Flight Simulator World Update XIII will make huge aesthetic improvements to the many islands across Oceania and Antarctica.
As with previous World Updates, where developer Asobo settles its focus is driven by the density of available points-of-interest. The Australia and New Zealand updates were single-nation packages that dove deeply into well-known tourist zones and best-kept-secrets. Several European updates spread the work across a number of smaller, densely clustered nations. In the case of the USA, Asobo had to break World Updates down to state clusters in certain regions. With World Update XIII, it covers the largest stretch of the Earth’s face yet, adding new handcrafted assets and landmarks across multiple island nations in the Pacific. The update continues southbound from Australia, fleshing out the Antarctic region and the lonely research stations that dot its coastline.
Of the numerous locations listed in the three-minute trailer above, Asobo have worked in:
- Easter Island
- French Polynesia
- Samoa
- New Caledonia
- Vanuatu
- Solomon Islands
- Midway Atoll
- Johnston Atoll
- Belitung
- The Cook Islands
- Batam
- Fiji
- Tonga
- Kiribati
- Papua New Guinea
- Guam
- Indonesia
- Java
- and, of course, Hawai’i
According to the marketing blurb, that’s 13 countries, 28 non-sovereign territories, a dozen handcrafted airports, 150 custom points of interest, 11 new missions, 3 new bush trips, 5 new discovery flights, and 3 new landing challenges. It’s so much work, and so much attention to detail, spread out over so many different places and cultures. More than any other previous update, there is a cultural threading of the needle here that you kind of have to marvel at.
This is all free with a Game Pass sub, by the way, and you don’t even need a flight sim set up to play it. You can just roll with your controller and have a grand old time. All of the previous World Updates are available to download as well, all for free, and yours to enjoy. The sole caveat: you’re going to need to give up a lot of drive space to install it all, so I’d recommend installing each World Update peacemeal until you know where you’ll be flying regularly. Installing them all is a great way to gobble up a quarter of your Series X’s SSD.
Flight Simulator World Update XIII is out now on Xbox Series X|S and Windows PC.
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