The Junkers JU-52 will be the first in a series of “Local Legends” featuring famous aircraft

The Flight Simulator team is ramping up the production of its own aircraft to further expand the options within the sim. After the release of the Just Solo and the Husky A-1C, we also knew that the Junkers JU-52 has been in active development aiming for a release coinciding with the upcoming Germany/Austria/Switzerland World Update. Now, there’s a significant update about the development of the JU-52: it will be the first in a series of “Local Legends”, which will see regionally famed aircraft come to MSFS together with new World Updates.

Jorg Neumann announced this new series of “Local Legends” during the Xbox presentation on Gamescom, where he also revealed that the Reno Air Races are coming to MSFS with a new competitive multiplayer mode. For “Local Legends”, the team is leveraging their goal to improve specific regions of the world (the World Updates) to also bring to MSFS some famous and historic airplanes from those specific regions, which may not be as well known to a worldwide audience. The team figured that the World Updates would be a great opportunity to highlight these “Legends”, starting next month, September 7th, with the release of World Update VI and the German Junkers JU-52.

The team is going to great lengths to digitally preserve the JU-52 in Flight Simulator. They have been working with Bernd Junkers, the grandson of the original creator of the JU-52 (Hugo Junkers), who has a large number of insider materials about the aircraft. They are also counting with the help of an organization that preserves one of the last surviving examples of the JU-52, which has enabled the developers to fully scan the plane from inside-out, in order to achieve an unprecedented level of detail that goes down to 1mm.

The JU-52 was initially unveiled a few months back, in a new partnership with developer Oliver Fischer, who is an expert in the aircraft. The goal is to create an extremely faithful virtual version of the Ju 52, where every switch and function works as in the real aircraft. It will be a “no compromise” aircraft.

The Junkers JU-52 is coming to MSFS on September 7th, by the time World Update VI is released as well, and it will come with a very attractive price tag: $14.99.

The JU-52 will then be the first “Local Legend” to come to Flight Simulator. Jorg revealed that the Flight Simulator team is now working with 40 (!!!) Museums worldwide to create a sort of digital museum in Flight Simulator, in order to forever preserve famous airplanes inside MSFS, digital flying copies of real-world classics. Incredible! It has us wonder about what’s in store for the future. How many “Local Legends” will we get if the MSFS team is partnering with 40 museums? One thing seems certain: they will be a lot!