Podcast Title:

Building the Ultimate Flight Simulator: Inside Microsoft Flight Sim 2024 with Jorg Neumann & Sebastian Wloch

Podcast Description:

Join host Justin Seams as he sits down with Jorg Neumann (Head of Microsoft Flight Simulator) and Sebastian Wloch (CEO of Asobo Studio) for an in-depth look at one of aviation's most influential training tools. Discover how Microsoft Flight Simulator has evolved since its 2020 release, with groundbreaking additions like career mode, wake turbulence simulation, and photorealistic graphics that even fool experienced pilots.

In this episode, Jorg and Sebastian share behind-the-scenes stories about:

• Working with real test pilots from Boom Supersonic, Red Bull Air Race, and Boeing
• The painstaking process of achieving 99.9% realism in atmospheric lighting
• Simulating complex airport ground operations with thousands of moving parts
• How Flight Simulator inspires the next generation of pilots (an estimated 50% of all pilots started with the sim!)
• Partnerships with manufacturers like Boeing for virtual airplane training programs
• The future of flight simulation as a legitimate pilot training tool

Whether you're a seasoned pilot, aspiring aviator, or passionate sim enthusiast, this conversation reveals the incredible dedication and innovation behind the game that continues to spark the aviation bug in millions worldwide.

Episode 346 of the pilot to Pilot Podcast takes off now.

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To learn more, visit sporty.com sxmoffer hi.

My name is Jorg Neumann.

I am the head of Microsoft Flight Simulator.

Very excited to Be here.

Hello, I'm Sebastian Blor.

I'm the CEO at Asobo Studio in France.

AV Nation.

What is going on?

And welcome back to the Pilot, the Pilot podcast.

My name is Justin Seams and I am your host today's episode.

I am joined by the head of Microsoft Flight Simulator in York and the CEO of Asobo Studios and Sebastian.

They are coming on the podcast to talk about one of our favorite games in aviation, and that's Microsoft Flight Simulator.

Now, we had them on the podcast a few years back and there's been a lot of change changes to Flight Simulator.

We talk about what those changes were, why they made those changes, and we talk about how great of a product this is and how they prefer to play the game.

It's always fun to talk with Sebastian and Jorg.

I really get the feeling that they truly love this product and they want to see the best of it.

And you can see it when they're talking about it, how much they love it.

And it's awesome to see they've done such a great job.

And I truly do enjoy playing Microsoft Flight Simulator on, on Xbox.

It's.

It's been a lot of fun.

And the career mode that they have is pretty, pretty cool.

I love it.

It' been great.

So shout out to Microsoft because this has played such a huge role in aviation.

As we talk about on this podcast, there's one of two things for a lot of pilots that was a determining factor in them becoming a pilot.

And a couple years ago, decades ago, it was watching Top Gun and now it's, well, I played Microsoft Flight Simulator, so it's cool to have a game that can play such a role in people becoming pilots.

Avia Nation, I hope you're having a great day.

This is a great episode and this is going to be an exciting week.

I'm planning the release of the product that I have not been able to tell you on Friday, most likely Friday.

It's gonna be great.

Look out for it on Instagram or the email chain.

However you pay attention to Pilot.

The Pilot.

It will be there.

There may be a surprise podcast on Friday or maybe the podcast the following Tuesday, but it will be released.

AV Nation, thank you so much.

I hope you enjoy this podcast.

And without any further ado, here's Jorg and Sebastian.

Jorg and Sebastian, what's going on?

Welcome to the Pilot to Pilot podcast.

Great to be here.

Thank you.

Yeah, welcome back.

I should say not too long ago we had you on letting everyone know that Flight Simulator was released and was gonna be back and it was quite the release.

And since then we've seen streamers, we've seen Instagram, we've seen YouTube, we've seen it pretty much everywhere.

I've seen a lot of people on Instagram where they actually get confused if it is real or if it is actually flight simulator.

So, I mean, kudos to you guys for really getting that.

That engine to where it needed to be to create such great graphics and to create such realism, which is essentially what you're striving for.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

I love seeing particularly some.

I've seen some of some people recording landings and reality next to.

Yeah, reality next to the sim.

It's hard to tell which is which.

And.

I train my eye when I see screenshots reality next to sim to.

To find clues.

Sometimes it's very hard.

Sometimes it's very hard.

Sometimes I sort of recognize some of the lighting, which is a bit different.

But yeah, it can be very hard to see the difference.

He just sent me a video.

He's like, I love seeing these.

And it was one of those videos.

Somebody's flying.

It looks exactly like the real world.

And nowadays we really sit there like, is this ours?

This is a.

It's cool.

That's got to be the best compliment, though.

I mean, if people really are sitting there for.

