Flight Simulator fans may find themselves in a slightly unique position in November, when Microsoft unleashes its more advanced Flight Simulator 2024 on the world, though the version that arrived in 2020, which was promised a 10-year roadmap, will still be installed on plenty of systems.
There will undoubtedly be people who won’t adopt the new version for a variety of reasons – cost, compatibility, or PC hardware, so what if you’re one of those people? Will you be left in the jet wash on the new shiny toy?
It looks like you don’t have to worry, as Microsoft Flight Simulator head Jorg Neumann has confirmed it. Interview with FSElite Last week we saw that we can expect to see updates for the current sims until 2028, which equates to roughly a decade since release.
Microsoft is confident that most mods, airports and aircraft will work when MSFS 2024 is rolled out, but even then there’s going to be a messy overlap with companies probably having to develop two versions of add-ons going forward, one that takes advantage of the new sim and one that doesn’t. More likely is that support for MSFS 2020 could end pretty quickly, although the fact that it’s gained 15 million pilots since launch could speed that up a bit. Nobody’s going to walk away from a guaranteed user base for a brand new one.
Having two comparable products running simultaneously doesn’t happen often in the games industry. If we talk about racing games, things like Project Cars 2 completely disappeared from Steam after Project Cars 3 came out.
It will be very interesting to see how this is handled – it will require some sensitivity to prevent some people from getting involved.
In the meantime, if you’re looking to improve your cockpit before playing Flight Simulator 2024, you might want to check out the new Flight Simulator Pro Military Edition from Next Level Racing Which has been launched recently.
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