Lewie skews Chaotic Good where possible, and loves pressing buttons, viewing pixels and listening to sounds. He's written for publications like Rock Paper Shotgun, Eurogamer, VG247 and Kotaku UK, and spent 13 years running Savy Gamer. If you ever get the chance you should ask him to tell you the story about that time he had a fight with a snake on an island off the coast of Cambodia.
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One of the most impressive aspects of Microsoft’s fantastic Flight Simulator is the scale of the world in the game, as it encompasses literally the entire world. One of the downsides is that such an ambitious scale can leave the details lacking in some areas, and Japan was one area that in the initial release of Flight Simulator that was somewhat lacking, where the beautiful mountainous islands that make up Japan were rather lacking in detail.
Announced today at the Tokyo Games Show, Microsoft is going to release an update next week that brings the in-game area of Japan up to standard, with a more detailed and accurate recreation of the geography, topography, and urban landscapes. This update is free for all players, and here’s precisely what is included:
“The update features an upgraded digital elevation map across the entire country, high-resolution 3D photogrammetry for six prominent Japanese cities (Sendai, Takamatsu, Tokushima, Tokyo, Utsunomiya and Yokohama), and six handcrafted local airports (Hachijojima, Kerama, Kushiro, Nagasaki, Shimojishima, and Suwanosejima). Additionally, players will also be able to try their hand at executing a trio of exciting new Landing Challenges set at Japanese airports.”
This update announcement comes at a great time, as anyone waiting to jump in now has the option of taking advantage of a promotion that Amazon is running, offering both the Deluxe & Premium Deluxe Editions with $15 off.
These versions include highly detailed, more accurately modeled, variants of many different specific planes and airports, although all of these planes and airports are still available in a slightly more basic version in the standard edition of the game.
If you’re looking for an in-depth introduction to the world of flight simulators, check out our guide to the long-running history of flight simulators over here, and if you want to check to see how your system measures up to the rather demanding system resources for Flight Simulator, we’ve got the system requirements listed here.