It's like for minutes or whoever long it is, and sitting with their friends and they're like, wait, that's not real.

That's actually flight simulator.

How hard was it to actually come up with such perfection?

Because I'm guessing there comes to a point where someone's like, all right, this is good enough, right?

Like, it's like, all right, this is good enough.

It looks real enough, but someone had to be there, be like, no, we can do better.

We can make it more real.

Yeah, I mean, I think there's two components to it.

One is data and one is then the rendering tech.

Right.

On the data side, we try our best to get as much data as we can.

We have multiple research teams.

We have partners at Maxar and Vexel.

So maxar makes satellite imagery for the world.

If you ever see a CNN type of thing.

Specifically Maxar Excel flies lots of planes over cities.

So we benefit from all that.

And those have been long term partners.

But to make it look real in a game engine that's all in sepsis.

It's awesome.

Maybe talk about the lighting or something.

Yeah, yeah.

So every, every, every time there's new hardware, every, every time there's new, we're getting closer and closer.

So I remember I started video games in the 90s, early 90s, and it was, everything was just really art.

Right.

We entered numbers and colors and everything was just based on the eye.

Now there's a lot of physics on, on the lighting of the real world physics.

Yet there's still some approximations.

Right.

We can't simulate perfectly the real world.

We're getting very close, but there's still some areas where it's approximations.

And that's where still the, I would say the artistic eye comes.

You see the photo.

We do a lot of this, right?

We exactly what people do when they play.

Like we have also photos and the sim side by side and we try to see where there's still differences and what is the cause.

So yeah, a lot of physics analysis of the image.

But then also when, when it's just the best we can get terms of calculations, we try to add a little bit of a human eye artistical notch to make it feel more realistic.

Yeah.

Can you guys talk about a little bit what into kind of continuing to build this program and continuing to build the flight sim experience to make it as fun and real as possible.

Yeah, I mean on the experience side, the most, the biggest innovation was the addition of the Korea, which was something that people had been talking about for a long, long time in Avid.

And that was basically, that was it.

And then you went back to free flight here.

Given that we actually had finally a real representation of Earth, the full digital twin, all of a sudden the problem was, okay, now these missions have to work everywhere.

And the team had to analyze what are the rules to make all this work.

You know, spraying a field in Vietnam is different from spraying a field in like Raleigh North Car plan.

Right.

So I think that's pretty amazing.

And I, you know, I think that I think the team did a great job.

You know, I do think oftentimes, you know, when I think about where we are now, where we're going in the future, I think we're right just at the beginning of this.

You know, this is like V1 of what a career is.

And I'm, I actually can't wait for V2, but let's, let's, let's make sure V1 works perfectly.

But I think the possibilities there are endless.

So gameplay wise, I think that's the biggest innovation by far.

But technically, lots of things went into it.

Yeah, there's a, I mean there's, there's a lot of new things.

One on, on the physics side, one, a big one is a wake turbulence simulation, which is something you, you really encounter.

I mean, I encountered once when I was doing, you know, when, when you fly, sometimes you train just to do circles and turns and stuff.

And I did a 360 and I run into my own wake up.

Actually, I didn't know it was what it was because at that day it was very smooth and it was a pretty rough bump.

Yeah, I mean, not dangerous, but still you, you felt a bump and the instructor told me, yeah, that's, that's our week.

But in reality you don't encounter it that much because they separate, you know, intakes off takeoffs and landing and airports, they, they separate by a few minutes.

And so we now simulate on some big airplanes it can be up to six minutes of, of weight.

Turbulence.

Yeah.

On every aircraft in the, in the simulation world.

So your own, but also multiplayer traffic.

Everything that's, that's having, that's flying or that's even helicopters, when they're on the ground, they're all emitting wake turbulence.

And if you fly through, you can, it's pretty realistic amount of turbulence and you can, you can feel it, you can even visualize it in the sim.

That's one big addition.

Yeah, yeah.

I remember when I was going through my 121 training to, to learn how to fly 737.

Even previously when I was learning how to fly Cessna Latitude, it was.

They just made some new changes in that massive simulator.

So because they talked about how hard it is to mimic wake turbulence, turbulence in general and turbulence and how the airplane kind of stalls up at altitude.

So I can only imagine how hard it was for you guys to get everything just right, to make sure it looks and feels the same.

Because that's, that's the goal of this, right?

To make, to have people have the career and have the ability to fly these planes and see what pilots and what actually happens at high altitudes.

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Another thing is also the, if you look at the career mode is, I think the, the, there's a mission where there's a, a category of mission where you have to bring, you know, people for parachute jumping up in the air.

And.

And you would think that, hey, these people probably will do like a very classical flying, like we would do.

Right.

You know, a circuit and all.

But in reality.

We work with people who actually do this as a job.

