When Microsoft first announced Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 in the summer of 2023, the community’s reception was generally positive, but mixed. Although a new simulator sounded exciting, there was a lot of uncertainty, not the least bit caused by how unexpected the announcement was, since MSFS 2020 was not that old yet. Since the initial announcement of MSFS 2024, Microsoft has worked hard to get simmers excited for MSFS’ latest iteration. With every new preview, announcement and piece of information they shared, everyone grew more eager for the next installment of flight simulation. And now that MSFS 2024 is finally here, I want to share some of my initial thoughts on Microsoft’s latest entry to the flight simulation market.
Off to a Rough Start
A lot of things have been said about the launch already, but you could probably summarise it with the word ‘disastrous’. Microsoft was wholly unprepared for a launch of this size, and many people were unable to get into the simulator in the first place, experiencing excessive loading times and crashes upon loading. Even those that did manage to get in, reported issues with content not loading or missing as well as performance issues with the server connectivity.
While some of these performance issues might be expected on a launch day, the fact that they persisted (and still persist) a week after the launch, is quite shameful. Microsoft is by no means a small company, and they have many game studios under their belt with reputations far bigger than Microsoft Flight Simulator. The company owns the Azure infrastructure that the sim runs on, and advertises with its scaling features. While I’m unaware of the technical implementation of MSFS, the fact that several days after launch the connectivity issues still are not fixed, is not a good look. Microsoft should, and could, have prepared much better for this launch.
It is yet another instance of developers delivering unfinished games to paying customers, with promises and intentions of fixing and finishing them later. While Microsoft has a somewhat proven track record of fixing MSFS 2020, this doesn’t absolve them from the criticism. And while many core simmers might see the product through for a little while, a disastrous launch is never good for your product. Many casual gamers will have discarded the product by now, seeing it as yet another cash-grab and poor launch product.
Designed for Xbox
After finally being able to start the simulator, you’re greeted by a brand new interface. While trying to navigate the game’s menus, it quickly becomes clear that the interface has been designed for Xbox. I want to emphasise that I’m not an Xbox hater, I’m very happy that a huge range of gamers can have access to MSFS through their consoles and I enthusiastically welcome them. This is not about the simulator being available on Xbox. What I’m not a big fan of, are the compromises that Microsoft makes to accommodate Xbox users, and the interface is a big one of those. Where the MSFS 2020 interface could still be somewhat scaled, this isn’t the case for the 2024 interface. I own a 38” monitor, and yet, the interface offers me only a few buttons next to each other that cover the width of the screen. All the interface elements are huge boxes, with huge buttons, offering little to no scaling options to make them smaller. MSFS 2024 offers a huge amount of aircraft, and yet I can never see more than six on the same screen without scrolling, horizontally. The livery browser is unclear and chaotic, only shows you three liveries at a time, and once again, offers a horizontal scrolling element. And in-game, assuming you have cockpit tooltips enabled, you’ll get tooltips so big that they block large parts of your screen, as well as aircraft controls and panels. The general look and feel of the UI, including the size of elements and the way to navigate them, don’t seem to take PC users into account at all. The UI is also quite slow and laggy, which might just be a side-effect of content being downloaded in the background, but I’m not sure about this. Either way, it offers a very sub-optimal experience.
One of the worst offenders of the new interface is the controls and assignments. Similar to what I described above, the UI for this has not been optimised at all. But beyond that, the controls are also very unclear. While some people may have liked the premise of having different controls per aircraft, I personally always thought this was a bit unnecessary. But Microsoft has gone one step beyond that, and made it a confusing mess. There are the general controls with presets for 2024 and 2020, but don’t think for a moment you can actually use the 2020 controls inside MSFS 2024 because some features don’t work with it.
Then there are airplane controls and specific aircraft controls. But the interface doesn’t allow you an option to choose which preset you want to edit. I can’t edit my general controls, and if I try to assign a new control somewhere, the sim automatically changes the airplane controls. I’m also not able to change my airplane-specific controls, as again, the simulator automatically changes the airplane controls.
