How Microsoft Flight Simulator Helped a Groundbreaking Lost Airliner Soar Once Again
Summary
- The Focke-Wulf Fw 200 Condor, a groundbreaking airliner for its time, has been reborn as the next Local Legend for Microsoft Flight Simulator.
- A group of volunteers known as the “Condorians” have spent more than two decades piecing a piece of aviation history back together.
- The Fw 200 Condor is available now in Microsoft Flight Simulator ‘s digital marketplace, in conjunction with the release of the latest World Update 18: Germany, Austria and Switzerland.
There have been many times in history where humankind has made its mark on the world, but few events have had as much of an impact as man-made flight at the start of the 20th Century. In the span of a few decades, we went from the Wright brothers flying for a few seconds at Kitty Hawk in 1903, to Lindbergh making his historic solo flight across the Atlantic in 1927, and then even larger craft starting to make the trek across the oceans to usher in the age of airliners. One of those, in 1938, was the Focke-Wulf Fw 200 Condor, the newest Local Legend that’s available now in Microsoft Flight Simulator.
“It was the most sophisticated airliner of its time because it was light for its size,” describes Head of Microsoft Flight Simulator, Jorg Neumann. “It only weight 17 tons, and it had an extremely wide wingspan, which is why it’s called the Condor. And it was designed to fly high enough (3,000m / 9,800 ft.) where long-range air travel was economical and where you can go without a pressurized cabin; pressurized cabins did not exist for commercial airliners until Boeing’s 307 Stratoliner in 1940.”
It also made a trek from Berlin to Tokyo in the same year, proving to be one of the most innovative and technologically advanced airliners… for a brief time. World War II would dramatically change this era of aviation, and the Condor was soon repurposed for military service.
By the end of the war, only a handful of Condors remained outside of Germany and very little engineering documentation survived. It wasn’t long until spare parts were becoming harder to come by, leading to its grounding and eventual scrapping. This left the Condor, one of the most innovative airliners ever built for its time, essentially lost to history.
“The Condor is kind of a missing link in the development of airliners in Germany, or Europe, before the war. In a way it is a connection between the very first wooden airliners from the 1920s and the Airbus of the 1970s,” explains Heiko Triesch, Head of the Aerospace Department at the German Museum of Technology.
Triesch and a group of volunteers wanted to help restore that missing link, and commissioned the salvage operation of a Condor that had been discovered at the bottom of Trondeim Fjord in Norway. The aircraft was basically in shambles, but a group of enthusiasts were determined to bring the Condor back to life. With assistance from Airbus, and Triesch’s museum, they went to work, calling themselves the “Condorians.”
“There was a core team [of volunteers] at the beginning of the restoration project in 2002 that had done their job training in Bremen during World War II at the Focke-Wulf Company, working on FW200 airplanes,” Triesch says. “They would later become railway drivers or technicians — [you were] not allowed to work on aircraft in Germany for a period of 10 years after the war — but their fascination for aviation never stopped. They became the first volunteers working on the Condor; no one knew more about this aircraft than those veterans.”
The team started with a wreck, significantly destroyed due to saltwater erosion damage. With limited engineering knowledge on how to repair it, it would take some time to begin piecing the Condor back together — but they were determined to figure it out. With a patchwork of parts taken from various other wrecks recovered from around Europe over the years, the restoration of the Condor would take the better part of two decades to complete, finishing recently in 2021. It was around this time that Neumann had reached out with the idea of bringing the Condor to Microsoft Flight Simulator.
“I read the story years ago and knew about the recovery efforts, and that people were reconstructing the Condor,” describes Neumann. “Then it resurfaced all these years later that they had breakthroughs and [had put] the plane back together again. I contacted them and said I have this goal in Microsoft Flight Simulator to preserve aircraft that have sort of been lost in time and they allowed us to come visit and scan the plane.”
But that wasn’t Microsoft Flight Simulator’s only contribution to preserving the memory of this aircraft. The Condorians had the plane, but they didn’t have the cockpit. It turned out, a private collector in Switzerland had put together a Condor cockpit dash but was looking to part with his collection. Microsoft purchased this collection and gave it to the museum, thus giving them an even more complete version of the Condor, which in turn helped bring an even more detailed model into Microsoft Flight Simulator. Neumann highlights the cockpit as the element he’s most proud of being able to reproduce for this Local Legend. – and isn’t coy about implying that this might be the best work the team has done to date.
“We brought two different groups together [for the Condor in Microsoft Flight Simulator],” Neumann tells me. “First, we have a company called iniBuilds that typically makes our airliners. They worked on the A320neo and they’re making an A330 for Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024. They are top notch, the best of best in the industry to make airliners [for flight simulators]. And secondly, we worked with Oliver Moser, who I would call a highly enthusiastic aviation fanatic. He inundates himself and basically gets every book, newspaper, or any piece of information he can get. He’s German, so he has a much easier time with the [Condor] documentation and is probably now one of the most foremost knowledgeable people in the world on the subject. He’s responsible for the flight model and the flight deck and everything, while iniBuilds is providing the artwork, the animation, the sounds, and all that.”
This collaboration paid off in creating a highly detailed representation of the Condor, inside and out. Oftentimes when Microsoft and a partner create a Local Legend, there is not enough information available to create a highly accurate representation of a cockpit. Cockpits are usually not preserved in most museum pieces and there usually are also not sufficiently detailed photographs available to really have high confidence that everything is historically 100% accurate, but in the case of the Condor, the team had sufficient information to get everything correct.
