Microsoft is using Flight Simulator to build Earth’s ‘digital twin’

Talking with Jorg Neuman, the head of Microsoft Flight Simulator franchise, is always a treat. I had the opportunity to do it first around the launch of the reboot, titled Microsoft Flight Simulator, in 2020, and a few more times throughout the game’s nearly 50 content updates since then. What’s interesting is that after more than three decades in the trenches, he seems more excited than ever to be doing the hard work of game development. That was certainly the case when I sat with him recently out near Grand Canyon National Park in Arizona, to once again discuss the plucky little piece of software that rose from obscurity to the once more take its place at the forefront of Microsoft’s consumer software portfolio.

One of the first things I asked Neumann about was the overall health of the business, and he had some very surprising things to say. Turns out that it’s Flight Sim’s 42-year-old existing fan base that truly forms the core of the business. More than three million customers are out there working from either licenses or old-school boxed product that they proudly purchased off of a store shelf or from an online distributor. Neumann explained that Xbox Game Pass doesn’t even make sense to that diehard user base. And virtually none of them care a bit about the Xbox Series X.

“The core, of the core, of the core core is on the PC,” Neumann said, “and they will do exactly what they have done for the last decades. We are the fulfillment of their hobby, and I think that is what’s driving the core of the business.”

And yet the popular Game Pass subscription program has also exposed the software to millions more users than ever before. Microsoft now claims that more than 15 million consumers total have experienced the game since it launched, and that cumulatively those players have initiated over one billion flights in-game – with 300 million of those sorties in just the last 12 months.

But the presentation that I attended earlier this month in Arizona emphasized something subtly different from the initial pitch the world heard four years ago, specifically with the emphasis on Flight Sim helping to create Earth’s “digital twin.”

Here’s a section of that conversation with Neumann, lightly edited for clarity and concision:

Polygon: We’ve heard this idea of a digital twin when talking about Microsoft Flight Simulator before, but I certainly heard you mention it a lot more this time. I also heard a lot more enumeration and cataloging: Things like the 900-and-some oil rigs cataloged here for the first time; The one million vertical obstacles, like antennas and windmills, that the game will now render in 3D; You also say you have the first real accounting ever performed of some 80,000 helipads as well as every glider airport in the world. 

When you’re speaking internally at Microsoft, what’s the value that Microsoft Flight Simulator provides to the larger organization?

Jorg Neumann: I think we reinvigorated Bing. That’s one of them. I had an interesting phone call with Bill Gates where he said, ‘Well, Jorg, you took two franchises that were sort of on the down-trend and you put ’em both back up in the up-trend.’ And I thought it was an interesting conversation, because he has a very specific view of the history of the company. He was there at the beginning of Flight Sim, and he basically saw Flight Sim was kind of faded away, we hadn’t done anything [with it for a number of years]. Bing was kind of not really innovating, and all of a sudden I give all my shit back to Bing. So when we make trees, Bing gets our trees.

When a developer flaps his arms in Microsoft Flight Simulator, Bing gets trees.

Half the cities that we’re making [in our regular World Updates]? I currently have planes [gathering data] in Africa, South America, and Asia. I’m flying those planes because flight simmers want [those areas in the game]. The Bing people have a completely different reason to exist. They look for search results and things like that. So I’m like, ‘Hey, I’m flying to Brazil. You want those?’ They’re like, ‘Yep!’ ‘Okay. Here’s the Brazilian cities. What else do you want?’

Just turn on the LIDAR while you’re there.

But all these things – For them to do vertical obstacles like towers and power lines? Do they need that in Bing? No, but it’s also not bad for Bing. It’s actually kind of good, because it’s a richer experience. So they are sort of also changing with [Flight Sim]. 

The digital twin thing, to me, is sort of an enabler in a way. You can do a lot of things [with a digital twin]. You could do infinite things, if you really wanted to. But you have to build it [first], and I think you have to have a purpose [to get it built]. Flight Sim gives you that. Flight Sim has the purpose. 

Flight Sim always wanted to have all of Earth. ‘As real as it gets.’ That was [the vision] forever. Even when it was just a rectangle for Chicago. ‘Hey, there’s Chicago.’ It’s a rectangle. People are like, ‘Oh yeah, Chicago! Of course.’ Now it’s real Chicago. We scanned it down to five centimeters, or something like this. 

I think we are inspiring others in the company. I get a lot of that, across the board. People in [a Microsoft office in China] call me up, ‘Hey, can we do this, and this, and this?’ Now, we just obviously have this new collaboration with Activision. They call me all the time. It’s like, ‘Hey, we want to do this with the city.’ ‘Hey, can you help us with this kind of countryside?’ ‘How would you go about this?’ So it’s just knowledge that gets shared, and of course we share wherever we can. We’re a team.

Does that include the Forza team?

Absolutely. I mean, they’re working on whatever they’re working on, and I will give them whatever I can.

Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 is scheduled to be released Nov. 19 on Windows PC and Xbox Series X.Disclosure: This article is based on a Microsoft Flight Simulator Global Preview Event held at the Grand Canyon on Sept. 10, 2024. Xbox Game Studios provided Polygon’s travel and accommodations for the event. You can find additional information about Polygon’s ethics policy here.