The next big world update is coming to Microsoft Flight Simulator soon, however, it might not be as soon as we hoped. World Update 3 is set to include vast improvements to the United Kingdom as well as Ireland. This was originally supposed to release in late January, but the developers announced recently in a blog post that they are going to need more time.

Unfortunately, these new cities are causing a slight delay… it’s a new process and data source for us and the tools have to be updated for these cities to integrate seamlessly into the sim. The Bing Maps team is working hard to make this happen…

World Update 3 is the third in a line of world improvements. Back in September, World Update 1 was released which included major updates for Japan followed in November with an update for the United States. In the aforementioned recent blog post, it was confirmed that this upcoming update will include 70 new points of interest in the United Kingdom and Ireland general areas, a new enhanced digital elevation model, a couple of new landing challenges, multiple airports, and five new photogrammetry cities. These cities are arguably the most interesting part of this update as it will create more accurate and realistic 3D cities to explore and fly around. Most of these cities have not been announced; so far, London is the only one that has been confirmed. As for the points of interest, the development team teased some screenshots showing the new points of interest like Blarney Castle, Forth Bridges, and Windsor Castle.

Until then, players can take advantage of the improvements that came in World Update 1 and 2 in the newly released VR mode that was added back in December. Hopefully, sometime in early February World Update 3 will finally be available to play.