covering the week's top tech stories
with a slight linux bias after a series
of closed alpha tests microsoft's xbox
game studios and a sobo studio announced
monday
that the next gen microsoft flight
simulator 2020 will launch on august
18th
pre-orders are now live and the game
will come in three editions
standard for sixty dollars deluxe for
ninety dollars and premium deluxe for
120 dollars
with the more expensive versions
featuring more planes and handcrafted
international airports
the last part may come as a bit of a
surprise given that microsoft and asobo
are using assets from bing maps
and some ai magic on azure to
essentially recreate the earth in all of
its airports
still the team must have spent some
extra time on making some of these
larger airports especially realistic
and today if you were to buy even one of
these larger airports as an add-on for
flight simulator x or x plane
you'd easily be spending 30 or more
the default edition features 20 planes
and 30 hand modeled airports while the
deluxe edition bumps that up to 25
planes
and 35 airports and the high-end version
comes with 30 planes and
40 airports all the airports are still
available in the lesser versions just
without the extra detail
based on what a sobo has shown in its
regular updates so far
even the 20 planes in the standard
edition have been modeled in far more
detail than in previous versions
and maybe even beyond what some add-ons
provide today
because a lot of what microsoft and
asobo are doing here involves using
cloud technology to for example
stream some of the more detailed scenery
to your computer on demand
chances are we'll see regular content
updates for these various editions as
well
though the details here aren't yet clear
as flight simulator 2020 is about to
enter its closed beta phase
we can expect to see more details in the
coming weeks leading up to the release
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