Xbox announces Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 and breaks the photorealism barrier

Just when we thought we had seen it all in terms of graphics, the Xbox Games Showcase 2023 has shown that video games are still capable of surprising us on a technical level. The Xbox event left us with a new trailer for Hellblade 2, probably the game with the best graphics to date, and what concerns us here, the presentation of Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024, a new installment of the series.

The announcement came as a surprise, as Asobo Studio, the developers of this sequel and the version that came out a few years ago, promised at the time that they would provide support and content for Microsoft Flight Simulator for the next ten years (2020). The decade seems to have been left in the legislature and next year we will see how far they are able to raise the bar and justify this new installment.

The original was close to excellent (92 on Metacritic) and sold more than two million copies, reviving an abandoned franchise and making it much more than a video game. Microsoft Flight Simulator is now even an official simulator in schools, a reference aviation platform that, in the trailer of its new release, seems to have surpassed the photorealism barrier:

Dune Expansion for Microsoft Flight Simulator

But even before 2024 and its sequel, the current Flight Simulator available on Xbox Game Pass will be updated with an expansion based on Dune, in which we will be able to travel the deserts of Arrakis, but instead of a sandworm, in the ships of the House Atreides:

“n partnership with Legendary and Warner Bros. Entertainment, Microsoft Flight Simulator has created an authentically detailed House Atreides Ornithopter. Master the complex controls of one of the most dynamic aircraft ever conceived as you pilot your ornithopter through awe-inspiring locations across the mysterious desert planet of Arrakis.”

The Dune expansion for Flight Simulator will be released on November 3rd to coincide with the theatrical release of Dune Part 2.