Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 looks more beautiful than ever for a much smaller download size

With the new update, the sim will only download what you fly over in a rolling cache

Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 / Microsoft

I’m in the cockpit of the Cirrus Vision Jet, a state-of-the-art, single-engine aircraft, named after its large, panoramic front windows, when the pilot tells me I’m doing the takeoff. 

I laugh, he doesn’t, and I realize he’s not joking. 

He taxis me onto the runway using the throttle and foot pedals while talking me through the pre-flight checks and endless panels of buttons I’ll never understand. 

“If I pass out, just press this button,” he says, pointing to a big red switch above my head called Safe Return Autoland, “and the plane will automatically land you at the nearest airport.”

Every aircraft should have one of those, I reckon. Pretty handy to have a “don’t die” button.

“This one’s the lever for the Cirrus Airframe Parachute.

“Right, I think you’re ready – let’s throttle up and get airborne.” 

I push the throttle forward and the jet picks up speed at a terrifying pace. 

“Now pull back on the side yoke,” the pilot says. “But not too much.” 

I pull back as visions of my heavyhanded flatpack furniture fails flip through my mind like a pop-up picture book, and feel the craft become weightless. 

Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 / Microsoft

As soon as we’re in the air, it’s like we’re bobbing in the middle of the ocean, the wind cradling our little metal tube and rocking us ever-so-gently as we careen toward impossibly fluffy clouds and wide open sky. The angle of the incline pushes me back into my seat, but I’m comfortable and my underpants are fully dry, I promise. 

“Now press that button to pull in the landing gear,” the pilot says. 

I do, and we keep climbing. 

“Now bank left toward the Grand Canyon,” he says, “But not too much.” 

There it is again. Not too much. It’s hard to know what too much is, but I err on caution. I later find out that this particular plane will just nudge you back the other way if you do mess up. 

Technology is wild. So is nature. 

The Grand Canyon stretches beneath us to my left as the angle of the bank pulls me toward the window. I saw it earlier in the day from the ground, but up here it seems to stretch on forever, like a skybox – its vastness is surreal – and I focus on a river that snakes through a pass. 

“Quite something, eh?” The pilot says. 

“It really is. You get to do this every day?”

“Erryday.” 

Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 / Microsoft

Later, I’m sitting in a function room in a hotel a few miles from the Grand Canyon and I’m playing Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024, which features a digital representation of the entire Earth – 1:1 in scale. I take to the skies above a virtual Grand Canyon and it’s almost exactly like the real thing – the only major difference is your stomach doesn’t fall out of your backside and you don’t contemplate your insignificance in the largeness of nature. 

The latest major update for Flight Sim sees more detail added to the Microsoft Bing-powered world, from the textures on the ground to the points of interest, the lighting, and even the animals you can now find running across the plains of this virtual Earth the developers call our “digital twin.”

I’m shown a wireframe shot of the ground from the 2020 version of Microsoft Flight Simulator, each section of land shown as a huge, flat triangle before the image switches to the new wireframe, and suddenly every tiny rock is made up of more polygons than the entire scene was previously. The level of detail of the world has been increased by 4,000. 

Just in time, too. With an all-new career mode where you can be anything from a crop duster pilot to a fire and rescue helicopter specialist, as well as new soft-body vehicles such as zeppelins and hot air balloons, we’ll be flying closer to the ground than ever. 

Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 / Microsoft

The increased fidelity at ground level makes the world much prettier up-close for virtual tourists like myself, but that’s not all – it impacts the simulation. Where before you could land a plane almost anywhere flat (and most of the world was flat, but not in a conspiracy theorist kinda way), these more complex textures will now present as obstacles for landing and takeoff, meaning you have to pay more attention if you need to land in an emergency. This is also true for ground types – during one misjudged landing, I have to fully throttle up to pull my wheels out of the mud and get back on the runway. It’s a good job my real-life copilot did the taxi to the runway. 

• Read More: Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024’s career mode uses AI voices

Microsoft has purchased over 1 million square kilometers of LIDAR data to more accurately map the digital twin’s topography, and the team is using available satellite data to map parts of the world that are difficult to get data on due to geopolitics. The work will most likely never be done, but every update brings the digital twin closer to a fully accurate representation of our planet, down to the local flora and fauna. 

Pulling in live weather data, you can go anywhere on Earth and experience what it’s like right now, from sunny days to raging storms. It’s mind-boggling to consider. Imagine traveling back in time, strapping a VR headset to a young David Attenborough’s head, and showing him this. He’d die on the spot. 

Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 / Microsoft

As you’d imagine, there’s historically been a huge cost associated with this scale and fidelity. When it launched in 2020, the basic Microsoft Flight Simulator was a 100GB install. The developers have since released various world updates, new aircraft, and more that balloon the title to around 500GB. On Xbox Series X, that’s half of your hard drive. If you wanted to add all the community mods, that can push up to 2TB. Two Xbox Series Xs. Oof. 

Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 will be a fraction of that – way under 50GB for the initial install. How? Though the developers are focused on increasing the detail at ground level, they’re keeping the data up in the cloud. 

With the new update, the sim will only download what you fly over in a rolling cache. Whenever you pilot a vehicle, it’ll be added to that cache. You’re realistically never going to visit every place in the world, so it’s a smart solution in a game that’s already always online by design. It also means everyone gets every world update released from now until the end of time without a separate install. 

Whether you’re an avionics aficionado or a curious traveler, Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 is more accessible, more realistic, and more beautiful than ever before.