Microsoft's Flight Simulator now includes all the world's airports. Gamers can choose over 37,000 airports to take off from and land at. The older game included 24,000 airports. The new game has international airports like New York's JFK. It also has tiny grassy landing strips and runways in the middle of deserts or on top of mountains. The airports have been manually designed to look like the real airports. Designers used satellite images to do this.
The graphics are better and more detailed in the new game. There are windsocks blowing in the wind and service vehicles driving around the runways. The runway markings in the game are like those on the real runways. The lead designer said: "To reach a new level, we needed a new approach. We decided to [use] real satellite pictures. This technique involves editing each airport manually." The result is that every airport is "a step closer to reality".