Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 is just a week away from its global launch across PC and Xbox Series X|S consoles. Asobo’s ambitious new sim promises an immersive, “next-generation flight simulation experience” to the masses.
Asobo has published a handy timetable in the form of a flight information board that will help incoming players know when to log on to the servers and take to the virtual skies.
Ready for departure
Even more so than its predecessor, Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 will be an intensely online-reliant application. Asobo has moved the vast majority of the sim’s data to cloud servers, with the information then being streamed to the player on an on-demand basis. This includes not just scenery and terrain data, but even aircraft will all be hosted in the cloud.
This will result in a significantly deflated install size, but with the requirement of a stable, fast internet connection. Asobo conducted an alpha test a few weeks ago which served as gameplay data collection. Hopefully, that also helped the team prepare for what is sure to be a massive launch day traffic jam.
This official chart displays all of the time zone-relevant schedule for the release of the sim.
As this is a global launch, players from each country will be able to log on at the same time, although the physical time in their region will differ. For instance, the indicated 8am PST launch time for Seattle matches the 11am EST launch time for New York.
What will make this particular launch different from that of the preceding Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 is that Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 is releasing across both PC and Xbox consoles all at once. Before, Xbox players had to wait over a year. Again, hopefully, this won’t make things too difficult on launch day.
Final preparations
Pre-orders are still live for Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 if you want to secure launch day access. There are multiple SKUs and we’ve outlined the difference between all of them in our handy article here. In the meantime, check out our impressions of the sim’s tech alpha here. If you plan on running this on a PC, make sure your rig is up to spec by viewing the system requirements.
Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 takes to the skies on November 19.
