You Can Now Experience This Award-Winning Game In Virtual Reality
Xbox Game Studios shared a major update for one of its award-winning titles this week: Microsoft Flight Simulator. The latest installment in the Microsoft Flight Simulator (MSFS) series is now available to play in virtual reality. On top of being the first MSFS game to be released on console, this news also makes it the first VR-compatible game in the series.
In an Xbox blog post, Xbox Game Studios announced that Asobo Studios' Microsoft Flight Simulator is "now available on your favorite VR headset for PC" and promised it to be the "most immersive virtual flight experience in the new simulator to date." The blog post went on to say that VR was added to Microsoft Flight Simulator as a direct result of community feedback. To make the update as accessible as possible, Xbox Game Studios made this update available across several VR devices, such as "Windows Mixed Reality headsets (including the HP Reverb G2), Oculus, Valve, and HTC headsets." Users can simply download the latest update on Xbox Game Pass for PC, Windows 10, and Steam to get started.
Microsoft Flight Simulator has seen huge success this year, as the game received the award for Best Sim/Strategy Game at The Game Awards 2020 on Dec. 10. "The team is extremely proud that we have been able to follow the storied history of previous Microsoft Flight Simulator titles that received such accolades, and we feel humbled to be selected from the amazing group of games that were nominated for this award," Microsoft said in a blog post.
That night, it was also revealed that Microsoft Flight Simulator would be coming to the new Xbox Series X|S in summer 2021. A trailer for the next-generation console experience showed gameplay footage in "real-time 4K" on the Series X, offering breathtakingly realistic views of the world from the sky, set to Louis Armstrong's "What A Wonderful World."
Beyond its accolades and platform expansions, Microsoft Flight Simulator also hit a major milestone just last week: more than 2 million players have taken to the skies. The milestone was included in a set of numerical data from Microsoft, which also revealed that the game's pilots completed more than 50 million flights that totaled in distance more than 3.5 billion miles. As Microsoft calculated, that's 19 consecutive round trips between the Earth and the sun.
As the latest edition in a long-running franchise that dates back to 1982, Microsoft Flight Simulator has evolved quite a bit, now including some pretty impressive technology, geographical data, and real weather data. Fans may have been skeptical of the game at first, due to the physical version being released with 10 discs, but Microsoft Flight Simulator ultimately turned out to be an overwhelming success.