Microsoft and Asobo Studio have today opened up pre-orders and all that jazz for Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 ahead of its November launch - it's also on Xbox Game Pass Ultimate if that's your preferred way to go. However, alongside this pre-order info dump, the developer has gone into lots of detail on its upcoming sequel, including how it's worked its magic to make MSFS 2024 a much smaller game to install.
Thanks to new techniques with the cloud, Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 will only take up about a 30GB install on your system. That's like, a quarter of the size of 2020's Microsoft Flight Simulator, which is pretty amazing if you ask us.
"By tapping into the latest cloud streaming technology, installation size has been trimmed down to about 30 GB to get you in your seat and flying as quickly as possible, streaming in the higher detailed areas that are only necessary for your flight path; why install all the data for the United States when you’re intending to just fly over Europe for the evening?"
What's more, the team says that post-launch 'World Updates' — which are often huge and contain new levels of detail in certain areas — are "just streamed seamlessly" and won't require any sort of update download. That's fantastic too!
Anyway, this new Xbox Wire preview also goes into lots of detail on what content is coming at launch, etc., so it's absolutely worth a read through if you're excited for MSFS 2024 later this year and want to know more. All of this, combined with the fact that you can actually get our of your plane and walk around in the next game, has us very much looking forward to future of flight simming over at Microsoft.