Not at all.

Right.

They try to minimize fuel consumption and time because they have to bring people up, go back down, bring people up.

And so they will literally dive down, back to the Runway, completely skip the circuit and just land as quickly as they can.

And yeah, we try to simulate the same.

In that mission type, you have to really get quickly back down to the Runway and in order to hit the same sort of the turnover time of a flight to.

To drop the people up in the air.

Yeah, it's pretty, it's pretty crazy when I have some friends that flew parachute jumpers and their stories are pretty wild.

Yeah, I mean them and banner towing.

Banner towing is pretty intense too, because such a steep dive to go after the toe and then go straight up and it's a.

It's a different world.

It's.

It's very non.

Standard.

I'd say it's standard for them, but for.

For another pilot, it is not.

I remember I was at an airport, I landed, I saw a banner to.

I thought the plane was crashing because the plane just had such a steep dive.

And I was like looking around like, do I take my phone out?

Like, what's going on?

And then he pulled up.

I was like, oh, there's a banner there.

That makes sense.

So, yeah, it's just such nonstandard.

So it's cool that you reach out and you kind of do your homework on what these pilots actually do and how the airplanes actually interact with those real life scenarios.

I mean, that's actually what I was going to ask.

Oh, sorry.

It's one of the coolest things, like I think when people saw after we announced that we got reached out to.

By the Coast Guard, I think SOPO worked with the security.

In France, which is like the European center for firefighting.

And those direct connections are obviously awesome.

You know, like it's.

That's when you really get to realism.

Working with test pilots is also really cool.

We talk about that a little bit later when we talk about the boom or something.

Oh yeah, that's cool.

That's North Carolina.

That's Greensboro, not too far from where I am in Raleigh, where they're headquartering everything.

Yeah, that's.

I just saw that announcement as well.

That's.

It's gonna be pretty cool.

Obviously the Concorde did a lot of Cool things.

And that was a long time ago.

And to think that we haven't really.

Well, there's so much good technology out there, but we haven't been able to fix supersonic flying or supersonic boom or the lack of the boom or how to hide the boom, whatever they're trying to do.

Right.

So the fact that we actually have some excitement and some new technology because we can make flying as safe as we can and we're.

We're doing everything we can, but we haven't improved the speed in so long.

So it's awesome to see that, that that's coming.

That's Blake's vision too.

Like, we made a little documentary because we're.

We're really excited about this one.

It's.

I think it's coming out next week or something.

And yeah, when he talks about it, like how we, how we stopped progressing in that area for 50 years, if you really think about it, it's crazy.

And I think boom is doing well.

Obviously the quest is coming.

Flying right now from the NASA one with.

With Lucky.

Yeah.

It's cool stuff.

Yeah.

I interviewed the two test pilots for the NASA one that they're doing and it was just fascinating.

They're just how, how they figured out they can minimize the sonic like the boom.

It's just like who's.

People are so smart in this world.

Like I can fly an airplane, but my mind cannot wrap around minimizing the sonic boom sound.

So kudos to them.

It's awesome.

Are you.

Sebastian, you mentioned that you're a pilot, York.

Do you fly as well?

I fly, I can fly, but I'm not.

I don't have a pilot's license.

Yeah, not yet.

Not yet.

We can fix that.

We can make that happen.

But is anyone else on the team pilots?

Is it important?

Do you.

Because in a lot of pilots and stuff that they fly, a lot of times it's perfected when it's engineered by pilots.

Right.

Because pilots know what pilots want.

Pilots know what pilots need in certain situations.

Did you find it important to find pilots to help code this, to help build this, to help or even just to ask.

There's such a network of smart pilots out there that have some experience with this.

Or was it kind of like we just need the best coders?

I know what we can do and we can make it work.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So we have a.

So we.

Some PMP who did not, were not pilot and have never flown an airplane started ppls and then we also hired a few people outside who were actually already pilots.

And since then.

So I, I stopped at the ppl.

But some one person got a ppl.

Then a cpl, then instructor license and then he, two or three years ago he got a test pilot license.

Another person is only about, I mean mostly about aerobatics.

Does a lot of aerobatic flying.

Yeah, we have a.

We have a lot of variety.

Trying to have specialists and experts in different areas.

We also, we went quite a few times helicopter flying, but that's too long to get a ppl.

And also I would say a lot more expensive than airplane flying.

Way more expensive.

Yeah, but it's actually very fun and, and we went as far as to really be able to at least control the aircraft alone.

Right.

Without any instructor help and just to get the feel of the aircraft.

Did a few auto rotation landings and stuff like that.

But yeah, we have a different area of experts.

Quite a few on York's team as well.

Maybe you want to comment?

Yeah, I mean we have one, the real remaining team member From Flight Sim 10, his name is Royal Winchester.

