Microsoft Flight: what to expect

If you’re a regular here, you may have noticed a certain passion for flight simulation in our articles. Be it in space or at flight level 390, it doesn’t matter, we just love jumping into a virtual aircraft and fly around. Until now, the best know way of doing this was through a program called Flight Simulator, which Microsoft killed a few years ago. At the time, Microsoft promised that the flight simulation franchise would continue in one form or another. This week, Redmond confirmed that it is indeed following through with a new title: Microsoft Flight.

But let’s not open the champagne bottles yet.

The first, obvious, gargantuan, monstrous, scandalous thing about Flight is the omission of the word “simulator”. I immediately contacted Microsoft about this, and a spokesperson came back to me with this frightening answer:

With “Microsoft Flight” we’re approaching the flight simulation genre from the ground up, with the focus on the universal appeal of the experience of Flight. We believe the simplicity of “Microsoft Flight” perfectly captures that vision while welcoming the millions of existing Flight Simulator fans.

I know, dear sim fans, I know. What our virtual world needs is endless tweaking and optimizing, not a ground-up redesign. On the other hand, a dumbed down product designed to appeal to the trigger-happy halo-playing masses isn’t a simulator, so kudos to Microsoft for being honest about it and naming it right.

But is all hope really lost? A decisive factor when it comes to games is who is building them, obviously. Some games rely entirely on one man, like X-Plane, Flight Simulator’s main rival, which was built from the ground up by a genius called Austin Meyer.

In flight simulator’s case, it was a group of people called ACES studio. It’s precisely this studio which was let off a few years ago. When asked if former ACES members were behind Microsoft Flight, I was told by Microsoft that

Microsoft Flight is being developed internally at Microsoft by a team that includes many of the same creative minds that helped deliver countless entries in the Flight Simulator franchise.

This is good news, but I wasn’t completely convinced yet. Will I finally give up on my FS9 installation? One decisive factor will be realism. In this area, X-Plane will be hard to beat, because it uses something called blade element theory, rather than a physics engine based on static tables. In other words, it’s the physical features of an aircraft that will determine its performance, just like in real life. I asked Microsoft if they planned on implementing a new model, and here is what they replied:

We aren’t ready to share a specific development details at this time, but I assure you this game is very real.

Of course, the game is real, but will it feel real? Only time will tell. I wouldn’t expect a release before christmas of 2011, but we look forward to X-Plane 10 in the meantime.

Here is the official trailer: