The second world update for Microsoft Flight Simulator is live now, and it brings a variety of visual improvements to an obscure foreign country called the United States of America. The USA will benefit from hand-crafted versions of four new airports (Atlanta, Dallas/Fort Worth, Friday Harbor, and New York Stewart), a Discovery Flight pilots can take across its eastern seaboard, a Bush Trip over the Alaskan wilderness, and “an improved digital elevation model with resolution up to one meter, along with new aerial textures for significantly better appearance in several states across the country.”
There are also 50 high-fidelity points of interest to gawp at as you fly past, many of them highlighted in the video above. Something about being able to fly over Tucson’s Airport Graveyard is a little creepy, and frankly those oil rigs off the Gulf of Mexico look like they’re about to pull some Death Stranding nonsense. Las Vegas does look amazing all lit-up though, and the video climaxes with a flythrough of the Grand Canyon for good reason. Also you can fly past the Statue of Liberty, which I believe is in Liberty City.
World Update II: USA is available for free. To access it, first make sure your copy of Microsoft Flight Simulator has updated to the latest version, which should be version 1.11.6.0 at the time of writing, and then go to the Marketplace to download the USA content bundle.
While you’re here, perhaps you’d enjoy getting fully spooked by Microsoft Fright Stimulator, the series where we visit the real-world locations of scary stories in Microsoft Flight Simulator.