Yep, I'm gonna reinstall all 80GB of Microsoft Flight Simulator to fly Dune's ornithopter

Microsoft Flight Simulator is one big download—about 80GB—which isn't surprising since it pretty much contains the whole simulated planet Earth. But at the Xbox Games Showcase we just saw one heck of a good reason to clear some storage space and click that big download button again.

Dune's iconic ornithopter is coming to Microsoft Flight Simulator on November 3, the same day the new Dune movie is coming to theaters. The 'thopter, which flies not with spinning blades like a chopper but by using something more like mechanical grasshopper's wings, looks like it'd be a blast to fly around, especially knowing how deeply detailed the aircraft are in Microsoft Flight Simulator.

And I can't say for sure, but there might be more than just the ornithopter included in the expansion. The trailer above shows the thopter making a pass over a spice harvester, so perhaps there are more vehicles included? Surely... surely they didn't add the entire planet of Arrakis to Microsoft Flight Simulator, did they?

One thing is for sure, there's a lot more coming to the flight sim in the future: another trailer showed off the highlights of Micro Flight Simulator 2024, which you can see below, and it's adding a bunch of jobs. Sky jobs.

You'll be able to embark on a number of airborne careers, like aerial firefighting, search and rescue, helicopter cargo transport, air ambulance, crop dusting, mountain rescue, aerial construction, VIP charter services, and lots more. Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 is confirmed to be a new sequel, rather than simply an update to the existing game. It is, as you've probably already guessed, due out next year.

Chris started playing PC games in the 1980s, started writing about them in the early 2000s, and (finally) started getting paid to write about them in the late 2000s. Following a few years as a regular freelancer, PC Gamer hired him in 2014, probably so he'd stop emailing them asking for more work. Chris has a love-hate relationship with survival games and an unhealthy fascination with the inner lives of NPCs. He's also a fan of offbeat simulation games, mods, and ignoring storylines in RPGs so he can make up his own.