Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 review: Magic, with turbulent clouds

Price When Reviewed

79,99 Euro

First things first: Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 is real magic in game form.

Hovering over Paris in our Airbus H125 helicopter, with the ray-traced sun in the cockpit reflected on the curved windows to the right and left, the Eiffel Tower in front of us and all the iconic streets of arguably Europe’s most beautiful city below us, is a dream come true.

We’re talking about a flight simulator in which we can fly for two kilometers from the Place de la Concorde over the Champs-Élysées to the Arc de Triomphe and see tourist buses and taxis below us. We can even activate the live traffic of all the world’s metropolises in the menu.

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Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024: Cloud problems at launch spoil the fun

However, Microsoft still has launch problems. They are now relying much more on cloud architecture, meaning that we only load 50 gigabytes onto the hard drive and the entire 4K world is buffered, just like Netflix buffers a 4K film.

This caused a number of errors on launch day because Microsoft’s Azure servers could not cope with two million Flight Simulator fans at the same time.

This outsourcing of rendering to servers is a problematic decision, as there are still a number of bugs today, such as rivers suddenly stopping, building textures not loading, or entire airports looking like shoeboxes.

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When everything is running smoothly, however, it becomes clear every time just how much love has gone into this game. Basically, it’s the ultimate holiday simulator. We didn’t expect to find statues in parks exactly where they are in the real world. It’s even more impressive at night when every row of houses are illuminated.

Every street lamp is animated and every car casts its own light. Flight Simulator 2024 loads 50-80 times more data in 4K and you can feel it everywhere. Not just in metropolises, but also in the savannah of Kenya, where we land and take photos of giraffes and elephants in special modes.

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Microsoft Flight Simulator has been the king of simulators for decades, and 2024 really does simulate everything, even data that almost nobody will notice.

The fact that they have gone to the trouble of incorporating the real routes of real shipping traffic into this game is wonderfully absurd. After all, who monitors shipping traffic just outside Rio de Janeiro via an app? We are actually here to marvel at the statue of Christ, the super-detailed forests and dreamlike wave animations.

The degree of realism is demonstrated here by a real pilot of an Airbus A330, who spends 30 minutes setting up his instruments before take-off:

If we fly in close, we see that tankers displace more water than smaller ships, and this is all simulated. Asobo also simulates over 90 percent of real air traffic for those hardcore fans who want exactly that.

In addition, the atmospheric lighting has been reworked. The cloud layers are now illuminated more accurately by the sun, especially when it is low, so the sky takes on a more yellowish hue at lower altitudes. All these ray tracing reflections are calculated for the cockpits of 45 new airplanes, helicopters, microlights, etc.

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Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 is certainly the most elaborate game of all time in terms of graphics. Not only do we experience the sunset in the long, sloping cockpit of an Airbus A380 in a completely different way to a Boeing 727, but when landing in the sands of Africa with a Beechcraft GTX King Air, fine grain settles on the windows, which changes the refraction of the light.

Asobo built a glass render engine especially for this purpose and had the manufacturers send them the exact thickness and coating of each cockpit glass. This also shows an attention to detail that can be felt in every hour of flight.

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Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024: 45 detailed new aircraft

The games industry has its share of lazy developers. They sit at EA Sports, unlocking slightly better AI and physics