He is an F15 fighter pilot basically.

From back in the day.

So he flies us about everything.

Then our entire test team is pilot testers of different ilks.

Right.

Some helicopter.

And we actually hire specifically to that because that connection is also important.

And then from a lot of the planes that are in Flight Sim are not made by or Microsoft.

Sobo makes some, but a lot of them are made by other teams and almost all of them are pilots because otherwise they wouldn't get it right.

Like for example, I and I builds, the head of Ioni builds is a 330 pilot.

And it's kind of like that everywhere honestly, because we went to where the expertise is because some of to make a great plane you need to really understand it, have lived it a little bit.

And I think I would say at least 50% of them are pilots.

Yeah, no, which is important, like I said, to make a great plane.

Maybe you, you don't have the expertise in a 737, but you have an expertise in building a 172.

Right.

So it's nice to kind of branch out and have other people that have the ability to do that.

You did mention about boom.

And you mentioned about having their supersonic test plane in there.

What was the, the process of getting that to happen?

Well, how did that even kind of form?

Was it a.

Hey, this would be really cool.

Did you guys reach out to them?

How did it work?

Blake caught Me.

So it was interesting.

So it was one of those days when you get some random phone call from someone.

You're like, he's like, hey, I'm Black Shaw.

I'm the CEO.

Boom.

Like, okay.

So I obviously, I followed the plane.

And he loves Microsoft Flight Simulator.

Like, he actually grew up with it.

Kind of the story that you told at the beginning.

He got inspired by it, that fell in love if aviation became a pilot.

And he wants to.

He wants his plane and overture and stuff in the future to be in flight sim because he knows that we think about 50% of all people who fly in the world started with Flight Simulator.

But you ask pilots, that's typically what they say.

And that is now a generation of people that grew up with Flight simulator are the CEOs of companies.

Cirrus is similar.

There's actually quite a few relationships we have with people like the aviation allies and those types of things.

They started with flight sim and they want to get back to it because they know that's the flywheel, where really new pilots will come from.

People will actually take aviation further.

So it's really cool.

And then just to say, because we talked about pilots a little bit.

So the, the, the.

The pilot from that sepsos mentioned the.

Francois's name.

He was just in Salzburg, like I through two or three times talking to Dario.

Dario is the test pilot from Red Bull.

He actually built the Red Bull simulator.

And they have like, immediately connected, right?

And we have like, we are very proud of the new Red Bull that is in.

So Air Race is now in Flight Simulator.

Right now it's on PlayStation only, but it's coming as soon as we ship SU4.

Super cool.

And when the test pilot says it feels just right, that's when you're like, okay, I think we're there.

I think we've succeeded.

The same was true with Boom.

So their test pilot, his name is Geppetto, he talked directly to the two teams that worked on it.

So that was a combination of Working Title and Flight FX working together.

Working Title was doing the avionics, Flight FX doing the plane.

They talked to the test pilot they visited.

And now we have a boom that actually feels like a supersonic plane, right?

When Geppetto says it's one of those planes that really feels happier being supersonic.

And it's actually kudos to Seb's system because by tweaking the parameters, the plane actually now feels like what the pilot, because he's the only one who ever flipped fluids, right?

He's the Only one who can tell us, does it actually feel right?

And he says, yep, looking good.

So, yeah, that's, that's what we're trying to do, right?

Yeah.

Can you imagine being the only person to fly an airplane?

Like, you're the only person that's gone supersonic in this airplane.

Yeah.

But, yeah, kudos to you guys, Sebastian, and what you're able to do with that because I'm sure that was.

It's new, right?

I mean, like, obviously the Concord is supersonic, but we really haven't had anything since then, so.

New tech truck to figure out how to make it work.

What was that like for your team to, to actually achieve that?

I mean, supersonic.

We, we did it with the very first time on.

When.

On the F18.

And obviously we.

I mean, there was really.

Royale helped a lot, but there was not much.

You know, you don't have a lot of experience on these.

Yeah.

So it's, it's this one.

The first step we really took just the physics and try to say, you get the.

This is what it should do physically.

Right.

The simulation is now much more accurate than it used to be 10 or even even longer ago.

Like, it's, it's much more accurate.

So we can sort of try to simulate it as it should happen and then, and then as soon as we get pilot experience, we, we sort of tweak it to get.

There's always a.

There's always a layer of approximation because we can simulate every molecule of air and everything.

Right.

It's way too complex.

So there's always some, some formula which is supposed to.

Grab the whole, the whole behavior.

And the approximation leaves always some percentage of space where it's really the sort of pilot feeling.

Right.

Who is going to go come in and get the last stretch of realism out of the system.

Yeah.

I think that's a time with Red Bull.

I think the.

