Microsoft Flight Simulator (2020)

I’ve wanted to try out Microsoft Flight Simulator for a while, but I was concerned it would melt my old laptop given its reputation as a massive game. With a new laptop and the game finally being on sale, I gave MFS a go.

When it comes to flying games, I’ve always found using a controller easier than mouse and keyboard. I think it’s the analog sticks that allow for smoother flight. As someone in the Sony camp, I game with a Playstation controller. Windows is set up to use Xbox controllers, but that’s an easy workaround. Unfortunately, Flight Simulator wasn’t wanting to play nice with my Dualshock. There’s three control schemes for the game: keyboard/mouse, Xbox controller, or generic controller input. It took some finagling between the two “controller” options and my DS4 for Windows program to get the controller to properly fly a plane. One of the settings had the rudder and throttle mapped to weird spots. While this game allows you to use a controller, it’s more a controller/mouse setup. You will need your mouse for all the extra bits that can’t be mapped to a controller button. There is an option to open up a cursor menu and use the analog stick as a mouse, but I found having the mouse handy was easier.

While a majority of basic flight can be achieved with the controller, this is a simulator game. I felt they were encouraging you to fly in 1st person, cockpit mode. Inside the cockpit about every lever and knob can be interacted with. This is where the mouse comes in. You can set the auto pilot, adjust your compass, tune the radio, switch fuel tanks, etc. Some of this is just flavor to add to the experience, others are required for stable flight. I worked as an aircraft mechanic for a short time working on 767s, so it was a treat getting to sit in the virtual cockpit of a Boeing plane and being able to point out “Oh, there’s the fire bottle handle”, “That’s the speed brake”, “Here’s the VOR.” Some of the larger planes like the Boeings don’t have every button available to use, but the overall detail in the cockpits is commendable.

I was disappointed by the lack of aircraft diversity in the roster. There’s a lot of small, Cesena-type prop planes, a few private jets, and a couple larger passenger/cargo freighters. I guess I was most upset by the lack of classic planes available. There was a Douglas DC-3 and the Wright flyer, but not a warplane to be seen. That’s where the DLC & mods come in. You can get anything from Trimotors and Electras to Wildcats and Corsairs. Unfortunately, all of the MSF mods are paid mods, maybe it’s where Bethesda & Valve got the ideal. And these aren’t little $2-5 affairs, they can run up to $50. I get simulator games attract a different crowd compared to a Fallout or Mass Effect, but mods that cost almost new game prices feels excessive. I did break down and buy a cheaper mod, at $20, of a WWII Wildcat. I’m of two minds about it all. On one hand, these guys are making some top notch, well detailed and high-performance mods that are practically DLC add-ons, so I can understand charging for them, maybe not $50, but I get it. On the other hand, there’s people who create DLC sized addons for Bethesda games, like Fallout: London or recreating all of Morrowind in Skyrim, equally laborious and provide hours of content, and they run off donations. I think I’d be less upset about these paid mods if they weren’t so damned expensive.

With that rant out of the way, I spent most my time flying around in either the Douglas DC-3 or my Wildcat. You start off by setting your departure and arrival airports. Once in game, there is no magic compass or guiding line pointing you towards your destination. There is a mini-map you can pull up that helps you stay on track, but it’s also a bit ugly. There’s several screens you can pull up and clutter your HUD with: the minimap, flight plan, and radio menu to name a few. You do need to pull them up occasionally, but I found it more fun and immersive to fly without them. Most planes also have an auto pilot, or gyroscope on the old birds, that hold your speed and altitude, but it’s up to you to make sure you’re pointing in the right direction. This does mean a lot of this game is just sitting, watching a plane fly through the air.

The graphics are very impressive, while the less populated areas of the world look like they’re in the PS2 era, the planes all look slick, and the clouds are realistically fluffy looking. Flying into storm clouds look opposing. This game is great for creating dramatic screenshots that could be used for wallpapers. There’s no music during the game, just the sound of the engine and the occasional radio chatter. This is another good game to zone out to while listening to a podcast.

