Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024: Creating a Career Mode for All Types of Players

Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 already works to simulate everything as authentically and accurately as possible from its physics systems, the atmosphere, the avionics, and more. So when it came time to scoping what a Career mode would be, how it would operate, and what it would include, the team looked back at these concepts in the same vein as their approach to MSFS 2020 — to make it as authentic as possible.

“From the start we knew that we had the opportunity to create something that had never been done before. Something truly unprecedented in the realm of missions and activities in entertainment software,” Neumann details. “Because we had created a digital version of our entire planet, not only could we allow simmers to start their career wherever they want on Earth, but we could also, if done correctly, have our missions and activities use the dynamics of our planet, like the seasons, weather, time of day, etc., as well as the location.”

It was around this time that the team began conducting several surveys to better understand what the community wanted as far as improvements or feature additions to Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024. These surveys revealed that the number one thing was to give players goals: an objective to the flights. This response was similar across every type of player, from core simmers to gamers and casual digital tourists. It was clear from this feedback that the team knew they had to make a Career mode happen.

“The aviation community is so passionate that it has helped inform the Career and the (flight) sim in many ways,” Neumann says. “For example, aircraft or rotorcraft pilots have given us super interesting feedback on flight models. We also met with agricultural aviators, firefighting, sky diving, and airliner pilots. But we’ve also done user research with a large range of simmer types to gather their requests, understand frictions, and hear their recommendations. Also, just reading the simmers forums sometimes gives us an interesting idea or will confirm our gut feelings about a given angle. The aviation world can be proud of its high level of participation, it really pushes everyone forward, including the development team obviously.”

When starting out in Career Mode, there will be no prerequisites to get flying. You can start as a rookie or as an actual real-life pilot. However, less experienced simmers will probably choose to improve their skills via training to increase their chance of successfully passing the required exam. Doing so will unlock more sophisticated activities — there are about 54 training courses in the certification tree.

The more skilled simmers will probably head straight to the certification exam, and then on to the more advanced activities like commercial airliner passenger transportation. The available missions also feature a difficulty rating to prevent non-experienced pilots from ending up in complex scenarios (e.g. poor weather) that they may not be prepared to handle.

Progression will be tied to how well – or how close to perfect – you can execute your flights. This will yield XP, money, and improve your pilot reputation. All these aspects feed into how you pass exams, unlock certifications, new types of planes, activities, and perhaps one day with enough money, buy your own aircraft (and even own your own fleet).

“There are many ways to develop your career as a pilot depending on what you want to be. These different dimensions can be blended or taken one after the other,” says Neumann “For instance, do you want to expand your client list all over the planet or stay focused on your territory? Do you want to be a versatile pilot able to achieve any type of mission, or do you want to specialize in airliner activity? Do you want to do all of this as an aircraft pilot or as a rotorcraft pilot, or both? Do you want to be an expert in your job, or do you want to expand your business and become your own boss and manage your fleet? All of this and everything in between is possible in MSFS 2024.”

A lot of this career integration is possible due to what we mentioned earlier — because the team had already created such a solid foundation with Microsoft Flight Simulator (2020). Now with MSFS 2024, it’s able to integrate so well within the existing framework of the flight simulator. For example, aircraft rescue missions will take advantage of the massive improvements made to the terrain augmentation. In addition to that, the new weather system, flight model, water interaction, new biomes, and the walking features are all leveraged in the Career mode too.

“If you take the crop-dusting example: actual fields in real life have been detected via complex machine learning processes. So, when you crop dust in a field where crop dusters operate in real life, you are experiencing the exact same flight challenge, with the same flight constraints. This is the same with airliners. In Career mode, every airliner mission is based on a real-life activity. For most of the activities featured in MSFS 2024, we’ve talked with experts in these domains to fully capture what is at stake in real life and to translate this into the sim.”

Translating that proof-of-concept into MSFS 2024 has been an incredible challenge for the team, but a proof point really began to take shape a few months ago that assured them that the path they were on was the right one. It was during the moment when a search-and-rescue (SAR) pilot played an early build of the flight simulator.

“He told us how awesome the experience in the simulator was and how closely it resembled the real-world SAR experience,” exclaims Neumann. “We were so excited to get that feedback at that pivotal moment. It happened again a few months later when we visited a Sécurité Civile operations center (the civile defense agency of the French government) and had the firefighting pilots test our missions in the simulator. While they told us that we did not get everything perfect, they were super impressed. Those moments were critical validation points for the team – especially as our ambition is not to simply give simmers something interesting to do. Our goal is to resemble the experience that pilots in the real-world go through as closely as we can.”

But as Neumann puts it, one of the most rewarding parts will be to see that final player reaction when Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 launches on November 19, 2024, and simmers of all types will be able to try their hand at starting their own virtual careers.

“It is the essence of what we are doing,” describes Neumann. “From the way we have leveraged all the tech improvements, the “digital twin” world, and with the data we have access to, to deliver a never-before-seen promise is in full alignment with the realism of the franchise and is a true achievement. I think we’ve done something really unique, and as creators it’s the best reward.”

Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 — available for pre-order today on the Microsoft Store — will launch in a variety of editions on November 19, 2024, and the Standard Edition will be available day one with Game Pass. All pre-orders will receive the De Havilland Canada CL-415 firefighting aircraft to use instantly in Microsoft Flight Simulator (2020). The Standard Edition comes with 70 aircraft and 150 upgraded airports; Deluxe Edition will include 10 additional aircraft and five extra airports; the Premium Deluxe will have another 15 aircraft (total of 95); Aviator Edition includes everything from the Premium Deluxe Edition plus the entire fleet of 30 Microsoft-published Marketplace aircraft developed for Microsoft Flight Simulator between 2021 and 2024.

If you own Microsoft Flight Simulator (2020) Deluxe Edition or Premium Deluxe Edition the additional aircraft and airports unique to these editions will automatically work in Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024.