Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 lets you climb out of your plane, walk a path, and watch the sunset

Microsoft Flight Simulator already sounded pretty spectacular, but my excitement levels have only just been skyrocketed after developer Asobo revealed that you’ll be able to step out of your plane, stroll through the countryside (or anywhere else), and watch the sun set over your favorite corner of the beautifully recreated world.

That’s according to Jorge Neumann, Microsoft Flight Simulator boss, who shared the news in an interview with PC Gamer, reiterating how much extra detail is packed into the digital version of Flight Simulator 2024 of Earth compared to its already impressive predecessor.

For example, the team has improved the look of every airport, added glider fields, every oil rig and every lighthouse in the world. That’s in addition to “hundreds of species of animals running around,” and it also simulates “every ship on Earth” via their transponder signals — all of which, Neumann claims, you can land on. “I think we’re in a new era of making games that I think are going to break new ground, from a scale and complexity perspective.”

And then there are the trees. Trees are something Neumann has talked about before, but he now says that Microsoft Flight Simulator has the capacity to show every tree on Earth. “We have a machine learning look(it) up,” he explains, “and then we know what the tree is, even to the point where we know what the species is likely to be… and then we plant trees, literally trillions of trees, and it all happens at runtime, so it’s pretty accurate.”

But what I’m most excited about is all this talk of disembarking. With Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024, you can not only be a digital tourist in the air, but also on the ground. “You can now get out of the plane and walk around, in 2024,” Neumann reveals. “You can literally walk up your favorite mountain trail to your favorite cabin in the mountains. Sit on the lake. Watch the sunset. It’s really a digital twin that you can absorb.”

Neumann shares one more detail that might just beat the whole walking thing on the thrill scale. Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024, he says, won’t eat up your hard drive space like its absolutely gluttonous predecessor.

“In 2020, the initial install is 130GB,” he explains. “Then we have 17 global updates. If you do the math, we’re at 500GB. And then there’s 5,000 add-ons that people have made, which I think is two terabytes… (But) for Flight Simulator 2024, we changed all that. We basically went to a thin client architecture, and we’re not done yet. We’re shipping in November, but we think we’re… I would say 50GB or less, but with a lot more data, because we’re offloading more to the cloud.”

And Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 has a lot to cram in. Asobo has already confirmed that it will launch with a truly mind-boggling list of activities, including aerial firefighting, search and rescue, helicopter cargo transport, air ambulances, crop spraying, mountain rescue, skydiving, aerial construction, cargo transport, air racing, gliding, scientific research, low-altitude training, experimental trips, airship tours, hot air balloon rides, plus VIP charter and executive transportation services. And that’s before we even get to the planes.

Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 releases on November 19 for PC and Xbox Series X/S, so you still have time to pack your digital suitcase and prepare your flight plans.