Microsoft’s presentation on Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 was the most well-attended announcement at Flight Sim Expo 2023. It has been almost three years since they released the platform, and everyone is excited about the upcoming MSFS 2024. I had the privilege to sit down with Jorg Neumann, head of Microsoft Flight Simulator, to talk about the recently announced simulator.

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Threshold: This is your first time at the Flight Sim Expo. How are you liking it so far?

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Neumann: It’s wonderful. We often go to big games shows—like back in the day E3 or Gamescom—with like tens of thousands of people, but this is more focused. It’s a single group of people who share a hobby and you can feel that they love it. Everyone is incredibly friendly and encouraging, and it feels like a community that’s very healthy. We’re very happy to finally be here for the first time.

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Threshold: When you envisioned Flight Sim 2024, what was the overall goal that you wanted to achieve?

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Neumann: Flight Sim is a platform, right, and we want to empower people. That’s actually the number one thing we try to do. Because the creator community that has formed is critical. It’s absolutely critical to the success of this field. 

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Threshold: What in particular do you want Flight Sim 2024 to address?

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Neumann: The sheer amount and size of addons. It was probably unexpected how much has been created already. We are now counting over 3,000 addons, with about 100 a week. We know that we need to enable that for the long haul.

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Threshold: What is the main challenge?

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Neumann: Flight Sim 2020 was just never conceived for the amount of data that’s coming in. And then on top of that, I promised that we would do monthly updates, and I’m totally determined to keep doing that. I should have just looked at the tally of gigabytes going up month over month over month. We’re now at 300-something gigabytes. We just plotted this out and said: ‘Holy moly, we’re going to be at 1 terabyte soon, and then we’re going to be at 2 terabytes, and nobody can download this stuff anymore.’ It's crazy!

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Threshold: How are you addressing that?

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Neumann: We knew we needed to make an architectural change that basically offloads more to the cloud, because you can stream infinitely, the ecosystem is no longer limited. Right now we are running out of memory sometimes. When a highly complex plane comes in, like a PMDG plane, it’s so detailed. We run into limitations, and I don’t want those limitations to keep the sim from being the best it can be. So we’ve changed the architecture fundamentally to go to a thin client. That enables groups like PMDG to make infinitely detailed planes. It sets us up for the long term.

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Threshold: There have been questions about access for addon developers, for access to different APIs. As an example, with MSFS 2024, would weather radar APIs be available for developers?

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Neumann: The weather radar is technically a little bit outside what I know specifics on, but as far as I understand what they’re asking for, we don’t have it. It’s not like we are the jerks who don’t want to give access to something, we just don’t have the memory. I believe it’s because, like I just said, we’re running out of resources. To have the weather for the entire platform, there’s nothing to be shared at this moment. I have to defer to some of the experts on the team to talk about this more, but the intent is always to empower people to do their best work. So every time you see us as not doing something, there’s a technical reason for it, not a political one.

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Threshold: Thank you, and I know we’re all looking forward to getting a chance to fly MSFS 2024.

Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 is shaping up to be a promising new simulator that will undoubtedly change the world of flight simulation!

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Threshold will keep you updated with all things MSFS 2024, so stay tuned!