Microsoft Flight Sim will let it snow in next week's free update
Dreaming of a Flight Christmas
Microsoft Flight Simulator features some absolutely stunning weather. But as far as the ground's concerned it's always the height of summer, with even the northernmost parts of Scandinavia left remarkably snow-free. That changes with next Tuesday's free update, which adds a sprinkling of snow, ice, and virtual reality goggles to the planet-sized flight 'em up.
The wintry new environments briefly feature in Microsoft's 2020 holiday commercial, which sees a pair of pooches take to the skies in between causing a ruckus in Minecraft and blowing up John Halo. Sure, alright.
Arriving next Tuesday, December 22nd, Microsoft Flight Sim's long-anticipated VR update is bringing more than just the ability to slap a pair of plastic goggles over your face for a more immersive flight. To celebrate the season, Asobo's digital Earth will receive "real-time snow and true-to-life ice coverage" - which I have to imagine means you'll be seeing snowfall where it happens, as it happens, rather than just a blanket white overlay across the entire planet.
While that means I can hope for a sprinkling of icing at best in fake-Scotland, you should soon see overwhelming snowfall over your mountain-caps and northern-most (or southern-most!) cities. That includes Pittsburgh, which gets a brief showcase in the above vid, and next week's update will even let you swoop overhead in those two new pup-themed plane liveries. No dog pilots, though. That'd be silly.
All this was announced in an end-of-year post for MSFS. Included is a nifty little infographic logging the virtual flight industry's year so far. Somehow, between 2 million pilots and 50 million total flights, only 72% of the Earth's surface has been flown over - probably because everyone keeps visiting New York, which is by far the most popular destination.
The post closes up with confirmation that we'll see 4 or 5 more World Updates next year, as well as "a few other surprises". Are we talking about dog pilots, Microsoft? Because I think we should be talking about dog pilots.