Jorg Neumann on City Updates, July 4th Celebrations and Microsoft Flight Simulator [2020] updates through until 2028

Whilst the talk of the town may be more on Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 in the past few weeks, we are still 4 and a half months away from getting our hands on it. Despite that, we still have a fantastic simulator and one that is still seeing regular updates. In fact, as Jorg mentioned during FlightSimExpo, there is a plan to see updates for it right up until 2028.

We spoke to Jorg during FlightSimExpo 2024 about November’s new sim release. But with City Update IX dropping today and plenty of celebrations to come over July 4th, it felt right to be a bit more focused on the current simulator and updates to come. After all, the digital world of Microsoft Flight Simulator [2020] isn’t going away any time soon.

Our conversation couldn’t begin without speaking about FlightSimExpo 2024. “I think the team really came back elevated,” an excited Jorg said reflecting on Las Vegas last week. “I mean, I got so many emails from team members saying I feel so much more connected to the community [..]”. He said that since Houston’s event in 2023, he had been telling his teams that they just had to go. Their presence at the show was certainly felt by 20 members of the Microsoft/Asobo team at FlightSimExpo 2024. “They really, really loved it.”

During that weekend, a new City Update for Las Vegas was dropped, celebrating the fact it was taking place in Sin City. Whilst the community much appreciated this, I feel that City Update IX will be even better received. If you haven’t realised already, City Update IX goes cross-country and focuses on the northeast of the US, with Philadelphia, New York and Washington D.C. all getting a massive makeover.

It may seem like the city updates are just minor in comparison to the World Updates, but these smaller updates allow for a much higher level of detail in a focused way. Using top-tier technology, the teams can capture really high-resolution TIN data and put this into the simulator. Roads are vastly improved, buildings are no longer a blurry, melted mess, and coastlines/rivers are now much more defined.

City Updates as of late have focused a lot on North America or Western Europe, but Jorg explains the reason for this is down to the available data. It’s no secret that the simulator uses data from Bing, and surprise, most of the data available from Bing is North American or Western European. But that hasn’t stopped Jorg from working with partners to diversify the digital twin.

They are working with a company called VEXCEL and flight simulation has helped this company enter a number of countries around the world with their camera technology. These $1m cameras need to be shipped to the country, hooked up to a plane, hire a specific pilot and get the rights to fly over places in order to get the data. This is partly why it took 4-years for Microsoft Flight Simulator to get really accurate data for Washington D.C. Jorg said, “Basically we’ve tried for four years to get approval to fly over downtown Washington is basically it’s super restricted airspace, but if there’s anything going on in the city that immediately don’t allow anything. So you need a federal agency to sponsor you, and then it goes, it really goes through essentially Congress to get approval.”

It was worth the wait, as Jorg is very impressed and happy with how D.C. now looks in the simulator. He says that the data captured is now at a point where it’s harder for him to tell whether an object, such as the Lincoln Memorial, is a custom-made point of interest, or just the object rendered in the sim thanks to the TIN data.

Anyone who has ever been to Washington D.C., and loves aviation, will no doubt have visited the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum. I asked Jorg if he thinks we will ever see places like this be fully modelled inside so people can learn about the rich history many of these places hold.

“That’s a great question. So I actually, so I’ve done some experiments that I haven’t shown anybody yet of like some because there is this notion of like a that some people call it the earth SIM or something like this. [..] And so I’ve done some tests of some of the world’s most famous locations and allow you to go inside. But it’s not in the SIM. It’s not even going to be in 2024. It’s just something I’m playing with because ultimately I think that’s that’s where this all could be going,”

“Can I do the interior of the museums? Put the planes in there and do the tours of the museum with like the voice-over you would get when you have the little microphone in and stuff like that. And I honestly think that’s going to be a process cause most of what I got from the museums is like real worry is that that’s what detracts from their actual real-world visit us.”

The release of City Update IX focusing on large North American cities coming at the start of July is no coincidence. July 4th is one of the US’ biggest holidays of the year and Jorg and the team wanted to really have a way to celebrate within the simulator. Various fly-in sessions will happen for those wanting to fly with friends on online. As you do, keep your eyes peeled for the fireworks displays that will go off right across America. Jorg explained, “every city in America is going to have fireworks. So as the time zone sort of elapses as the sun goes down, there’s going to be fireworks everywhere.” That will make for some amazing screenshots and videos over the next week.

One thing I did ask Jorg was whether a decision was made to whether all these World and City updates would come as standard in Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024. He explained that things are far more streamlined this time around – something he made clear in 2023. Instead of downloading gigabytes and gigabytes of data, you will be streaming a lot more of that data as and when you need it.

Jorg continued, “you know the installer is way slow and the downloads are huge and all this stuff. We’re fixing it. I mean, it’s a night and day. Once you play it, [you’ll see] It’s night and day. You’re in the [simulator in] like a minute.”

Whilst there is so much hype already for Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024, it was interesting to see Jorg really retain his commitment to flight simulator just as he did back in 2019 when we spoke. I brought up his 10-year minimum commitment plan. He replied, Just to say it that way, when I said that 10 years ago, what I really said, I believe what I said was when I started the project, there was a world in which Microsoft had obviously stopped [flight simulation] development And I said, we’re not going anywhere and that’s what I meant to say when I when I put the team together, right. I basically said we’re gonna do this for at least a decade, so if you wanna work here, make no other plans.”

Despite this, he’s now saying we’ll see updates for Microsoft Flight Simulator right up until 2028. At least that’s the plan. “according to the plan will be a World Update 38 and that literally just takes us around the plan at once.” While this is the plan, things can happen at any time. Jorg gave me the example of how Stockholm was a challenge to bring to the simulator. “I had Stockholm was stuck in military review so I couldn’t ship it last November when it was supposed to ship.”

It’s clear that Jorg and the teams working on these updates all have the best intentions, but ultimately real-world agencies, equipment, or last-minute changes can have a big impact on the release schedule of much of this content. Regardless, there is still plenty to come with Local Legend 17 coming soon. “people [may have] noticed that Local Legend 17 was supposed to come out. I think it was a week ago and like, where is it Jorg and like uhh.” [Editor’s note, since this interview, it seems Local Legend 17 will be out today]

He continued, “I was actually just on the call with the dev team and we think we fixed the final bugs. I mean, you know, there’s no point releasing something if it’s buggy.”

Finally, with Gamescom happening next month, I was cheeky to ask if we could expect something at the show for attendees. He told me that “there’s a world update and the plane.” Sadly Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 won’t be there as it’s still a bit too early.

There we have it, a bit of background on City Updates and the future plans for Microsoft Flight Simulator [2020] until 2028. This year will be a busy one for the teams creating the simulators, but Jorg knows better than anyone just how much anticipation there is from the whole community to continue to see flight simulation thrive.

For now, enjoy the new cities in City Update IX and be sure to share your screenshots of fireworks are you soar over America on July 4th.