Test - Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024: Test: Please fasten your seatbelts, we expect turbulence!

No matter how good games like Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 are, they will never appeal to every target group. What suits casual pilots goes against the grain of enthusiasts and vice versa. It's even worse if the program ends up tripping itself up due to severe server problems during publication. Fortunately, these problems were quickly resolved so that we could take a look at the new features at our leisure.

You don't want to be in the shoes of the developers at Asobo Studios. Their balancing act between recreational pilots, who just want to shake the joystick a little in virtual aircraft and enjoy the view, and hardcore sim freaks, for whom every switch and every screen in a cockpit, no matter how small, has to work authentically, is painful to watch. Somewhere in the middle lurk the typical gamers who expect a challenge with countable values.

Satisfying everyone seems impossible, especially since MS Flight Simulator 2024 is already being accused by the community of being just a full-price DLC in disguise. So the big question is: What does the new iteration actually weigh in?

More challenges for gamers

With the predecessor from 2020, it was the aforementioned gamers who were left out. Flying challenges were something you had to impose on yourself, and even if you came to terms with them, there was little tangible to measure yourself against. That's why MS Flight Simulator 2024 now brings two game modes to the fore. On the one hand, there are the so-called activities that present you with various extreme tasks, for example particularly low flights with a jet fighter, difficult landings on special airfields or rally flights with gates that you have to pass.

On the other hand, there is a fully comprehensive career mode that accompanies you in your career from acquiring a hobby pilot license to becoming a sought-after rescue pilot. For this purpose, you are allowed to create an avatar for the first time, inspect the vehicle before taking off and leave it again when you arrive safely on the ground.

Which missions you are allowed to complete after purchasing your basic license depends on which direction you specialize in. Early tasks, for example, are entrusted to you by private individuals who just want to take a sightseeing flight over their hometown. If, after a few flight hours and further tests, you commit yourself to airborne firefighting, agricultural aviation or cargo transport, you will receive corresponding tasks.

A clearly structured career tree shows you your options and assigns you appropriate tasks after selecting your area of ​​operation, which can be anywhere thanks to the fully comprehensive world map. Many of them are AI-generated, or apply a fixed pattern that is distributed to appropriate airports and heli-pads using AI options. At the end of a mission, a grade rating always tells you how well you did, so that your career receives tangible, measurable values.

This is good stuff, laid out in detail in every way, with a thread that you spin yourself. It gives your flying ambitions a goal and at the same time reliably analyzable criteria that motivate you to improve your own flying style. In some tasks you have to be able to keep a helicopter steady under difficult conditions, while in others you have to be able to control a propeller aircraft through tough climb and descent curves.

But don't get your hopes up too much. Despite some challenging tasks, Asobo's work remains as brittle as a tax return. This is not only due to the minimalist presentation of the menus and the dryly listed objectives of your missions, but also to the human participants. Their texts are not presented by voice actors, but by the machine language routines that are also used in Microsoft Word. Long-winded sentences with awkward comma breaks, robotic emphasis on disappointment and enthusiasm, as well as a number of technical terms and English words from the aviation industry that the program misinterprets, will make the hairs on the back of your neck stand on end in a negative sense.

The English word “approach” is an example. It happens on every flight because your avatar announces how and where it will set its flight route during takeoff and landing as well as when changing course. The Germanized speech with its robo-accent just sounds terrible!

Asobo should make a lot of changes to the “gamification” of the simulation aspect, otherwise the mode will miss the target group in the long run. In all respects, because after a mission you will be told what you could have done better, but not how you actually achieved an improvement. You can only get real tips for flying in the dry tutorials for each aircraft. The “learning by doing” principle is completely missing from MS Flight Simulator 2024.

Make the world your playground (again).

Despite this criticism, we don't want to judge the career mode too harshly. It's a big leap forward compared to the 2020 release and offers you content for weeks and months. They may seem bland, but what you do while flying is by no means boring.

