Flight Simulator 40th Anniversary Edition, a free update slated for November, is being talked about at Gamescom 2022 which is taking place in Cologne right now. Germany is also in the spotlight since the game developers have made some of the most interesting announcements.
To celebrate the show, Microsoft Flight Simulator released its first-ever City Update (City Update CU1) with five new German cities in photogrammetry: Hannover, Dortmund, Dusseldorf, Bonn and Cologne. Players will even be able to see the famous Cologne Fair, which hosts gamescom. This free update can be downloaded now from the in-game market.
Additionally, the game team revealed some juicy details about the release of the 40th Anniversary Edition update. It will be available free of charge on November 11, 2022 for those who own the game or Game Pass Xbox and will offer, for the first time since 2006, helicopters and gliders, the most requested improvements by the community. In addition to helicopters and gliders, another airliner will appear in the catalog: the Airbus A-310, where almost every button will be functional.
This anniversary edition celebrates aviation in general, so 7 historic planes will be playable: the Wright Flyer from 1903, the Curtiss JN-4 Jenny from 1915, the Ryan NYP Spirit of St. Louis from 1927, the Douglas DC-3 1935, the 21 Grumman G-1937 Goose, the 2 Havilland DHC-1947 Beaver, and the 4 Hughes H-1947 Hercules (the largest seaplane and wooden plane ever built), also known as the name of Spruce Goose.
Four commercial airports will be added once the update is applied, including Meigs Field in Chicago, which is an emblematic departure airport for the Flight Simulator franchise.
Finally, and it's on the developers' blog that we talk about it, the public tests for the SU10 update continue. Last week, a new build was rolled out to testers (PC only) that was specifically aimed at improving performance in DX11 mode. And the first feedback seems very positive.