Microsoft Flight Simulator
From light planes to wide-body jets, fly highly detailed and accurate aircraft in the next generation of Microsoft Flight Simulator. Test your piloting skills against the challenges of night flying, real-time atmospheric simulation and live weather in a dynamic and living world. Create your flight plan to anywhere on the planet. Microsoft Flight Simulator includes 20 highly detailed planes with unique flight models and 30 hand-crafted airports. Vivid and Detailed Landscapes – Immerse yourself in the vast and beautiful world that is our planet with over 37 thousand airports, 1.5 billion buildings, 2 trillion trees, mountains, roads, rivers and more. Living World – Earth is vibrant and ever-changing and so is the world of Microsoft Flight Simulator which includes live traffic, real-time weather and animals.
Game Discussion
Steam User 972
The game challenges my mental abilities. I believe it is a meaningful tool to help seniors keep alert.
I am 87 years old and I am still trying to improve my ability to land a variety of aircraft. I've been told that learning a new language....doing crossword puzzles are also meaningful methods.....I have chosen FLIGHT SIMULATOR !
Steam User 169
Be aware, the launcher is 1.5~ GB to download, although, after you run the game for the first time, you must download 130 GB of content (which is the actual game, these dummies), and depending of your Download speed, you might find yourself wasting your Steam 2 hours window to refund the game if you didn't like it...
I like these games, it's quite fun to fly, travel through my local area, discover new places, and so on.
just be aware of the download times...
This review is timed at 1.5 hours and I have just been able to download 66.55GB
Steam User 88
>bought this game
>downloaed it
>thought to myself "wow only a gigabyte?"
>launched it
>prompted me to install 500 gigs worth of stuff
>started install
>10 hours later still installing
10/10 perfect game, microsoft download simulator
Steam User 51
Played quite a bit of this using gamepass, figured I'd wait for a sale and then buy it here on Steam.
It runs almost twice as fast as the 2024 version on my 5700x3D (32gb ram) + RX 6700, I have it capped at 90fps, 1440p ultra settings. The performance alone is reason enough to buy this over the new version, it's not even close.
Did an almost 5 hour long flight in the DA62 over Europe to test stability with live traffic and weather on. Zero issues. The ATC seems to be working fine too, but only time will tell.
WHY 2020 over 2024?:
I've played a lot of MSFS2024 as well on gamepass to compare the two, and unfortunately the newer version is still a buggy mess. I have a 300mbps connection and textures do not stream correctly and I get constant microstutter. I'd rather have a one-time download in the form of MSFS 2020 that doesn't require me to be online to play and also has all the terrain data stored on my SSD. Oh and by the way, in 2024 if the connection drops for whatever reason (like the servers pooping themselves), its a GG for your flight with a crash to the main menu. Which also makes the much desired Career mode almost useless, because every flight is a gamble.
TL;DR
If you are on a mid-ranged PC, and value your sanity I would recommend FS2020 over 2024 any day of the week. It is more feature complete, and above all, actually gets you up in the air and flying your favourite planes which is why we're even here. It just works. One can only hope someday 2024 will actually be in a state worth buying, but that day isn't today and likely won't be for another 3-4 years, if at all.
Steam User 48
My first 10 hours was trying to figure out how to get past the game crashing once i booted up the 1gb launcher to actually download the 110gb. I spent days trying to figure it out and it was something stupid like needing to install a english (US) language pack.
After i finally got to play the game it was amazing other than a few small bugs with the autopilot and the atc not doing what its told. totally recommend this game for those interested in aviation.
if you're having the same problem as me:
Install the English (US) language pack for windows. The game requires it for air traffic control. Fixed the closing to desktop for me.
Instructions here:
Steam User 64
I'm gonna need to wait before installing this, but I felt it important to make sure buyers are away that this game is 400gig+
Steam User 33
i mean what can i even say about this game... i guess i will start with the pros:
1: this game was the thing that got me to love aviation so much and its to this day one of my favorite hobbies.
2: i bought this game in 2023 (i think at least im not sure), and to be honest even now in 2026 i love to play this a lot as its really stable for me (i dont have msfs 2024 nor am i planning to buy it).
3: the game is very flexable, what i mean by that is that when you start the game you get 3 airliners, a fighter jet, 2 helicopters, the sr-72 darkstar (i think its called the sr-72), a few otehr special planes and a lot of GA planes, and if you want you can also purchase planes from either the inbuilt marketplace or from outside installers with great planes like pmdg planes, fenix a320s, and other planes which i personally only play airliners so idk about that but yea i think you get the point, oh and a lot of free mods from flight sim.to that some are really good for the game.
4: in my opinion the graphics are really good, now the ground other then in airports can sometimes look really weird (i will get to that) but the airports and the aircraft most of them at least are great.
5: the game has multiplayer so you can fly with friends (i dont have them so im alone) but if you have friends you can just fly with them.
6: while its not perfect you CAN fly offline, the only cons are that the graphics are in my opinion really bad (on the ground- and yes airports also look really bad) and there isnt live traffic and live weather but the core games with your add ons work and the planes look the same so it is playable.
7: servers like vatsim and ivao let you play with atc thats humans and other pilots also playing on the network, i really like it personally.
now the cons:
thank you for reading my review :)
no but seriously these are the cons:
1: this is the main issue: the game takes like 20% of my ssd (i got a 1tb nvme ssd).
2: following that i will also say that running the game with good graphics and ray tracing and all of that is bit hard for my computer, i dont know about low graphics and all of that but thats just from what i see.
3: well this is more for people who do long flights with autopilot but im finding that if my monitor goes into sleep mode in a flight then its like a 50% chance that the game will stop responding and i will have to manually close it with task manager and in a long flight its really annoying.
4: the ground terrain not in airports sometimes annoy me, as they can look really bad in certian places and from my personal experiences houses look really bad, but honestly most of what about graphics is just me being super picky at stuff that doesnt matter.
but i would say that if you can somehow bypass most of these issues then the game is really fun and calming, thank you for reading me yap about a flight sim, and i hope you have a great day :)
(also im sorry for the worst english you have ever seen in your life im just not good at english and its also not my main language).
note: buy this game, its amazing.