When I last spoke to Neumann, it was to preview the launch of the Xbox Series X/S versions of Flight Sim — the first time the series had ever come to consoles. Of course, that brought in a whole new wave of players who had never experienced the series, and the team took great care into creating tutorials and other guiding missions to ease them in.
Fast forward over a year and Neumann says he’s happy to see how this new audience has received the game. “It was great. The audience is huge — we doubled the audience.” And that was just with the native Series X and S versions. This past March, Microsoft added Xbox Cloud Gaming support to the game, letting players stream it to the last-gen Xbox One and, even, mobile devices.
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Sharpening Virtual Flying Skills
When Microsoft and Asobo released the 2020 version of Flight Simulator, it provided some much-needed engagement for real-world pilots grounded at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic . The software’s advanced scenery and aerodynamic modeling allowed many frustrated aviators to practice their flying skills. Whether or not the flight time is loggable is another discussion. Either way, they could practice piloting, instrument scanning, and radio navigation.
While flight simulators are not helpful for ground operations, like parking or taxiing an airplane, some flight training academies encourage pilots to improve their skills through home-based flight simulators. An example is a Melbourne, Australia-based flight school that has developed online training modules and recommends supplemental practice via Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020.
Who’s making FS2020?
When Microsoft closed the developer of Flight Sim X, Aces Studio, in 2009, there was some concern about the future of the Flight Simulator series. With 2020’s Microsoft Flight Simulator, however, Microsoft has chosen French developer, Asobo Studios, to create it. Asobo was once known as the developer of major Pixar sims like Wall-E, Up, and Toy Story 3, but more recently has been lauded for its efforts with A Plague Tale: Innocence.
With a near decade-and-a-half gap between the release of the new Microsoft Flight Simulator and its predecessor, it should come as no surprise that Flight Sim 2020 is a major update, upgrade, and overhaul of previous flight sims. It features massive improvements in graphics, with a brand new engine, and heaps of exciting cloud interaction. Not only that, but it also features real-time satellite data tracking to create a world that is not only better looking and more immersive than ever before, but as close to the living and breathing contemporary world as possible.
Microsoft Flight Simulator: 40th Anniversary – trailer
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“When I first pitched this, the very first demo I showed to Phil was Seattle in 3D”, he told us.
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Colleges and universities are more reluctant to ban ChatGPT, The New York Times reported on Monday, and professors are instead changing their courses in response. We’ve reached out to the University of Washington about its stance on ChatGPT and will update this story when we hear back.
Some believe the technology can enhance the learning experience by letting teachers “model the concepts they want students to understand,” and provide preliminary feedback on students’ work, noted Ben Talsma, a learning solution specialist for an education nonprofit .