Microsoft continues with its peculiar logbook of Microsoft Flight Simulator, and on this occasion they wanted to talk about the possibilities of multiplayer which will offer the highly anticipated aviation simulator that the company has been preparing for months. The wait is taking forever, but as you can see below, it will be worth it.
A world in which to fly together
Microsoft's idea is to offer a single world in which all the pilots on the planet fly together. And when they say all the pilots on the planet, they mean those who are playing virtually in Flight Simulator and those who are doing it in reality on their planes. This is possible thanks to the use of Azure servers distributed throughout the world that, with the help of artificial intelligence, will be represented on a map in real time with each of the locations. In case of losing a signal, the AI will continue to calculate the route until the signal returns.
Various game modes
When it comes to connecting to the world, we will have several options depending on the style of play we want to play, depending on who we want to fly with and how we want to fly. One of them will be the way Live Players Only, which will force the players to follow all the rules in a much stricter space in which they will have to strictly follow all the rules of the airspace, also enjoying a system of weather conditions in real time, so that if we it rains while we fly over the Azores, it will mean that at that precise moment it will be raining in the Azores.
To complete the mode, we can also include real-time traffic, which will complete the real-world experience by having to respect the positions on the map, the rules, and endure the weather conditions in which we find ourselves.
Another available mode will be All Players, which will allow you to play with all the players but with the conditions you want. The idea is that we can choose the weather conditions, the flight time, the altitude and density of the clouds, enjoying a completely personalized flight, but also accompanied by the rest of the players who are connected. Ideal for those who want to take walks and discover the world.
The last mode is that of groups, that will allow you to create personalized sessions in which all the members of the group fly with the same established conditions. The creator of the group will be in charge of defining this configuration, indicating the place from which they will take off and the route they must take to complete the session.
How many planes can be seen in the game?
Taking into account that we will have real traffic in real time, and that all the simulator players will enter the same world to play, won't we have an excess of information in sight? Yes, that could be a pretty obvious problem, however, even though the game controls all the planes that move around the world, the player will only see those within a 200 kilometer radius on his radar, whether they are real planes or virtual players.
This work will be automated and optimized by Microsoft servers, limiting multiplayer traffic to 50 closest planes so as not to compromise network performance. Another matter will be representing them visually on the screen, since their appearance will depend on the graphic configuration of each player, although this will not prevent us from seeing all the planes present through our radar. There will be certain distance limits to see a plane and we can choose if we want to see the name of the pilot on the plane or not.
With the idea of maintaining a completely real experience, Microsoft Flight Simulator makes use of a series of technologies that represent the flight of each aircraft in a completely smooth and continuous way, avoiding spontaneous appearances or intermittent flights.
Unfortunately, the game still does not have a specific date for its release, but everything indicates that there is less to know anything about it. Of course, in the meantime you could burn time trying some of the free flight simulators that we leave you as proposals. And you, have you already prepared your pilot uniform?