In Microsoft Flight Sim’s multiplayer you’ll be able to fly alongside both real world air traffic and your fellow virtual pilots. Real world pilots are simulated based on air traffic data, Asobo say, and augmented by AI. Even if data for a particular plane falls off for any reason, in-game AI should continue flying it to its destination. As for the real pilots, Asobo show how you can choose filters to control who you’re actually flying alongside without having to swap sessions or any other usual multiplayer faff. “Live Players Only” is for the proper pilots who want to respect all the rules of flight. You’ll also be flying in weather conditions based on real world data and flying at the proper time of day as well. “All Players” and “Group” filters seem to do pretty much what you’d expect, seeing everyone or flying with chosen friends. In both modes, Asobo explain you can fiddle with weather a time of day to your liking. Great for staging screenshots, I imagine. In the video above, Asobo also go into how servers will choose plane visibility to keep your bandwidth usage manageable. You’ll only see planes withing 200km of your location and a maximum of the 50 closest planes within that radius. I’m having MMO flashbacks imagining a giant gathering of planes all parked on some remote runway. In their last video, Asobo shared how they manually edited 37,000 airports for Microsoft Flight Sim’s giant earth-sized simulation. Microsoft Flight Simulator is planned to release sometime this year, though we’ve not heard a firm date yet. You can keep up with development videos like these on the game’s YouTube channel.