Another big compromise is the install size of the simulator. Granted, MSFS 2020 was quite big in the end if you used several or all of the world updates, as well as third-party aircraft and scenery. So a reduction in simulator size was always welcome. And the solution that Microsoft came up with, sounds good on paper. However, the reliance on servers for basically anything related to this simulator became an obvious problem on day one, and it hasn’t stopped being a problem since. I’m still experiencing issues with the streaming of assets, whether they be textures or sounds, and probably other assets in the background that are less obvious. The photogrammetry won’t stream correctly, changing the landscape into a molten mess. I have not experienced a single flight where I did not run into one, or multiple, of these issues. Microsoft won’t allow you to download content, such as aircraft, onto your device (yet), so for now it seems we’re all still relying on the server woes.
All the Technical Issues Aside
While my experience with MSFS 2024 has been mostly negative, there are some positives about the sim as well. Although not all of them work as well, the simulator boasts an impressive library of default aircraft, especially if you own the Deluxe, Premium Deluxe or Aviators Edition. While I haven’t yet had a chance to try out all of the new aircraft, I did fly around some of my favourites. Microsoft has made a very clever move by working with some third-party developers for these additional aircraft for the simulator, as they are by far some of the best included in a base simulator. The iniBuilds Airbuses are a lot of fun to fly, and I keep finding myself returning to the Beluga XL. I also really appreciate the Albatross, developed by Michael Johnson, and the Edgley Optica by Got Friends, among other aircraft.
While I have never enjoyed helicopters in 2020, MSFS 2024 has me genuinely excited to explore the world in a different way with some of the new helicopters and other “lighter than air” options.
Although I run into bugs and issues on most of my flights, there have been a small handful of flights where these issues seemed less common. Admittedly, when everything works, this simulator shines. The new lighting engine looks amazing, casting a much more realistic atmosphere across the world. The seasonal trees look very nice and they are a very welcome addition to the simulator. And where the flight dynamics already felt very good in MSFS 2020, they feel even more like a big step up in 2024.
However, I’m less happy with some of the game design implementations of the simulator, particularly the career mode. After all the trailers and previews, I found myself excited to try out rescue or cargo ops, fly around VIP’s or drop some parachutes over an area. These missions compromise around 90% of all the trailers. And yet this content that I was so looking forward to, is locked behind a buggy career system, without any option to fly such missions outside of the career mode. It’s a questionable game design choice that takes away freedom from players and forces them into arbitrary flying tasks. And it has me slightly worried for future expansions, as well as in-game microtransactions in order to speed up progress that might otherwise require a grind.
Another important aspect that didn’t quite live up to the expectation was the add-on compatibility. Microsoft stated that “with very few exceptions, virtually all add-ons that work [in 2020] today will function [in 2024]”. While some issues were expected, I think this statement massively oversold the promise of add-on compatibility. While I don’t want to assume anything bad, surely Microsoft and Asobo must have been aware that this statement created a lot of expectations and hope that turned out to be false when the sim was released.
Conclusion
Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 was never going to be the revolution that MSFS 2020 was, but it was sold as a significant step up. It was supposed to offer players more to do in the sim, and invite them to explore and see more of the world that Microsoft and Asobo had carefully crafted. In the end, after one week of playing, MSFS 2024 feels like a letdown to me. I find myself annoyed with the interface, as well as the arbitrary game design decisions. I’m still messing around with the controls, which function as a barrier to trying out all the new aircraft this sim has to offer. I also still experience a lot of technical issues, mostly related to server connectivity. On top of that, sadly, MSFS 2024 still doesn’t deliver on some of the community’s most requested features, including a weather API for third parties, dual jetways, and ATC improvements. The hype and excitement that lived in the community leading up to the release have changed into frustration and annoyance for a lot of players.
It’s a problem that could have easily been avoided with more development time. I’m certain we would all have been happier if this product had been delayed, allowing additional time to perfect and refine it. However, Microsoft committed themselves to a 2024 release by attaching that title to it, and now here we are; not the love letter to aviation that this community deserved.
