Forget Dragonflight, this Microsoft Dragon Simulator X is the real way to ride dragons

The simulator is just a personal project, for now.

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Microsoft Dragon Simulator X

Ever since Game of Thrones ended, and House of the Dragon began airing, dragons have been a thing: even the world’s most popular MMORPG, World of Warcraft, released a dragon-themed expansion, Dragonlflight, finally allowing players to ride dragons after almost 20 years of existence.

While riding dragons in WoW is definitely fun, this Microsoft Dragon Simulator X takes it to the next level, with hyper-realistic dragons soaring through the skies, and making the ground beneath feel like a playground. Fortunately, there is a way to witness the Dragon Simulator X. Unfortunately, there is no real way (yet) to play it.

The Microsoft Dragon Simulator X was developed by Reddit user, Sidenius, and it looks breathtaking, to say the least.

In almost 2 minutes, you can see a dragon flying through the sunny skies, before diving, and soaring again, and it looks incredible.

It’s currently under development, but the user felt that the Simulator is good enough to be displayed: it currently runs on Unreal Engine and it uses an aerodynamics model, and procedural animations to simulate the experience of a dragon flying.

The developer says the Simulator is far from its finished version, but even in this state, it looks incredible.

The flight simmers are gonna love this one. It’s a little project in Unreal Engine I’ve been working on recently which uses a simple aerodynamics model and procedural animations to simulate a highly dynamic dragon flying experience. It’s still very much a WIP (anyone noticed the map borders?) but good enough to showcase.

Sidenius on Reddit

The developer also said the Simulator will be upgraded to support fire-breathing capabilities (cool, right?), so that means potential players will be able to use their dragon to wreak havoc on those pitiful mortals down below (we’re kidding).

For now, it’s just a personal side-project, but the developer hopes to find some devs to take it to the next level, a mod for Microsoft Simulator (after all, Microsoft did release a Dune-themed expansion for it), or even a game on its right.

It’s just a personal side project so far, but I might look into opportunities for funding and potential dev buddies to make it into a real game. The purpose of this post was partly to gauge interest and it seems like a lot of people like it, so I’ll definitely keep working on it for now at least.

Sidenius

Meanwhile, while most of the Reddit community finds it absolutely breathtaking (and for good reason), there are some criticisms: the dragon is not really a dragon, but a wyvern, and this is an important distinction, a Reddit user says.

If it only has four limbs, it’s a wyvern. I adore wyverns, but it’s an important distinction to me. Also, I absolutely love dragons with wings that feel big enough to be real.

Reddit user

Microsoft Dragon Simulator X or Microsoft Wyvern Simulator X, whatever your heart desires, but can we have it already? Can we play it already? Pretty please.

More about the topics: gaming, microsoft