Key Takeaways
- Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 borrows its animals from Planet Zoo.
- Flight Sim has been improving its ground simulation experience.
- Flight Sim 2024 is simulating over three trillion trees.
Head of Microsoft Flight Simulator Jorg Neumann has revealed that Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 borrows its animals from Planet Zoo, the zoo simulation game from Frontier Developments.
Neumann mentioned this in an interview with PC Gamer, while describing the improvements that Asobo Studio has made to the ‘on-the-ground’ experience of Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024. “I’ve worked with Frontier Developments for a long time,” Neumann said. “I don’t know if you know those guys, they make Planet Zoo, amongst other things. And I called my friend, the CEO. His name is Jonny. And I said Hey Jonny, I’m working on Flight Sim, can I have your animals from Planet Zoo? And he’s like yeah, why not? We actually grabbed all the Planet Zoo animals and stuck them into our world, which is cool, you know?”
Flight Sim Borrows Animals From Planet Zoo
I concur, that is cool. Flight Sim has always been adept at simulating the piloting experience, but in past instalments, the landing experience wasn’t anything worth talking about. I mean, it’s not called Walk Around The Sahara Simulator, so expectations had to be tempered. However, Asobo Studio is really upping the ground simulation experience of Flight Sim.
Along with Planet Zoo’s animals, Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 is simulating “3 trillion trees” along with rocks, pebbles and other landscape features. The more nuanced terrain present in the game has allowed Asobo to better simulate the physics of landing on different surfaces.
As Neumann puts it, “The reality is, if you land in a field that is ploughed, you’ll crash your plane. It depends on the weight, but typically, if it’s a light plane, you will probably nose-dive forward. So now we have every rock, literally every little rock, and your tires will hit them physically.”
I look forward to nose-diving my small aircraft into the ploughed fields of the West of Ireland during one of my daring dives. As I lay there crumpled in a heap beside my unsalvageable aircraft, I’ll take solace in the fact that the rock that ultimately destroyed me was rendered in beautiful detail by Asobo.
Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 expands the next-gen series further, adding a host of new technology for hyper-realistic weather and more. It also adds jobs for pilots to undertake, from shuttling skydivers and cargo to mounting daring aerial rescues.