Simmers have always looked into ways to inject additional levels of realism and immersion into their flights. Either by using the most accurate aircraft available, the most detailed scenery, or utilities that help to simulate other aspects of real-world flights, there have always been ways to augment the experience in one way or another. One key area of this is the simulation of passengers and how this may condition pilots actions, or reward them for their prowess.
Older simmers will surely remember FSPassengers, a widely popular program back in the day of FSX that simulated just that: passengers during flights. FSPassengers is sadly nowhere to be found for MSFS… in fact, the developer has simply vanished so we may as well drop any hope of ever seeing that beloved tool in Microsoft Flight Simulator… but worry not! The development community is more active than ever and there are some pretty good alternatives like TFDi’s PACX, Self-Loading Cargo, or the one that brings us here today, the newly announced Passengers2.
Led by Scott Thompson, Passenger2 is looking to shake up the Flight Simulator community with its promise of “advanced passenger realism”. Its cross-compatibility with popular flight simulators like MSFS, P3D, X-Plane, and FSX using FSUIPC is a bold move, designed to cast a wide net in the market, similar to what we saw with FSPassengers.
“It’s exhilarating to announce the development of Passenger2,” said Lead Developer Scott Thompson. “Having entered advanced development stages, we are ready to excite the Flight Simulator community with advanced passenger realism.”
A key feature of Passengers2 is its dual-mode capability, which enables users to take on a career as an airline pilot, or simply embark on a solo flight and leave it at that. There’s also a rating system, which will evaluate simmers not only on flight performance but also on customer service, providing interactive passenger reactions to the flight.
The pledge of advanced announcements, which draw from real-world crew scripts and include multilingual cabin announcements, could raise the bar for realism in the genre. This, combined with the introduction of safety videos, another first for Flight Simulator apps, could potentially offer a more immersive experience than what’s currently out there in the market.
Passenger2 certainly sounds like it has the potential, but we’ll be left in suspense for a few months since it’s only expected to launch in Q4 2023. As for the pricing, it is said to be competitive, but as we all know, value is determined by more than just the price tag. Will Passenger2 deliver on its promises? Only time will tell.
