Microsoft Flight Simulator released in 2020 to a positive reception with many praising the game’s rendering of the entire Earth – even if there were a few mistakes. Asobo Studio has since been updating its world country-by-country with accurate and bespoke mapping – the 9th World Update of which is available now.

Making the announcement on the Xbox Blog, Asobo Studio’s Jorg Neumann, the Head of Microsoft Flight Simulator, said “Fly throughout the historic cities of Rome and Venice, soar above Mediterranean coastlines, and navigate sheer-faced peaks, all rendered in lifelike realism with World Update IX: Italy & Malta.”

With this latest update, the regions listed above have been enhanced with “the latest geospatial data available, including digital elevation modeling, aerial and satellite imagery, and triangulated irregular network (TIN) modeling of 20 cities, including Rome, Naples, Venice, and Milan.”

Additionally, Asobo Studio has added four handcrafted airports, 105 custom points of interest between Italy and Malta, three bush trips, three new discovery flights, and three new landing challenges.

This marks the 9th World Update, with previous patches seeing similar improvements made to Japan, the USA, UK, Ireland, France, Benelux, Nordic Europe, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Australia, Spain, Portugal, Gibraltar & Andorra.

While it is unlikely that the team will be able to map the entire world with bespoke custom buildings and textures, it is nice to see them giving this treatment to as many locations as possible. The 9th World Update for Microsoft Flight Simulator is available to download right now.

KitGuru says: What do you think of World Update 9? What countries do you want to see added next? Is your country represented well in MSFS? Let us know down below.

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