After a series of closed alpha tests, from Microsoft Xbox Game Studios and Asobo Studios today announced that the next Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 flight will launch on August 18. Pre-orders are now available and FS 2020 will arrive in three editions, standard ($ 59.99), deluxe ($ 89.99) and premium deluxe ($ 119.99), with more expensive versions with more craft planes and international airports. .
The last part may be a surprise, given that Microsoft and Asobo are using Bing Maps resources and some AI magic on Azure to essentially recreate the Earth - and all its airports - in Flight Simulator 2020. However, the team must have taken extra time to make some of these larger airports particularly realistic and today, if you were to purchase one of these larger airports as an add-on for Flight Simulator X or X-Plane, you would easily spend $ 30 or more.
The default edition features 20 planes and 30 hand-modeled airports, while the deluxe edition exceeds 25 and 35 and the high-end version comes with 30 planes and 40 airports.
Among those airports not modeled in all their glorious details in the standard edition (they are still available there, however - only without some extra details) are Amsterdam Schiphol, Chicago O'Hare, Denver, Frankfurt, Heathrow and San Francisco.
The same goes for planes, with the 787 only available in the deluxe package, for example. However, based on what Asobo has shown so far in its regular updates, the 20 standard edition planes have also been modeled in much more detail than previous versions and perhaps even beyond what some add-ons provide today .
Given that many of the activities carried out by Microsoft and Adobo in this case involve the use of cloud technology for, for example, the streaming of some more detailed scenarios on the computer on request, it is likely that we will see regular content updates also for these various editions , although the details here are still unclear.
"Your fleet of detailed planes and airports of whichever edition you choose are all available on launch day, as well as access to ongoing content updates that will continually evolve and expand the flight simulation platform," is what Microsoft has to say about it for now.
We are likely to have more details in the coming weeks, as Flight Simulator 2020 is about to enter its closed beta phase.