It all worked right, but it didn't feel right.

And then Francois hooked up with Dario, who actually, who was one of the Red Bull pilots, and, and that sense of weight and control is now there.

And.

But it, it really took them tweaking the numbers together and, and getting it right.

Yeah, I mean, when, when people sit down and play the game, they don't think about how many tries, how long this takes, like how many hours it took to just make this one part, this one scene look good.

Right.

Like, people just want to.

They just want it to work perfectly right then and there.

They don't realize how much work went into it to make it happen.

Was there anything that you, that people would be surprised that took so long to get right or that was just very difficult?

I know you talked about the physics of lighting, I know you talked about all that other kind of stuff.

But like, was there anything that you guys specifically remember that was just like so difficult that maybe the average game player doesn't really realize would take a while?

I mean one thing you can find in 24, which is different than.

But yet there was a few issues like for example, this, the famous line on the horizon which is due to an approximation.

You know the, the.

It becomes tangent to the earth's surface and there was sort of a, in the GPU there's infinity and then you don't know what to do.

And so the team entirely revoked this.

Now it's actually like really tracing rays through the atmosphere and sampling the clouds and whatever is happening on the way.

And so it's pretty much a rework from the ground up.

And in the end it looks almost the same.

Right.

Because the previous one was already a very good approximation.

It just had a few, I would say issues in some, in some angles and some situations.

And the new system doesn't have these issues, is even more accurate.

But it took, it was very hard to just get a.

Rebuild that system from the ground up, make it more accurate and solve all the, all the singularities.

And in the end.

Yeah, when you are 99% realistic and then you become 99.9% realistic, it, if you don't have a, if you don't spend all your day in the sim, you don't almost see the difference.

Right.

If you don't have the eye.

And I clearly see the difference now with the, with the time but, but it's, it's the last percentage of like sort of uncanny valley thing where you, where you.

Where you fix the last notch.

That, that was very hard.

And there's, it's, it's like that in all areas where we're always fighting for the last little percentage of accuracy and that often can only be felt by a test pilot or I would say really edge cases of flight model.

When you, for example, for Red Bull, that's the case.

That's stuff that you don't usually do on a day to day basis.

You don't push the machine so hard.

And in those situations it's hard for us to know like the simulation says this, but then what really happens in that moment and, and only a test pilot can actually know who flies because they have a knowledge which is.

So every plane is different, even every flight is different because they keep tweaking.

But the test pilot sort of knows the, you know, he knows what is the family of situations he can find when it's really within the cloud of possibilities or if it's out.

And he sort of has almost like a feel, right.

He doesn't even think it.

He sort of knows when it's the right thing or when it's not.

And a first test for us is often when a pilot who really knows the machine very well, who has a lot of hours on the machine, if he doesn't feel to like, if, you know, if he can talk to us and not even look at it and fly it so almost like automatically, then we think, okay, there's something right here, because he doesn't even have to think about it.

And when it's not right, you can see that they have to a little bit more concentrate and everything, and then they will tell you, yeah, there's something not.

Not working here.

It's, it's.

It's different.

Something's off.

Yeah.

Yeah, exactly.

I would say an area that might seem easy, reasonably easy, but it really isn't.

Is that what we call the airport experience?

So what we do, we get, you know, we get transponder signals from Flight Aware.

So we know every plane, we know what the model is and all that.

So while they're in the air, everything is great.

We know everything about it.

And then they land, and then we know nothing about them all of a sudden.

And we need to go get them to their gates in the right patterns with the right hold short and all that stuff.

And it's like.

It's like simulating a city.

And it's actually quite complicated.

And the same is true when you're doing career missions.

The ATC in free flight and Korea is actually a very interesting intersection point and something we need to, I think, work on in the future, because it's.

It's actually hard.

It's not perfect the way it is, but we'll crack it at some point.

It's definitely on our radar.

The airport simulation is.

The difficulty in that area is just the volume.

Like Jorg said, it's like a city.

When you look at, like a Paris airport or whatever, the number of employees in these things, if you look at the number of cars, like sometimes you land, you know, when you take a bus to get from the plane to the gate, and it takes forever.

And then there's how many buses are There.

How many ground vehicles, how many fuel tanks, how many Catering.

Catering.

How many?

And it's just.

It's.

And everything has to be simulated, right?

Because when you fly, when you do this AI thing and you don't have any information and you want to bring it to the gate, I mean, if a taxiway is closed, if there's a fuel tank, vehicle, if there's something going on, everything has to be there.

And it's thousands of things which all of a sudden needs to be simulated.

And in.

You know, in.

In.

In classical video games, you.

You sort of.

I don't know, if you don't look at it at something, you just.

It goes away or stuff.

Yeah.

Here.

You can't really do that.

