Flight Sim

A week ago, Microsoft shared news about four new things coming soon to Microsoft Flight Simualtor during their Gamescom 2021 Xbox presentation. Prior to the event, we sat down with Jorg Neumann, Head of Microsoft Flight Simulator, to talk about the announcements and a few other bits related to the simulator. Despite the relatively short period of time, Jorg enlighted us with more information about what we can expect from the likes of World Update 6, the Junkers JU-52, eSport opportunities and much more.

On World Update 6

Jorg: World Update 6, as you know will focus on Germany, Austria and Switzerland. We’re updating when we have great data and in this case, we have excellent data. We have brand new satallite and aerial imagery for Germany, Austria and Swizterland and we got a great ampunt of elevation maps for the alps. Now they are looking awesome! We also then had enough data to make new 3D cities. We thought about which ones we should make, as we had quite a few in Germany, none in Austria and one in Switzerland. So we ended up going for Frankfurt, Wuppertal, Basel in Switzerland Graz and Vienna in Austria.  They look friggin’ great – down to 7cm in some areas and some are even better. We work with local tourism companies in order to help produce local points of interest and learn about the most meaninful things in the region. We’re really happy with the selection.

We then tie this all together with missions and discovery flights. Added in new discovery flights and continue doing this for every world update going forward. New landing challenges, some really cool airports and bush trips. We’re now starting to think about these [bush trips] as guided tours. So if you don’t know a country or a region, they’ll help you get around to look at the best and greatest stuff. The alps in this update are the difference between night and day. 30m – now 1-2m resolution. It’s near perfect.

Over the past few months, you may have noticed a new store appear called Contrail. This new store, developed by Lars from 29Palms Scenery Design, is both a point of sale and also an application for customers to download and install products. Over the years, Lars has had an obsession with creating stunning scenery and easy-to-use configurator tools, and so, the Contrail App was a natural evolution for him.

In our extensive interview with Lars, he tells us exactly what the Contrail App is and how the new marketplace will support developers and the community access their products. The store is already populated with top-tier names such as Flightbeam, Aerosoft, LatinVFR and has recently introduced Verticalsim into the mix. More developers and products are to come in the future.

In addition to our interview with Lars from 29Palms, we’re pleased to work with Contrail to offer FSElite readers 25% off their first purchase with Contrail. That means you can pick up a product from the likes of Flightbeam, LatinVFR, Aerosoft and others at a discounted rate. Simply use the code FSELITE at the checkout, or by clicking this link.*

Further to Contrail, we spend some time asking what the future of 29Palms looks like and what future scenery products we can expect to see in the future. Thanks to Lars for taking the time to tell us more about Contrail and we hope you enjoy the interview.

Could you tell us a little about yourself and what you’ve done in the past for flight simulation?

My name is Lars Pinkenburg, a 29-year-old aviation nerd from Hamburg, Germany. Some readers might know my work under the “29Palms” brand which has been established in 2010. Over the years we have released a couple of airports for FSX and Prepar3D such as Nuremberg, Twentynine Palms and the Greek islands Mykonos, Samos and Skiathos. Besides our own projects, I have also collaborated with FSDG, Orbx and Limesim on projects such as Sharm-El Sheikh, FTX Germany and Southampton airport, just to name a few.