In talking to Triesch, I was curious to know what he thought now that the Condor will now be able to “live on” as a digital preservation flight model in Microsoft Flight Simulator: “I remember there were many talks about just trying to get an engine to run, or ‘We’re sorry, this aircraft will never fly again,’ but now we can! For me it’s a miracle. I was told the Fw 200 is gone forever. Now we have an aircraft in Tempelhof and Microsoft Flight Simulator has made it possible to fly it again!”
“When you think about these people spending 20 to 22 years of their life, remaking every inch of this aircraft, for them to know that this [now enables] us to make it an authentic digital model that can be enjoyed by millions of people – yeah, I think it’s super exciting for them,” Neumann adds. “I think we sort of take aviation for granted these days, but it’s these pioneers and early innovations that are really making all this possible. And I think the Condor plays an important part in that story. And it’s a beautiful, beautiful plane.”
The Fw 200 Condor is available now in Microsoft Flight Simulator’s digital marketplace.
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Xbox Game Studios
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Microsoft Flight Simulator has fulfilled the aspirations of aviators worldwide for 40 years. Celebrate the award-winning franchise with the 40th Anniversary Edition, loaded with all-new features, aircraft and content that span the history of aviation.
The 40th Anniversary Edition update introduces:
• 1 true-to-life Airbus A310 Airliner
• 2 helicopters and 14 heliports
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Xbox Game Studios
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Explore Your World
• Vivid and Detailed Landscapes – Immerse yourself in the vast and beautiful world that is our planet with over 1.5 billion buildings, 2 trillion trees, mountains, roads, rivers and more.
• Living World – The Earth is vibrant and ever-changing and so is the world of Microsoft Flight Simulator, which includes live traffic, real-time weather, and animals.
Earn Your Wings
• Aircraft – Hone your pilot skills in a variety of aircraft from light planes to commercial jets with comprehensive flight models. Every aircraft includes highly detailed and accurate cockpits with realistic instrumentation.
• Checklist System – From pro to beginner, scale your level from full manual to full assist with interactive and highlighted instrument guidance and checklist.
Test Your Skill
• Live Weather -The weather engine enables users to switch on the live weather mode to experience real-time weather including accurate wind speed and direction, temperature, humidity, rain and more.
• Day and Night Engine – Experience flight at any time of day or year allowing for night VFR, visual flight rules, navigation.
• Aerodynamic Modeling – A state-of-the-art physics engine with over 1000 control surfaces per plane allows for a truly realistic experience.
Microsoft Flight Simulator has fulfilled the aspirations of aviators worldwide for 40 years. Celebrate the award-winning franchise with the 40th Anniversary Edition, loaded with all-new features, aircraft and content that span the history of aviation.
The 40th Anniversary Edition update introduces:
• 1 true-to-life Airbus A310 Airliner
• 2 helicopters and 14 heliports
• 2 gliders and 15 glider airports
• 7 famous historical aircraft including the Hughes H-4 Hercules (aka the Spruce Goose)
• 4 classic commercial airports
• 24 classic missions from the franchise’s past
Microsoft Flight Simulator Premium Deluxe 40th Anniversary Edition
Xbox Game Studios
$119.99
$95.99
The Premium Deluxe 40th Anniversary Edition includes everything from the Deluxe Edition plus 5 additional highly accurate planes with unique flight models and 5 additional handcrafted international airports.
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• Boeing 787-10 Dreamliner
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• Denver International Airport (USA)
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Explore Your World
• Vivid and Detailed Landscapes – Immerse yourself in the vast and beautiful world that is our planet with over 1.5 billion buildings, 2 trillion trees, mountains, roads, rivers and more.
• Living World – The Earth is vibrant and ever-changing and so is the world of Microsoft Flight Simulator, which includes live traffic, real-time weather, and animals.
Earn Your Wings
• Aircraft – Hone your pilot skills in a variety of aircraft from light planes to commercial jets with comprehensive flight models. Every aircraft includes highly detailed and accurate cockpits with realistic instrumentation.
• Checklist System – From pro to beginner, scale your level from full manual to full assist with interactive and highlighted instrument guidance and checklist.
Test Your Skill
• Live Weather -The weather engine enables users to switch on the live weather mode to experience real-time weather including accurate wind speed and direction, temperature, humidity, rain and more.
• Day and Night Engine – Experience flight at any time of day or year allowing for night VFR, visual flight rules, navigation.
• Aerodynamic Modeling – A state-of-the-art physics engine with over 1000 control surfaces per plane allows for a truly realistic experience.
Microsoft Flight Simulator has fulfilled the aspirations of aviators worldwide for 40 years. Celebrate the award-winning franchise with the 40th Anniversary Edition, loaded with all-new features, aircraft and content that span the history of aviation.
The 40th Anniversary Edition update introduces:
• 1 true-to-life Airbus A310 Airliner
• 2 helicopters and 14 heliports
• 2 gliders and 15 glider airports
• 7 famous historical aircraft including the Hughes H-4 Hercules (aka the Spruce Goose)
• 4 classic commercial airports
• 24 classic missions from the franchise’s past
The post How Microsoft Flight Simulator Helped a Groundbreaking Lost Airliner Soar Once Again appeared first on Xbox Wire.
