Microsoft’s new Flight Simulator has been enthusiastically received by flight simulator fans. YouTube is literally inundated with videos that show how realistically the flight behavior of the aircraft has been reproduced, how convincingly the entire planet is reproduced in three dimensions. No matter which airport you want to fly from where: From the largest airports to terrifyingly short grass runways on Indonesian mountains, every known landing option in the world is replicated, according to Microsoft there are more than 37,000.
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Many of them are in China and it is worth trying one or the other of them, regardless of whether you want to fly along the Great Wall of China, sightseeing over the Forbidden City or land by seaplane on the Yangtze River in front of Shanghai. It all looks great – as long as you don’t live in China.
Because like the “South China Morning Post“reports, there is no – or at least no legal – possibility to get Microsoft’s simulator from China. The software is therefore not available in the Microsoft Store, not on the Steam gaming platform and certainly not in stores So fly the program in China, but only as long as you are not in China.
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Are the servers too far away?
Why this is so is unclear. It is logical that there are some theories on this. The simplest is that Microsoft simply lacks the infrastructure in China. The special thing about the new Flight Simulator is that it constantly reloads current map and weather data from the network in order to simulate the world as realistically as possible.
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Microsoft handles this using its Azure cloud technology. But in order for this to work without any longer waiting times than it already does, Microsoft’s servers have to be at least roughly close to the users. Some now suspect that this is not the case in China.
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Already registered?
Daniel Camillo, who specializes in helping companies bring games to market in China, suspects the “South China Morning Post“on the other hand,“ a mix of licensing issues and the content of the game. ”After all, you could virtually fly over the autonomous region of Xinjiang, for example, and look for the re-education camps where a million Uighurs are located to be held and indoctrinated. Microsoft’s map material is so detailed that such buildings cannot be hidden – except with Microsoft’s help.
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But Camillo suspects another problem to be probably more important: The cumbersome process a game has to go through before it is approved in China. That could drag on for months, even up to a year. It is not known when Microsoft registered its simulator for such a license.
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When asked, Microsoft only confirms “that the title will not be released in China at this time.” The group lacks an explanation of why this is so, only adds in marketing speech: “The Microsoft Flight Simulator will continue to develop over time and we will announce more availability in new markets in the future.”
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