Microsoft Flight Simulator – A review

Despite a launch marred by calamitous community engagement, Microsoft Flight Simulator manages to soar above and beyond expectations.

This is a review, the opinion is soley that of the author.

It’s regrettable that this is even part of a game review but I should explain what I mean by “calamitous community engagement”. I checked out the official social media pages/servers/subreddit for the game before writing this and I was honestly taken aback. If you’re active on social media in anticipation of Microsoft Flight Simulator today, you’ll have noticed scores of people seemingly being warned by community moderators on the official Microsoft Flight Simulator discord server and reddit pages for taking advantage of a harmless workaround that allowed users to access the title they’ve paid for just a few hours earlier than they normally would by changing their home region on Windows to one closer to the international date line.

The surreal part was watching many users be told by moderators (absolutely incorrectly) that accessing the game earlier could see them facing fines or worse, jail time. When this was pointed out by users on the server, the moderation team declared that it was “fake news” but you can see some of what happened for yourself below.

It is absolutely astonishing that this has happened, let the gravity of the following sink in and keep in mind this is an official communications channel for Microsoft Flight Simulator. This is very, very unusual.

There is even a warning in place right now on the reddit page (originally posted by a Microsoft employee on the discord discussion server that states “What you decide to do with your timezones is your own business, but we don’t allow chatting about it here. We will take action when necessary”.

Yikes, Streisand Effect anyone?

The approach to community engagement at the launch of one of the most anticipated games in recent years is genuinely astonishing as it appears to be turning players and simmers away from the official community channels. Hopefully this is not going to be a permanent feature and hopefully it will be sorted out.

The game itself is amazing and can only get better, let’s take a look!

On to the game!

I’m currently above Glasgow and despite a few small errors in building generation, you could be forgiven for thinking this is a video of an airliner flying over the Scottish city. It is stunning. My home is the same shape and colour, it looks great from up here.

This software is truly a wonder. The clouds and the light are majestic and the fact you can change all of the weather settings in real time is even more of a technical achievement, no more reloading the game when you change a setting.

This level of detail is possible because the simulator generates the environment using satellite data from Bing Maps. The software brings the map to life as it intelligently fills it in with trees, buildings and even traffic on the roads. Mountains are where they are due to quite accurate elevation data, the hill beside your house might not be there but it probably is. You can even use live weather data, meaning that if it’s raining in Glasgow in real life, it’ll be raining in the game too.

There are around 37,000 airports in the game, 1.5 billion buildings and two trillion trees all in roughly where they’re supposed to be. I grew up on Microsoft Flight Simulators, all the way up to Flight Simulator X. This is incomparable. This is an entirely new generation.

The sheer scope of this game, the sheer beauty of what it presents is attracting thousands of people that would never normally play something like this but don’t worry, Microsoft is well aware of this. Many ‘assists’ can be switched on or off, meaning you can pretty much let the software handle whatever you don’t want to and just enjoy the experience. Or, if you prefer, you can work with every switch and checklist needed to simply start the engines.

Microsoft Flight Simulator also allows the player interact with real-world storms as they occur in real-time, can you believe that?

This is suited to everyone and it’s only going to improve with third party aircraft, scenery and airports!

What are the specs?

Here you go.

When is it out?

Now on the Microsoft Store and on Steam.

A special thank you to DrawyahYT for the high quality images. His twitter can be found here and his YouTube channel can be found here, enjoy! Additionally, it should be noted that DrawyahYT has had no involvement with our reporting above and no involvement with any issues on the Microsoft Flight Simulator discord server.