A new Microsoft Flight Simulator game is currently being developed for Windows PCs, and the company already said that it’s planning to bring it to Xbox One consoles as well. The project seems to be getting increasingly ambitious as time goes on, as a VR version is apparently on the table.
Speaking with AVSIM (via VentureBeat), Microsoft Flight Simulator head Jörg Neumann explained that VR support has been one of the top feedback items he received after the first Flight Simulator trailer was shown at E3 2019, which pushed the team to explore the feasibility of the project:
“Right after the E3 trailer came out there was a lot of people making that exact assumption, that ‘Oh yeah, this better be supporting VR right from the get go.’ It honestly wasn’t our plan. But we are listening, and we heard it, so we will try our darnedest to make it happen. Whether or not we’re going to pull it off for launch, we can’t commit to that at this point in time, but we are aware of the desire […] We will try to prioritize that over other things.”
Even though Neumann isn’t promising to get VR support ready for launch, it’s great to see that this should become an option down the road. The new Microsoft Flight Simulator game is currently being developed by Asobo Studios, a French company that previously worked on several Xbox Game Studios titles such Kinect Rush: A Disney-Pixar Adventure, Disneyland Adventures, and ReCore. The new flight simulator will also leverage Azure and Bing Maps to render over 2 million cities and 40,000 airports, and a first technical alpha will be available for select beta testers on October 24. If you haven’t done it yet, you can sign up for the Flight Simulator Insider Program on the dedicated website.
