Microsoft Flight Simulator The 2024 roadmap for the remainder of 2026 is fairly complete with multiple updates planned.
City Update 15 is now available, incorporating new locations in Minnesota, Illinois and Wisconsin, adding the major cities of Chicago, Minneapolis and Milwaukee to Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024. You can get this update from the in-game market right now for free.
The next major planned update is Simulation Update 6. There is still no confirmed release date beyond a “July/August” windowbut it’s not that far away by any means. Simulation Update 7 Currently it is also planned October.
Sim Update 6 was first detailed at the recent Flight Sim Expo in Minnesota, along with a host of other Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 news.
You can watch the full keynote presentation in the video above. As for Sim Update 6 specifically, here’s everything we know so far.
Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 Sim Update 6: Downward Airflow Display
One of the technical features coming with Sim Update 6 is the airflow display.
Specifically for downdrafts, allowing you to visualize cold downdrafts due to clouds and weather, wind coming down mountain slopes, and vertical wind shear.
In an effort to improve helicopter physics from third-party sources, Microsoft is introducing a set of new debugging tools with Sim Update 6.
The helicopter assist debugging tool is designed to improve tuning assist and generally make them easier to fly. There will be displays for cyclic assist, tail rotor assist, and collective assist.
The rotor blade polar debugging tool will allow developers to see the relationship between lift and drag and visualize real-time polar lift, polar resistance and alpha of the blades.
Additionally, there will be new tools to debug vortex ring status and drift.
Neither is a feature that regular users will touch, but if you’re a fan of helicopter flying, these new tools are designed with the intention of improving your life in the future.
Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 Sim Update 6: Turbulence Warnings
When you fly a real airplane (or sit in the back of one), you can feel turbulence. But in a simulated environment this is not the case, at least if, like most of us, you don’t have an extremely expensive setup that can track motion.
With Sim Update 6, Microsoft will introduce new visual turbulence warnings that will provide information about intensity and cause.
Using the new option will also help provide valuable feedback to developers. When a player submits feedback about turbulence, they can now include a screenshot of the reading, which will help you better understand it.
Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 Sim Update 6: Airport Night Lighting
Sim Update 6 will introduce automatically added apron lighting at 2,236 airports, as well as fixing missing runway lights at 452 airports.
The developers have created multiple light poles with different properties that are deployed depending on the type of airport.
Additionally, by providing runway lighting at all airports, this opens up a wider range for night missions in Career mode. You can choose between lit and unlit missions.
Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 Sim Update 6: Career Mode
Career mode in Sim Update 6 will also have a new filtering layer that increases the variety of planes you can fly in missions.
When it launches, you will be able to fly any aircraft in all supported missions, and the new layer for the filter screen will help filter by aircraft.
Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 Sim Update 6: Bush Trips Are Back
One of the most requested features by the community is returning. Bush Trips will be ported from Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 to Flight Simulator 2024, and all 59 will be available for free with the update.
All travel on all aircraft will be integrated with the EFB and will benefit from the improved ground details available in Flight Simulator 2024.
Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 Sim Update 5.1 and Aircraft and Avionics Update 5
Sim Update 6 will be released in the same period as Aircraft and Avionics Update 5, which, among its new additions, will be the classic Boeing 707.
In the same presentation it was announced that these updates will be decoupled from Sim updates in the future and will be released in the coming weeks.
The Sim 5.1 update will arrive before both and its main feature will be the long-awaited arrival of gifts. You can give away content from the marketplace, whether it’s content you own or not, as long as you pay in USD, GBP or euros. The option will be added to the relevant product pages.
So there is a lot to look forward to and along with all this, we have already seen World Update 22which will arrive on July 4th.
In this we’ll have plenty of American national parks and monuments to fly over and, judging from what we’ve seen so far, some truly impressive landscapes.
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