Microsoft Flight Simulator Is Getting a Hot Air Balloon for Your Sightseeing Pleasure

Microsoft Flight Simulator has a whole, beautiful world to explore, but most aircraft may not as be slow enough to catch all the details.

The good folks at Hype Performance Group, whom you may know for their Airbus H145 helicopter, have decided to fill this gap by releasing a fully functional hot air balloon.

The vehicle will release on Friday, October 7, and it’ll cost $15. At the moment, it’ll launch only for PC on Hype Performance Group’s own website, and an Xbox Version has not been announced.

Here’s a list of the features you can expect:

Highly Detailed 3D Model, Textures, and Animations

Professionally modeled with incredible interior and exterior details
17 liveries included, all at 4K resolution and with PBR textures inside and out
Fully animated cockpit and animations for inflation, deflation, stall, and collapse
Animated 3D humans including a hot air balloon operator and 2 passengers
Designed and optimized for VR with great FPS performance, working VR Cockpit Zoom, and proper visual scaling throughout the model

Avionics & Systems

Steam gauges showing barometric altitude, vertical speed and envelope thermometer
Available AI pilot that can control the hot air balloon based off terrain or altitude
EFB tablet included with maps and additional apps available
Balloonist Maps App: shows GPS speed and track
Little NavMap App: connect to LNM, the free open source flight planner, navigation tool, moving map, airport search and airport information system
Nearby Radio Stations: listen to radio stations local to the area you’re currently flying in

Hot Air Balloon Flight Model

Fully integrated internal hot air balloon flight model and envelope simulation
Power Plant: 2x 12 million BTU burners with realistic visual and sound effects

Immersive Sound Pack

Realistic burner and environmental sounds

Bonus Features

Launch fireworks with realistic visual and audio smoke and explosion effects
Create other nearby AI flown HPG Hot Air Balloons on demand
HPG Hot Air Balloon can be set to follow a MSFS flight plan or current wind conditions