You have to simulate the whole airport.

Like, the.

The.

A big airport can be like.

There was a time when seven.

I talks like, man, why?

Why?

Started going out running faster.

I think there's 20,000 cell phones, and.

There'S like, big House of Sickity right there.

Miles.

Large airports, big as a city.

Yeah.

So when you're talking about that, for me, going from flying private jets, going to flying the airlines, the hardest part for me wasn't flying the airplane.

It was on the ground taxiing and going to the ramp and figuring.

Because one of the most.

Some of the most stressful moments is not in the air.

It's like, is that van gonna stop?

Is that catering truck gonna stop?

Is that gonna stop?

Where's the fuel truck going?

Is there.

It is a hot mess on the ramp.

Everything is so fluid and moving.

So we get.

We get obviously pinged a lot from the real world, but for the real world of aviation, and there's probably two different areas.

One is the manufacturers, and the other ones is the airports.

And we have a lot of airports that ask us, can you make a perfect airport simulation?

Because they all sit there in their little airport tower holding, you know, managing the ground, basically.

But nothing is really perfect.

And the interesting thing about it is they're all totally custom, right?

So you talk to, like, Rome, and they have their set of problems.

And you talk to Sheepo.

They have completely different problems.

They talk to Lufthansa about Frankfurt, and we haven't really touched this yet.

But it's one of those areas that.

That might.

That might be a new frontier for us here at some point to go after the more specific ground.

Ground simulation.

We have it, of course, but not.

Not to the degree that they want it.

Yep, absolutely.

Yeah.

I think you guys have done a great job, but it is hard because from.

If someone's not used to that world, it.

Like you said, it's a city.

Every airport's different.

Different, too.

Like, JFK is different than lax.

LAX is different than Miami.

And they're all a hot mess.

Right?

Like, it's all just like.

And you have to know everything.

That's where the iPad comes in and.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

It's crazy.

What is your kind of getting back to gameplay?

What is your.

You mentioned career mode, but do you guys have a favorite airplane you like to fly?

Do you have a favorite kind of scenario you like to be in when you play the game?

I'm currently in the bush trips.

I fly the Draco X, the plane that doesn't really exist yet.

But, like.

But it's.

I mean, I saw.

I saw the original Draco in Oshkosh, and we're like, man, look at this beast.

And then.

Then Petey came up with the Draco X, and we're like, we got to get this thing.

And it's the fun, I think, because it's easy for me.

It's like, it's super powerful.

Right.

Literally go anywhere that thing can take off, like.

And so I love exploring the world, so that's why that's my favorite plane.

But right now, for sure.

I mean, my.

The thing I do the most right now is helicopters.

Yeah.

But it's maybe.

I don't know if it's my favorite or not.

I like a lot of different experiences, but I do a lot of helicopter flying.

In the area, mostly here.

Right.

Also, I check the weather every time I fly.

If it's right, if it's always check.

I'm at the window, so always check that.

But, yeah, I do a lot of work helicopter to check round effect.

Like, a lot of the physics.

Always.

Always a lot of the physics.

And also, it's very hard.

It's easier with a helicopter to check your own wake turbulence.

You know, just have to with the plane.

It's.

It's.

It takes a while, you know, to fly around and.

Yeah, yeah, but I like that.

I like smaller.

I mean, anything that you.

You can land anywhere.

And usually I like to fly.

The things I fly, I flew myself because I can relate.

You know, I can compare to what I see if it feels the same.

And so I've flown the Icon.

I've flown the Cessna, the Robin.

Robins.

Oh, yeah, Robins.

And the cab helicopter.

So those ones.

The ones I fly the most often.

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What's some.

Because there's been so many people that play this game.

Has there been, I don't know, like a celebrity or anyone that has reached out to you or just like feedback you've gotten that surprised you in a positive way that they're like wow, this game is actually, I mean obviously people say they want to be pilots, but just any feedback that really kind of stuck out from you from either people playing the game or people that have.

Worked on the game.

I'm not sure it's surprising anymore.

So I mean I talk people to your control yesterday or they talked to me and they basically a whole array of pilots of various ilks, right.

And they start saying we're huge fans.

We think you guys are doing an awesome job.

This is super realistic.

It's not so well known.

We worked with Boeing for the last five years on their virtual airplane simulator.

Perfect.

I was like, okay, that's that.

I mean that the other test pilot, Seb, you took on the, you went on that tour once, right?

Where he goes went to a bunch of manufacturers.

I think that's the thing that happens celebrities.

I mean I think you know, John Major and people like that.

You know sometimes there's the.

He is a big fan, right.

So I think there are people that call in ever so often.

But it's more for me the celebrities are the people that make the planes like that that, that is kind of what we're aspiring to.

Right.

In many ways.