This is not possible in theory, because the possibility of being able to include the entire world as a playground alone brings so much entertainment value that you'll even be happy to start missions that have been completed long ago again. Even if it's just to give you that holiday feeling or to see your own home from the air.

Whether in his career or in free flight, what Asobo gets out of Bing's satellite photos is still astonishing. Even better than four years ago, when MS Flight Simulator first impressed with extrapolation, MS Flight Simulator 2024 creates an accurate depiction of the world. Even objects that are difficult to identify now have more details.

The biggest difference from its predecessor lies in the type of processing. Gone are the days when you had to free up 200 gigabytes or more on your hard drive just to be able to save one continent with all its details. MS Flight Simulator now relies on an internet connection to stream all data. This not only makes the program particularly slim at around 60 gigabytes, but also reduces the load on your computer - as long as your internet connection can keep up.

More fluid thanks to the cloud

We tested the game with a 250 VDSL line from Telekom and were thrilled! We flew with an Intel 12700k, a Geforce 4080 and 32 GB of RAM, usually with buttery-smooth frame rates beyond 50 FPS, without stuttering or micro-pauses.

All world updates are automatically included so that not all buildings have to be extrapolated via Bing Maps. Nevertheless, the selection sometimes seems a bit one-sided. For example, the entire skyline in Frankfurt was replaced by distinctive, hand-drawn 3D models. Even less important buildings like the “Ginnheimer Spargel” (aka Frankfurt TV Tower) have clear edges and sharp textures.

On the other hand, if you look at the capital Berlin, you will hardly find a building that looks accurate. The much better known Berlin TV Tower? Still misshapen and with warped Bing Maps textures. Charlottenburg Palace? Just so identifiable. Even though extrapolation now works better, it still has difficulty dealing with complex shapes. Compared to MS Flight Simulator 2020, hardly anything has changed in this regard. At least not when it comes to buildings.

Things look different in the animal and plant world. The closer you get to the ground, the more fine details the program displays that can put a strain on your system, for example trees. Real, modeled trees instead of the previously painted green blobs that were only impressive from above. This looks great, especially when your avatar needs to get out, but it can also bring the computer to its knees if you fly very close over a large forest.

Meadows were also refined. More blades of grass and small flowers adorn the greenery this year. Unfortunately, this also applies to football fields and other green areas where such plants do not fit. It's not that bad, it's the good will that counts. Meanwhile, bridges remain solid and usually don't allow you to fly under them. Exceptions confirm the rule: At the transition between the Offenbach district of Bürgel and Frankfurt am Main, we found the Arthur-von-Weinberg-Steg, under which we actually got through with the helicopter. It would be nice if this lapse were finally eliminated.

VR und Xbox

All in all, the virtual globe leaves a more authentic, although still not perfect, impression. Wild animals wander around when the landscape allows it and beautiful contrasts separate the general flora from the asphalt jungle of large cities. These positive changes extend to the VR view: We were amazed at the amount of detail when we connected Meta Quest 3 to the computer and enjoyed the full splendor in real 3D. Here even the rotors of helicopters made waves in the water.

However, this required some sacrifices in the graphics settings. The VR mode only ran smoothly with the help of DLSS and a few reduced settings. This makes it clear: If you have a weak computer, you should also make use of the various graphics options in flat gameplay, because you don't necessarily need a few of the new features for a good experience. See, for example, ray tracing, which better illuminates the interior of airplanes and helicopters.

Meanwhile, the Xbox Series version can only dream of such gimmicks. The new grass detail is already causing such problems for the console that the render settings have been reduced to a minimum. And not even satisfactory, because we found a high number of airfields where the grass hovered about half a meter above the ground.

A jet fighter flight over Bora Bora seemed sobering because the Xbox showed ground details at the expense of the overall structure. The coarser lighting compared to the 2020 flight simulator also doesn't flatter the console version at all.