Microsoft Flight SImulator was just updated with a massive amount of completely free downloadable content earlier this week in a release called the 40th Anniversary Edition, but the game has already been given of heap of high quality material over the course of this past year, most notably the expansion pack known as Top Gun: Maverick and the addition of the D77-TC Pelican from the Halo franchise. While the former was apparently a safe bet, the latter seems to have been a little bit of a risk, at least according to Microsoft Flight SImulator boss Jorg Neumann.

The news comes from a recent interview by VG247. Neumann describes how the team working on Microsoft Flight Simulator added the ship into the game with a little bit of trepidation, but against all expectations, the response turned out to be overwhelmingly positive. The developer even added that more such crossover content could be to come.

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“Top Gun I felt very safe with because our team is pretty diverse between core simmers and gamers, but the core simmers loved it,” Neumann remarks. “There's not a person that said Top Gun, are you serious? Everybody was like, oh, that's awesome.”

“Top Gun wasn't even a consideration. The Pelican was risky in a way,” Neumann admits. “The Halo guys loved it. So, the Halo audience, look, they ate it up. And the flight simmers were not as annoyed as I thought they might be,” Neumann jokingly points out. “And mostly because we didn't half-ass the aircraft.”

“As a matter of fact, we asked the Halo team 'how does this thing work?' and they're like 'um just come up with stuff, like aviation stuff.’ So, we invented a bunch of stuff, but it all makes sense. So, we actually ran that by the hardcore simmers all over the place saying ‘okay, here's the avionics package, here's the radar, here's how this thing will work’ and they all liked it. So, it's an actual believable aircraft now.”

The breakout success of the Pelican seems to have inspired the team to pursue this particular avenue of development. “Yes, there will be more of those sorts of things,” Neumann explains. “I think we at least have a good reputation because it's the same care, right? We don't half-ass, we didn't half-ass the thing.”

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