And when they call and say something nice that makes.

Feels awesome.

But yep.

So.

I mean I, what I really enjoy is, I mean it's, it's over 40 years old.

So sometimes you see people who, like, I'm 80, I'm still flying flight sim.

And yeah, it's, it's.

I mean, not a lot of.

I mean, people who are 80 don't play a lot of games, right?

But this is, this is something which I think still brings people into.

Into, I mean, joy, first of all.

And, and also when they say how fights come, like, I mean, I also played in the 90s, right, when it was just a wireframe.

And, and it's the same experience, the same feel.

I mean, at the time, I was fully, completely, completely crazy to be able to fly in 3D and everything.

But, I mean, sometimes people haven't touched the flight simulator for 30 years or something, and they can't just come back to it right now and they're like, whoa.

What is.

What has happened?

It's, it's, it's completely different.

And yeah, yeah.

So that's, that's, that's very interesting.

Also, everybody knows it, right?

Even my kids from school, like.

The other kids at school.

No Flight simulator, right.

So my kids say.

Yeah.

People have told me the.

I mean, it's weird, but when you talk.

I don't know if you ever do this.

Like, sometimes there's a mailman coming, and I open the door and he's like, do you work on Flight Simulator?

And then you're like, yeah, I need to go back to work.

And he wants to talk about it.

Like, okay, so it's, it's, it's.

I mean, it's.

It's kind of an.

It's an honor.

We always say we.

We feel like we're standing on the shoulder of giants.

And it's not some joke, right?

Like, people, like very smart people have worked on flight sim for decades.

And yeah, we stand on what they've done.

You know, we've learned from what they did.

Some of the code still runs, but they made.

Yeah, that's awesome.

I mean, when you talk about, like, the mailman, you work for flight sim.

I mean, when, when, when pilots go to parties, like, a lot of times all people want to talk about is flying in aviation and that stuff.

So what you're doing is you're giving access to the everyday person that maybe doesn't have the ability to go fly an airplane, but they get to.

To get as close to the real thing as possible, right?

So they get to fulfill their childhood dream, albeit whether it's on a computer, on a PS5, on whatever they're playing on.

But it's as close to the real thing as you can possibly get.

So you're helping them and be able to say that they, not necessarily they aren't really flying the airplane but they get to see what it is like what it's like to be a pilot, what it's like to be on the ramp at Amsterdam, what it's like to be on the ramp at Paris de Gaulle or Charlotte or whatever.

Airport Raleigh a little bit easier.

But they get access to us into a world that is kind of hard to get into.

Right.

I mean it's, it's cost prohibitive.

It's very expensive to become a pilot.

So you're doing a great job there.

It's got to be awesome.

You say that like so we, we do a few things like this.

Like for example, there's something called Alaska Day.

So Alaska Airlines puts this up every, I think it's twice a year.

They bring thousands of STEM kids in and, and we, and it's really cool.

Like it's just the joy of the kids playing.

It's just something else.

Right.

And, and there was a, there's a story like I talked to the, the, the flight lab in the National Air, National Air and Space Museum, like the, the, the, the Air Force Museum and ignore where it is but there's this three gentlemen, they're 70 something years old and they run this app and they told me the story of like hey Jorg, we're running this lab and the kids come in and can you tell us when you do SIM updates?

I don't know if I even told you this.

They're like, because our computers are down the data SIM updates and we need to schedule that.

And the reason why I say that is it's a, we touch these kids lives and in this case these three volunteers that are in their 70s trying to teach kids to fly.

But what we do and how we do it actually affects people in the real world quite a bit.

And I think it's just.

There's nothing like this in computer gaming at all.

This is very interesting.

Great learning.

Yeah.

And I think we're still learning.

One of the main things, obviously I know you guys are busy, we can wrap up here soon.

But one of the most important things that I could see Flight Simulator, Microsoft Flight Simmer turning into is truly a training product for pilots.

Right.

Like the technology is getting there obviously with VR headsets with the ability to do things like you can make it as real as possible.

As real as an actual simulator with physical buttons and your, you Mentioned the Boeing I've read about.

I think it was a couple weeks ago, it actually came out.

Boeing said that they're actually introducing Microsoft Flight Simulator and they have been using it.

And you mentioned the737.8 that they've been doing it on.

What do you think?

Obviously you don't.

I mean, I know you guys probably have like a white paper and plans and stuff, so don't give it all out.

But like, what do you think the real, the reality of making this a true pilot trainer, where someone is going to an airline interview and they're like, instead of watching this on your iPad, we're now going to get you a VR headset and we're going to run through all your flows, run through all your checklists, run through all this.

So when you get here, you've already had experience in the simulator.

It can save the airline's money and it can save time with the pilots as well.

