Friday at FlightSimExpo

After a nine hour flight from London Heathrow to Minneapolis St Paul on Thursday, I arrived at the convention centre for FlightSimExpo 2026 mid-morning for the afternoon presentations, and the opening of the exhibition hall for the rest of the weekend. After registering and picking up my pass for the weekend, I grabbed a coffee and found a table in a quiet corner. An elderly gentleman joined my table, and struck up conversation - revealing a career in the first the US air force, and latterly as a commercial captain. We lost track of time, and almost didn’t make it to the presentation hall before the main part of the day started - a 4 hour presentation from somewhere in the region of twenty different hardware and software developers - I won’t list them all - you can find the press releases all over the internet. Perhaps the highlight came with Microsoft’s closing presentation - revealing their work with Inibuilds on a re-built Boeing 707 that looks absolutely amazing. It’s already out, which means you’re getting to play with it days before I’ll get a chance - I’m ever so slightly jealous. I should probably mention that somewhere in the region of two thousand people were present for the presentations. After they finished, the exhibition hall opened its doors. I made my way around the convention floor, and had the slightly intimidating experience of being recognised several times - I had been told to expect it, but given most of my life is spent holed up in the spare room at home live-streaming, it still feels very odd. I made my way over to Microsoft and SayIntentions.AI, and immediately ran into a number of familiar faces:

… and some rather famous faces:

Looking forward to the rest of the weekend, and will report more. I have hundreds of photos to share of some of the most amazing hardware already…