Microsoft Flight Simulator
PC
You can just stick a pin anywhere in the world and start flying there. Fancy a jaunt over the pyramids?
Developer Asobo Studio
Publisher Xbox Game Studios
Format PC
Release Out now
They say it’s not the destination but the journey, and with Microsoft Flight Simulator that might entirely depend on why you’re playing it in the first place. We have to admit to being tourists here, both for the sightseeing potential of a game that boasts planet Earth as its sandbox, and in terms of flight sim experience. But with much of the world still grounded, the chance to virtually explore the globe, flying free as a bird through ever-shifting skies, is irresistible. The game’s timing couldn’t be more perfect, certain to bring new players to a series that was once the preserve of a dedicated community of simulation fans and wannabe pilots.
Indeed, for a few meditative hours we almost forget this is a hardcore genre. The series pre-dates Windows in Microsoft’s software discography and the expectations borne of its 14-year absence since the last iteration have not escaped French developer Asobo. The game remains faithful to the core pillars of the series while delivering an ambitious update of the simulation experience, utilising all the Azure cloud tech and satellite-based applications available in 2020. At times the results take our breath away, making us feel like we’re looking at a next-generation horizon, albeit one constrained by the dry nature of a game about flying planes.
Flight itself is fairly simple once you get the hang of it (though dig into the nuances of the aviation tech and things can be fine-tuned to be as complex as you’d like). The directional yoke, throttle and rudder are all you need to get airborne, and a series of tutorials cover take-off, level flight and landing patterns in a two-seater propellordriven Cessna. There are 20 planes to choose from in the base game, from light propellor aircraft, which are easiest to control and land, right up to a less forgiving Boeing 747-8. The cockpits are recreated down to every switch, although you can opt for a tailing camera, with key instruments shown in a more traditional game HUD. This is easier, generally, for viewing the world below, since moving the camera to look outside the aircraft windows can be tricky while you’re trying to manoeuvre the plane. The map allows you to pick your arrival and departure airports, time of day and weather conditions, or you can just stick a pin anywhere in the world and start flying there. Fancy a jaunt over the pyramids of Egypt, a highaltitude cruise over the rainforests of South America or low sweep along California’s Big Sur coastline? Being able to tick off your wishlist of travel destinations instantly is the stuff of fantasy, aided by a number of systems that Flight Sim piggy-backs for realism outside your cockpit window – from the geocoding and satellite photogrammetry to live weather prediction modelling.
And from a few thousand feet up, the world looks incredible. Bodies of water, in particular, look stunning, varied in colour based on their mud and algae content. 400 of the world’s cities are faithfully reproduced via photogrammetry, so theoretically it’s possible to find your own house. At present, however, unless you live in one of the world’s most famous places, you may be disappointed. Attempting to locate Edge’s Bath office, we found the UK’s entire southwest to be a procedurally generated expanse of fields with generic sprawls of buildings where cities the size of Bristol should be. It’s a small gripe, we concede, given the ambition of Flight Sim, and one that will be addressed over time as the game adds more data and thirdparty developers begin to flesh out regional details with paid-for add-ons.
While you’ll have to settle for certain regions over others, wherever you end up the illusion seen from the air is irresistible. Taking as a given the level of detail in the licensed planes, it’s the sky that feels like it’s benefitted most from the generational leap. We never thought we’d wax lyrical about cumulonimbus, but the detail in the clouds is hypnotic, while rain, storms, rainbows and other weather phenomena are astonishingly realistic.
But the spectacle breaks down when you get closer to the ground. Framerates stutter and urban areas can look primitive, dependent on the level of hand-crafting that’s gone into them. We spend a couple of hours in a Cessna on a fascinating tour of a perfectly detailed Manhattan, while elsewhere we find some cities (cheer up, London) and airports to be nightmares of ugliness and frequent freezes. This is especially evident while taxiing along runways, with ground vehicles lagging and disappearing through walls. The game is streaming a lot of data, so we can forgive some of its stumbling, and to aid the framerate issues you can turn off data streaming – though you lose its live weather and air traffic, making Flight Sim’s headline feature, its living world, much less interesting.
Even if the world outside the cockpit is less interesting, you’ve still got the most gripping aviation simulation ever created, lovingly detailed in every way. If you’re committed, you can spend hours on your journeys, creating an authentic flightplan, taxiing to and from airport gates and completing the flight in realtime while attending to every detail manually. Casual players may prefer to leave some of the control to the AI co-pilot, and focus on the takeoff and landing. Or, with a high level of assistance (for example, visual aids that guide landing patterns) you can focus on the fun of flying. There are also Landing Challenges, complete with leaderboards, and Bush Trips; the latter involving short-ish hops navigating some of the world’s most remote and beautiful regions in a light aircraft, feeling every jolt and every updraft.
Despite the laundry list of issues that have arisen as a result of Asobo’s ambition, in the end, it’s those sudden sensations – especially the frequent feeling that we’ve finally got our hands on something truly next-gen, imperfect as it may be – that count for the most. Imagine where Flight Sim’s 10-year expansion plan might take us next. Bring us that horizon.