Besides flying old planes, one of MSF’s main draws for me was the sightseeing potential. Being able to travel to anywhere on the globe that was to scale was a cool thought. The more major areas are hand modeled, but most buildings are featureless blocks generated by a predictive AI that reads Google Maps. I still work at an air park, so the first thing I did was fly from the local big city airport to the little place I worked. It was a fun flight that took a few minutes & I recognized some notable locations and the Interstate I’ve driven many a times, then I tried to fly over Las Vegas, Rio De Janeiro, across the English Channel, and down to the South Pole. I learned quick that I wasn’t going to get the sightseeing experience I was hoping for. I was up above 30,000 feet during most my flights, which meant I often saw clouds more than anything. When I did purposefully fly low, I could make out certain landmarks. Bigger, natural landmarks, like the Rockies were easy to marvel at, but trying to find the Cristo Redentor on a hill in Brazil, or Big Ben in London proved a little more challenging. I also didn’t want to just teleport and start right off flying over the Effiel Tower, I feel that defeats the “simulator’ part of the game. So, I’d try to chain trips together, fly over the English Channel to Paris. But that involves several real time hours of flight and 80% of the time you are looking at water or fields. American Truck Simulator has a similar vibe where you spend most of your time on an Interstate looking at deserts or corn fields, but being on the ground you’re more likely to come across a neat roadside sight. I usually ran out of gas or patience before I reached my destination, and like Indiana Jones, I can fly a plane, but landing’s a different story. I think about 12% of my landings were successful.

While sightseeing was a bust, there was one aspect I kind of liked. You could choose to fly on a certain day and the game would simulate the weather of that day. I remember driving to work with a thunderstorm rolling in and thinking, “This will be fun to try and fly in later.” Along with the weather, you can have the actual flights of a certain day in the air. Using the available flight data, you can see the actual flights coming out of O’Hare or Laguardia. There’s also an online multiplayer component to this game. I didn’t come across too many people flying the friendly skies, but it’s a big globe.

All in all, there is fun to be had with Microsoft Flight Simulator both in the thrill of figuring out how to fly and criss crossing across the globe, but it’s not a mile a minute ride. This game requires a patience I don’t always possess, but the chance to see parts of the world I’d never see in my real life was fun. The bland list of aircraft felt like it was designed to help push the expensive mod planes. If you enjoy a realistic simulator, I'd recommend this game but only at a sale price.

Like the turtles being called back to Galapagos, there is something inside of every cis-white man that will awaken at some point and guide him to transportation simulations. Whether it be model trains, slot cars, ships in bottles, or flight simulators, it will happen. It happened to me, in the year of our lord 2022, when I flew, entirely in VR, an 8 hour solo flight across Greece in a Cessna, stopping at something like 14 different airports.

What is there to review? You already know whether or not you're gonna like this thing. You already know whether or not you will have to play this thing, at some point in your life.

After 91 hours played (according to Steam), it might be time to write a review.

It's a fantastic experience, even if it's hard to call it a game. I can fly for hours and the environments are gorgeous. Either if you like flying low, sightseeing while navigating through landmarks or if you want to fly a jet on autopilot, this game can accommodate any play-style.

The AI-generated world is a slightly stuck in the uncanny valley, though. The generated houses sometimes make no sense and the algorithm is very aggressive with putting trees everywhere. But I feel that this is only an issue when flying in very familiar locations.

The only real problem is that even with the whole world to fly, it lacks a game. There's no "career mode" that provides a mission structure with progression. I would love being able to play missions to gain resources to get better planes, or flying always the same plane and having to me mindful of wear and tear. Anything to guide the player, really.

Oh, and also the loading times are atrocious. The game can take 2 or 3 minutes to just load into the main menu.

I haven't played it as much as I would like to but the time I've given to it was amazing. This is a fantastic game, extremely adaptable to the kind of experience you want to have, with many amazing innovation and that manages to strike an almost perfect balance between depth and ease of use (something that Microsoft struggled with in previous iterations of the franchise). The whole "real world" shenanigans are amazing and now there's also VR, what the fuck are we talking about?

I think it's also an important game for how it redefines a certain kind of "PC gaming flavour" in an era of almost interchangeable gaming platforms.