- Microsoft flight simulator x review full#
- Microsoft flight simulator x review pro#
- Microsoft flight simulator x review simulator#
You can easily lose yourself in the moment. The detail level up close is of course lower - this is primarily designed to be seen from thousands of feet in the air - but at times, circling airports and cities I knew coming in for landing led to an incredibly uncanny feeling. Much has been written about this technology, including in our recent preview, but all you need to know is that it is an incredible achievement. If you live in a big city, chances are some of the landmarks will have been directly translated - and if you're lucky, you might have enhanced, hand-created 3D models of particularly significant locations dropped into the AI-crafted world. That means to a relatively solid degree of accuracy you will be able to locate your house, school, workplace or local pub. Fed into an Azure cloud server, the vast amount of data is crunched in order to create a 3D representation.
Microsoft flight simulator x review simulator#
The sprawl of mankind is visible in minute detail beneath you - and in this Flight Simulator feels like at last a delivery on the promises of the 'power of the cloud' touted at the start of this console generation.įlight Simulator 2020's world - the whole world, as previously mentioned - is built from Microsoft's Bing Maps data and occasional photogrametric scans taken within cities. It underlines the power of this game as digital tourism - you can sit back and relax, cruising at lower altitudes over places that interest you, taking in architecture and geography.
This game releasing in the midst of pandemic lockdown with vastly reduced travel options is actually perfect, in a twisted way. There is a school of thought around video games that might suggest that this game is less worthwhile because the planes don't have guns on them - and I get it - but there's a lot to experience and enjoy here. That's the other trick up Flight Simulator's sleeve this time around, you see - it's not just accessible, but it's just incredibly good fun. So it's a most competent learning aid - though as someone who came to this with little interest in learning to fly, I kept playing just because I was loving doing so. This is impressive going for just a couple of weeks with the game. I wouldn't have the stones to do it in real life, obviously, but if you were to sit me down in that cockpit I could probably correctly talk you through much of the basic functionality.
Microsoft flight simulator x review pro#
There's a wide range of accessories available thanks to strong compatibility with years of pro flight sim gear.Īll this is to say that I can now confidently pilot several of the aircraft featured in Microsoft Flight Simulator. Ultimately, you could use any combination of these - just a yoke with a keyboard for everything else, a controller and real-life instruments, or whatever other weird combination makes you comfortable.
If you want to keep things simple but go beyond a controller, something like the Thrustmaster TCA Sidestick is also instantly compatible while having a reduced footprint and more affordable price. Both are great, but I ended up going deeper, primarily playing with a Thrustmaster TPR Rudder, Honeycomb Alpha Yoke & Switch Panel and a Logitech Pro Flight Throttle.
You can use a keyboard and mouse, of course, but the basic flight controls are just as accessible with an Xbox controller - vital for a later console release. The control choices mirror the in-game options and assists, too.
Microsoft flight simulator x review full#
Flick everything off and you have staggering, terrifying full authenticity and realism. In ways it reminds me of the deeply granular difficulty settings that have become common in simulation racing games like Microsoft's own Forza Motorsport: it's not just easy, medium or hard, but a whole range of assists and settings that combine to make things more realistic and therefore more difficult. Seasoned pilots can remove it all right away, if they wish. It's incredibly smartly crafted to make sure you can always easily access the parts of flying most of the most interest. You can also spawn right on the runway or even in the air, mid-flight.
If you want to taxi from the runway and go through the full pre-flight rigmarole, you can. The game is obsessed with authenticity, but also embraces accessibility. Then they'll double and triple confirm the checklist of things you need to do to safely fly the game handles that too. At first, your teacher will only give you control of the most basic functions - so the AI does that for you. Much of the development team learned to fly over the course of the game's development and endeavored to create assists that mirrored the way in which you learn to fly in real life. For me, however, the training aids are what make this a paletable video game and not just a simulator.
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