Fly over Gamescom in Microsoft Flight Simulator’s first City Update, out now

Make-believe plane pretender Microsoft Flight Simulator’s first City Update has added realistic versions of five German conurbations just in time to mark Gamescom 2022. You can now fly over Hanover, Dortmund, Dusseldorf, Bonn and Cologne. They’re rendered with the fancy photogrammetry technique that’s already plonked a hundred of cities into Flight Simulator’s rendition of Earth.

That means that you can zoom over Koelnmesse, which is where Gamescom’s happening right bloomin’ now. Nice bit of Inception-style weirdness there, Microsoft Flight Simulator devs. I’ll give it a go later and see if I can spot our roving reporter Ed. Witness the realism for yourself by watching the trailer below, like some kind of human aircraft gliding above.

Flight Simulator’s added new stuff regularly with plenty of free updates, but cities have so far eluded the extremely pretty game. The trailer shows off some reet nice views, including the Gothic revival castle of Marienburg in Lower Saxony and Borussia Dortmund’s home ground of Signal Iduna Park. I also spotted Dusseldorf’s Merkur Spiel-Arena, where the 2011 Eurovision Song Contest was held. That was when Azerbaijan won with this ditty.

Recent changes to Flight Simulator have seen the USA zhuzhed up in World Update 10, and Italy and Malta in World Update 9 back in May. Other parts of Germany already had a glam makeover, along with Austria and Switzerland, in last September’s World Update 6 You can also fly Halo aircraft in it, for some reason. If you fancy some more random content in your photorealistic flight sim then you could always check out our guide to the best mods for Microsoft Flight Simulator, Godzilla included.

Microsoft Flight Simulator is on Steam and the Microsoft Store for £60/$60/€70. It’s also part of PC Game Pass, if you’ve got that.

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For more Gamescom coverage, be sure to check out our Gamescom 2022 hub for all the latest news, impressions from the show floor and more.