Microsoft Flight Simulator gets Halo’s Pelican

The Flight Simulator series turns 40 this year, which is somehow a distressing thought making me realize how fast time is passing, so Microsoft are preparing to celebrate. Come the 40th anniversary in November, they plan to release a big Microsoft Flight Simulator update with helicopters, gliders, iconic historical aircraft including the Wright Flyer, and more. But that’s the future. Right now, the game has received a taste of far future with the release of Halo Infinite’s Pelican aircraft as a real plane you can really fly in Flight Sim.

The Pelican is available to download now for free from Flight Sim’s in-game marketplace. Yes, it really can hover and punish about. Makes boosty noises and flaps its arms and legs and blasts flame and everything. Looks very fancy.

The big ’40th Anniversary Edition’ update will follow in November. Exact contents are a secret for now, but they’ve revealed a little. Along with re-introducing “some classic airports” they’ll add more aircraft, including some familiar faces (well, they would have faces if they were in Jimbo And The Jet-Set).

Look forward to two helicopters (“brought to life with an all-new Fluid Dynamics Simulation,” developers Asobo say), two gliders, an Airbus A310, and five historic planes: the Wright Flyer, the plane which started this whole thing; the Spirit Of St. Louis as flown by Charles Lindbergh on the first solo transatlantic flight; a pioneering passenger plane, the Douglas DC-3; and a Canadian icon, the De Havilland Canada DHC-2 Beaver. Presumably we’ll hear about other newness between now and then.

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