PC Release Date and Version Information

Put your seats in the upright position 'cus this baby is taking off on August 18th!
... on PC anyway, Xbox details at a later date.
I discovered this while on the MS Store reminding myself what number Forza Horizon was up to, it's up to number 4 by the way.

I was a little surprised when i was confronted with 3 different editions available for purchase, i'll post the content lists down below but i'll quickly sum it up.
The Standard edition nets you 20 aircraft of a good variety and access to 30 of the 40 "hand crafted" airports, Deluxe gets you 5 more aircraft and airports and Premium gets you another 5 aircraft and airports. It should be noted that the game has over 37,000 airports these are just especially detailed ones, i assume you still have access to standard quality versions of the airports regardless as Heathrow is in the premium tier which is BONKERS.

Regarding the extra aircraft, unless one of your hobbies includes researching the finer details separating small single prop planes you probably don't need to splash out for the extra planes, the standard edition has all the major types of civil and commercial planes covered, most of the extras really are just extras.

Pricing!
Standard - $59.99/£59.99, because apparently the pound is equal to the dollar.
Deluxe - $89.99/£79.99.
Premium - $119.99/£109.99.
I'm almost tempted to go Premium, i don't really intend on buying another flight simulator for decades... maybe ever again, is that a reasonable excuse?

Anyway enough of me, here's the lists of content.

I hope there's a challenge mission to fly a private jet through low height checkpoints and under bridges in Seattle.

Those challenges were weird but fun in FSX. Just a shame that performance didn't improve with better hardware.

Hmm Heathrow is Premium only? And no Gatwick... Not sure how to feel about that one.

@bollard: It is weird that THE UK airport is locked behind a paywall, maybe it's because there's so much of it.
Gatwick will certainly be in the game, just not one of the 40 they chose to spruce up.

The last Microsoft flight sim i played was that free to play "Flight", it wasn't really for hardcore players but i enjoyed the basic missions it presented, fly a photographer around an island, orbit a forest, land on a small runway, fly around a bit more, take him back to the airstrip, i'm not sure what goals "pro" players give themselves in Flight Simulator, but having objectives helped me engage with the game.

Back in FS98 i would just do stunts in the Extra, fly between sky scrapers and attempt to recreate my family holiday to Spain.

At the moment i'm looking forward to using the new game as a sort of next generation Google Earth, i've got a list of places i want to fly to.

@bollard: That's just for higher quality versions of them. There's 37,000-some airports in the game, but most of them are using more generic assets because they're (partly) autogenerated using the satellite data. They just went above and beyond for a handful of the more popular or unique ones.

For some reason they did not put the "enhanced" label directly on the airports list image that everyone's sharing, so people are making the mistake all too easily.

EDIT to add: for context of what the "low quality" versions are like, they've been doing great feature discovery series' on youtube, and one covers airports

Here’s a random question: how effective are these at helping alleviate crippling fear of flying? I’m building my first gaming PC soon and I kinda wanna pick this up, partly to see if it’ll help me get over the panic attacks I have when I just see an airplane. I love flying in games but the real thing was soured for me a few years ago after some bad experiences.

I'd probably pay extra for some Meigs Field DLC. Other than that, I don't care for any of the planes or airports they put behind the premium paywall right now. Hoping the non-premium airports won't be too bad, FSX's rendition of my closest airport wasn't great, and it still had an half-implemented Swedish airport that had been shut down in the 90s that you could glitch into under unclear circumstances which had a waterfall in the middle of the runway.

@brspies: @cikame: I'm in the alpha so I'm aware of this, but it's still a bummer being from the UK and getting one hand crafted airport that's locked behind an edition of the game that isn't included with GamePass and costs over £100.

@bollard: Like i said, bonkers isn't it?
But at least Standard gets a hand crafted version of Donegal in Ireland.

... Probably didn't take long...

@brspies: Thanks for the video link, i'd watched some of what they put out but i missed this one, seeing the tools they use for generation was really cool, and it's nice to hear 80 of the busiest airports will receive extra attention, Gatwick included, so i assume Heathrow looks pretty good in the standard edition, i would like to see what a hand crafted airport looks like by comparison.

Have they said anything about time dilation, similar to Euro Truck Simulator? Will a flight from NYC to LA actually take several hours, or once you get to a certain altitude they speed up in game time?

@bollard: Ah grats, yeah for sure it's a shame.

@pajamariot: In FSX you can do up to 4X time acceleration while still having AI traffic on, or up to like 16X or so while still using autopilot. This should have at least that but idk if they've said specifics.

The one thing I'll say about missing airports is the mod scene is bound to figure something out.

@shindig: I do wonder about mods, last year they said they'd be supporting "community content" but i don't know if they've given any details, since the game streams data constantly from servers i assume you can't simply mod the bejesus out of it without going offline or giving up some features, i can see them having paid mods in some kind of marketplace, i know third parties have sold high quality Flight Sim planes before.
I personally would like to see this balloon return... for reasons...

The counter I'd say to that is what's on those 10 DVDs? That's stuff you can get at. My theory is the map data, real time weather, etc will be streamed whereas the finer scenery (landmarks, housing, airports, plane models) will come from the hard drive.