What do you think about the feasibility of training with this product either where it is currently or in the future?

I mean, I would say it's definitely possible.

Everybody, I mean, you know, training is a ramp and the level D stuff, there's not enough album.

The usage is constantly booked out.

So if you want to become an airline pilot, stand in line.

Why don't fly to Dubai, right?

That's literally what you kind of have to do.

So I think everybody sees the same problem and they all say that this type of gamey simulator is now sophisticated enough that at least the first few stages of actual pilot training could be handled there.

So at home, trainings, touch and gold landings, those stuff of things, for us it's really just a, can we do it?

Can we support these people?

Because like we had this with ESP backwards.

Flight Sim 10, I don't know if you know this.

There was a similar idea at the time was called ESP, which turned into later on.

We sold that to prepare 3D to Lockheed.

And for us it's really just like we did this Boeing program to test what's it actually going to take to support them correctly.

Because you can, you know, when you, when you sell a game to a consumer, at some point or another, there's bugs and stuff and we fix those bugs.

But at some point they're actually pretty happy with what they have and accept that as reality.

I think the difference in businesses is that they are always evolving and looking for the next thing and that needs to be supported properly.

And then do we have the staff know how desire to support these types of things.

I mean there were up until recently there were two programmers dedicated to this at the sovo.

And does that scale for us.

So I think we're, I think we're going to be very open minded but cautious.

Is that probably, is probably the right way to say it.

And it has to be a different product.

Right?

Because when you look at what we have like all these planes, we have 125 planes now or something like they actually are.

Many of those don't allow us to be a training tool.

Right.

They, they come from manufacturers, they have their own ideas what training is like and they, they don't want people to learn it the wrong way.

They're like hey wait a minute, this is our plan.

You know, where'd you learn that thing?

You know, be careful with that stuff.

And that's fair enough.

Right.

So but it's, I would say we are in a super harmonious state with the aviation industry and the airline industry both.

And I think that's a good, that's a good basis.

And now we'll see where we can take it.

Agreed?

Yeah.

And then the last question I ask you is what's the perfect way or what's your favorite way to play the game?

Is it with an Xbox controller?

Is it with a keyboard?

Is it with like a full setup?

You know, you got throttles, you got a yoke.

What's your perfect.

What's your favorite way to actually play the game?

So I use a yoke.

And, and, and this.

Perfect.

I love how you had it right next to you guys.

It was like ready for that all the time.

I mean I would say the eyes.

Awesome.

I don't know if you simply see eyes.

It's the best thing.

That is, it really is something else.

And I have, I have this thing here.

Right.

Also.

I don't, I don't, I don't actually use, use it that much.

So I, I usually prefer like this gives me enough precision, you know, on the, on the.

Well, because I don't fly airliners.

That's the thing, right.

I find it intimidating still.

Just give me a call, I'll talk you through it.

We'll make it work.

Yeah, but York, Sebastian, I always appreciate you guys coming on.

It's a lot of fun to kind of just, just talk shop.

Right.

Talk about the game.

Talk about a game that's touched had such an impa.

Important role in a lot of pilots lives.

And we'll continue to do that.

As you said, you guys think 50% of pilots have used Flight Simulator and it's helped them get to where they are today.

So I think I said it before, I don't know if I said in recording.

I think there's two things, especially after Top Gun came out, that have really helped pilots and it's Top Gun and it's Flight Simulator.

So you guys are doing a great job.

It's a much needed game and it helps spark the aviation bug for so many people and it just gives them the ability to, to, to live the life of a pilot, whether it's to start their training or just to fly New York to Paris and see what it's like to be on a 350, you know.

So thank you guys so much and hopefully we can have you on again and talk about some other cool stuff you're coming out with.

Totally.

And I would say I think we, I just can speak for both of us.

It's an honor to work on this.

Right.

This is not just some, you know.

So the reason why we work so hard is because every day I get up and I pinch myself like man working on something important that actually has relevance.

And so I'm very grateful and I'm glad that we are in this state and that we can help a little bit.

Yeah.

Well, from the outside looking in, we can tell that you guys love it and enjoy it.

So you're doing a good job.

We can all see really makes a difference too.

So I appreciate you guys.

Thank you.

Awesome.

Thank you.

Bye.

That's a wrap on today's podcast.

Thank you so much for listening.

Shout out to your and Sebastian for coming on the podcast and again you can just tell how much they truly, truly love this product.

So Microsoft Flight Simulator, great game.

If you haven't played it, you haven't downloaded, please go do it because you might find yourself wanting to become a pilot.

Maybe give it for a gift for Christmas.

And you never know.

Your little brother, little sister, your dad.

Maybe they're going to want to be a pilot.

Aviation.

Hope you're having a great day.

As always.

Happy flying.

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