponry, and shoot things.
]]>Aircraft carriers are odd and brilliant. I rarely think about them but the trailer for Air Conflicts: Pacific Carriers just sent me into a tailspin of questioning. Who first had the idea to build mobile artificial islands that are, as I understand it, motels for murderous planes? Check in, fuel up, admire the cheesecake nose art on the 22nd's B-24s, then back to the business of battle. The Pacific was strewn with carriers, as well as the ruined parts of men and machines, and Air Conflicts has plotted a course to the heart of it. Trailer below.
]]>Welcome aboard Microsoft Flight gfwlivesetup_4d5308d2e0000001_DIR.exe. Our free-to-play sim set in the skies of Hawaii, but we've been redirected to land on a strip near Tim Stone's house. He'll be trimming the review rudder for us sometime this week. We offer complimentary Big Island, planes and missions. Drinks and light refreshments, such as additional landscapes, planes and missions, can be purchased from our Marketplace. If you'll look out your window to the left, you'll see the launch trailer. And on the right, that black mountain spitting blood-red lava into the air, engulfing the 'Limping Kitten Cattery' in choking, sulfurous, acid rain is GFWL Mountain. There's no way to avoid it. The stick has locked. We're going innnnnnnnn!
]]>After over 340 years in development, there's finally a trailer for Microsoft Flight. It's the reboot of the previously defunct Flight Simulator series, beginning stuck on the islands of Hawaii, but coming out for free. The trailer doesn't really emphasise the hardcore side of the game at all, so those hoping to find out if it'll meet their MSFS needs will have to wait a bit longer.
]]>Microsoft Flight Simulator was dead for a while, but it's due to return with one less word next year. Microsoft Flight is the name for the rebooted grandaddy of stately, faithfully-recreated aeorplanes, presumably because someone in marketing decided 'Simulator' didn't sound suitably lifestyle. Microsoft Game Studios have been quietly documenting MSF's progress over on their website for a while now, but they've just announced plans to open the bomb bay doors to interested beta testers next month. That all happens here.
]]>Take On Helicopters, Bohemia Entertainment's civilian helicopter sim, has landed. Or taken off. Or remains hovering, terrifying, in the air, threatening to remove fingers from waving hands. Our lovely Tim was quite taken with it and now you can be too. It's on Steam for $49.99 or £31.99 and is also available on a whole crate-load of international distributors. Tim recommended it for anyone with even a passing interest in flight sims, so fire up those rotors and watch out for crosswinds. The release trailer's fuelling up after the jump, and features footage of some thrilling low-altitude flights through the tree line.
]]>Air Conflicts: Secret Wars plunges beneath the surface of World War II, even though it’s set entirely in planes rather than submarines. What does it all mean, and is the game the sort of terrifyingly accurate simulation that I struggle to get off the ground, or a point and shoot arcade game suitable for a landlubber with no air-legs? And should I have used the term “landlubber” in a non-nautical context? Here’s Wot I Think.
]]>My left mouse button is confused. It's just spent five unbroken hours with a Bohemia Interactive game and not once was it asked to snuff out a man's life. There were times when I felt like asking it to snuff out a man's life, but as the preview build of Take On Helicopters doesn't include player firearms, such a request would have been fairly pointless. After the jump, a picture of the man I wished dead, plus twelve hundred words where four -“Take On Helicopters! Gosh!” - probably would have sufficed.
]]>It is with some nervousness that I attempt to share news of the release of hardcore flight sim DCS: A-10C Warthog. It sounds and looks like a pretty remarkable achievement, but as I tend to start weeping uncontrollably if you put me on anything more complex than Crimson Skies or Stunt Island I may not be best placed to successfully identify the major lures of this beast. That said, it does include a 'game' mode as an alternative to exacting simmery, so perhaps I'd not be completely out of my depth.
]]>When Fighter Squadron: Screamin' Demons Over Europe touched down in early 1999 it found all the comfiest armchairs in the mess bagsied, all the comeliest WAAFs spoken for, and all the Brylcreem in the local branch of Boots sold out. The previous year European Air War, Jane's WW2 Fighters, and Combat Flight Simulator had arrived and snaffled everything. Obscurity beckoned until a band of inquisitive erks led by one ArgonV noticed the sim's mod potential and set to work. The most impressive product of their labours to date - a massive WWI TC - has just been released in a convenient standalone package. If there's a better free combat flight-sim available, I'm unaware of it.
]]>WWI boffins came up with various solutions to the Western Front mud problem - floating roadways, artillery shells that spread sawdust, boots in the shape of boats, snorkels... By far the cleverest though was a device called the Aero Plane. Essentially a winged car made of kindling, piano-wire and old big-top canvas (hence Richthofen's Flying Circus) these machines allowed soldiers to fight and stay clean. Rise of Flight, the beta of which I've been dabbling with for the last couple of days, celebrates this momentous military breakthrough in an uncommonly realistic manner.
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