Taking Flight, Slowly and Carefully
On 19th of November, Microsoft released their newest edition to their flight simulator series, Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024. And it didn’t come as a big surprise to many that the launch has had its issues. Whether or not you believe it should happen or not, it has become the standard for any big new releases with a significant online component to have hiccups in their first week or so. What was a bit more of a surprise was just quite how bad some of those hiccups were. For many on day one the game was completely unplayable, or even un-launchable with some people not being able to get past the loading screen. This was somewhat reminiscent of the launch of Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 but with 2024, once people finally got into their planes they would often encounter a brand new issue, their planes wouldn’t be loading in. This is due to a new feature of the 2024 release which is instead of having the aircraft installed on the computer, they would be streamed in along with the terrain and scenery. Having such a large amount of data streaming to so many people all at much looked to be just a bit much for Microsoft’s servers.
We’re a little over 2 weeks post release now and while some people continue to have issues, most people are at least able to get into the game now and get flying. I have been lucky to have almost no issues at all since launch, maybe due to a lighter server load in my region so have been able to soak in the new sim and form some opinions.
Aircraft
While I definitely can’t go over all of the 125 aircraft available in the premium deluxe edition, I can give some general opinions of the overall quality of what’s available when you first load into the game.
In comparison to MSFS 2020, we can first see just how many new aircraft we have. In the premium edition of MSFS 2020 there were only 30 planes so that’s over a 400% increase in 2024. It’s not the quantity that’s important though, it’s the quality right? Well 2024 wins their quite handily as well. This time, a number of the aircraft have been designed fully or in part by 3rd party addon developers such as Inibuilds, Carenado, and Working Title. These include planes from Airbus, Boeing, and many others. Even the Asobo planes in general have seen an improvement in their flight dynamics with some real life pilots such as 320 sim pilot describing the feel of the planes to be more realistic in 2024.
Visuals
This might be one of the most important parts of Microsoft Flight Simulator as it is what sets it apart from other sims such as X-plane and Prepare3D and they lead the competition by quite a way in this area.
For the planes, again due to the involvement on 3rd parties some of the new plane models do look better than 2020, though only in relation to the default planes. Addon planes in 2020 can look as good or better than many of the default planes in 2024. At some points due to the streaming in of aircraft their can be a reduction in texture quality though if everything is running smoothly everything looks great.
Trying to describe the scenery improvements is quite difficult, as I haven’t had time to visit the whole world yet but there are a few standout upgrades. The lighting in general sees a noticeable improvement, with raytracing also added for those with compatible graphics cards. There are over 20 new biomes which include new variations on vegetation which should improve the realism of certain areas. A small touch, but one I appreciate is that the aircraft will now have an effect on the world around them, from skid marks on the runway to tire treads on soft ground, the game feels just a bit more immersive before and that can go a long way. There are a bunch of other visual upgrades that I’m not specifically aware of but they all combine to create a very pleasant viewing experience from the sky and for some locations, even the ground.
Career Mode
This is best left to be discussed later. The career mode is a lot more broken than the rest of the game. There are certainly some good ideas in there but I will wait for a little more work to be done before I fully dive in.
While there is certainly a lot more work to do for the team at Asobo, there is definitely enough there for now to enjoy while we wait. I still won’t be uninstalling MSFS 2020 for now though, I have far too many addons there to fully move on yet.