Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024

Steam Reviews

Read all reviews on Steam

• Recommended Posted December 22, 2025 on Steam A very good simulator depending on your preference and budget. If you like sightseeing in GA aircraft or helicopters, the base game is very good for that. The photogrammetry is generally excellent, and cities and landscapes are included in the base game for free. Flying small aircraft over amazing landscapes is a lot of fun, I highly recommend it. 3rd party aircraft can provide even more detail and improve the experience even more, but they are completely optional. If you prefer flying airliners, like I do, you can also have a very good experience, but the cost of entry will be much higher. Here are the things I would recommend that you purchase to get started, sorted by priority: 1. A Navigraph subscription. I cannot fly without this, every single flight involves Simbrief, nav data and Charts. They are constantly adding more functionality, so I am completely okay with the subscription model. 2. A cheap joystick. It may break eventually, but it will improve the experience by a huge amount while it lasts. If you fall in love with the hobby, you can spend endless amounts of money on hardware, but a cheap joystick is all you need to get started. 3. A premium 3rd party aircraft. Start out with the FlyByWire A320neo and A380 since they are free, then move on to a more premium developer like Fenix or PMDG if you really like the hobby. The Inibuilds A350 can be a fun aircraft, but I would only recommend it if you have quite a powerful PC and you have already spent some time flying airliners, I would not spend such a large amount of money on the A350 as your first payware airliner. DO NOT buy very cheap airliners in the marketplace, they are absolutely terrible. I generally buy aircraft from 3rd party sites instead of the marketplace to get faster updates, but that is just my preference. 4. An external ATC program. I would recommend BeyondATC to start with since it is a one-time fee. I have not tried SayIntentions AI, I was put off by the subscription model and BeyondATC covers my needs. An external ATC program helps teach you the flow of the different phases of a flight and increases the immersion dramatically. If you really fall in love with the hobby, consider joining Vatsim, it provides the best ATC experience possible and is free, but using a microphone and writing things down and reading them back can be stressful. Only join Vatsim when you are proficient at flying your aircraft. 5. Premium 3rd party airports. Realistic airports are of course nice to look at, but a more important benefit is that the taxiways and signs are realistic and up to date on 3rd party airports, making it much easier to navigate. Only buy airports you have a personal connection to, or airports you really want to fly to. It can be very easy to quickly collect a lot of airports, but if the location is of no interest to you, you are just wasting your money. I generally recommend purchasing airports in the marketplace since they do not receive as many updates as aircraft and many are quite mature at this point. Buying from the marketplace means that the scenery can be streamed, which can save a lot of disk space. 6. ChasePlane. This replaces the default camera system and improves the experience by a surprising amount. I often leave my PC after reaching my cruising altitude on long flights, and the cinematic mode is very nice for this. 7. The premium deluxe edition of the game. I only really recommend this upgrade because of the Boeing 787 which can become very good with free mods. The medium-quality airports included in this edition are a nice bonus, but their quality has dropped compared to MSFS 2020. Amsterdam used to be one of my favourite airports, but now there is a large hole in one of the taxiways. I really enjoy flying airliners in this game, but the cost is quite high. For me it is worth it, for others it may not be worth it. Over 5 years I have collected hardware and software to make the experience better; I would recommend that you also let your collection grow as your interest grows. I have not explored every aircraft and location in this game, but no matter if I want to do a long flight between continents, or do a short helicopter flight between gorgeous mountains, this game never fails to entertain me. The career mode was rough at launch, and I have not played it in more than a year, so I cannot give it a fair assessment. I would highly recommend trying the base version in a trial of Xbox Game Pass, you can then purchase the version that matches the level of your new addiction. You need a Microsoft account to play the game anyway, so the progress you make during your trial will carry over even if you later purchase the game on Steam. I recommend this game, it will provide me with a lot of fun for the foreseeable future.
• Not recommended Posted September 29, 2025 on Steam Decided to buy with the intention of playing career mode, despite all of the negative reviews, and I can confirm it's a disaster. The career progression is unforgiving with a total lack of refinement. It's full of game-altering bugs that can really piss you off, such as: your plane randomly crashing upon takeoff and aviator performance bugs that tank your reputation and bank account. The final cherry on top for me is that I am no longer receiving no-skip bonuses for flights. In fact, I'm receiving HALF of the advertised amount for the flight. The fact they charge this amount for this garbage is infuriating. Listen to the reviews. Do not buy.
• Recommended Posted November 12, 2025 on Steam A diamond in the rough that unfortunately requires a lot of work to turn into a real gem. A disclaimer: I have been having fun in flight simulators since Flight Unlimited 2, I am that old. My first XPlane was version 6 and the first time I saw Microsoft Flight SImulator II was as a kid on Atari and quite frankly I never cared much for it. There are many issues with this sim. The user interface is abysmal, menu controls are the worst I have ever seen and the flight dynamics and systems depiction of most of the planes that come with the sim is very lacking (ironically one of the best planes in the sim is the default Cessna 172, but I think the devs can recite the POH of that plane in their sleep). ATC is... well, it's so bad that I just turned it off. I fly on PilotEdge, VATSIM and SayIntentions, but even Flight Unlimited 2 had a much more superior ATC system and that was more than 20 years ago. Setting controls is a chore and only after a thousand hours in I am starting to grasp the insanity of the mind behind it. Career mode, while it's something I very much hoped for, is feature-wise below the standards of any already existing career addons, like the old FSEconom. The only thing that is positive about it is the integration of aircraft state into the career module - if you land rough, you will eventually see it in the mechanic report. I will not judge the actual physics. Not even real pilots are really qualified to do that, so take all youtube vids of real and phony pilots saying that this is that has 100% realistic handling with a huge grain of salt. To me, it's realistic enough. Most of the flight envelope is depicted really well and the rest is in the hands of aircraft developers. However, once you spend time (and money) on getting a few essentials down, this is an absolute work of art. I would say that behind all the undercooked and broken stuff there is a labour of love from people who have flying airplanes in their hearts. But you will need to: - forget about any version above the Standard one. I own premium deluxe. Not worth the money. - invest in a couple of top quality planes from top developers. A2A, Black Square, PDMG, Fenix, Taog just to name a few. - Personally I cannot feel any immersion from flying on a pad or on keyboard. Even a simple joystick with analog throttle and perhaps a twist stick will make it good. - Find an ATC system of your liking if you feel like you need one. I can't fly without it because it adds that bit of pilot workload that just makes it interesting. - Try to use one of the addon career modules. Some are free, some are paid. The bottom line is to have a reason to fly from one place to another, perhaps with some persistence. I am a member of Walker Air Transport which provides me a lot of ready routes and inspirations. - Learn about how all this works in real life, otherwise the utility of floating an arcade plane over bing maps will cease to be a novelty rather soon. - There are a lot of quality of life improvements on addon websites too. If it sounds like a lot of work, then yes, but it's an investment that is paying off, at least for me. I fly both MSFS 2024 and Xplane 12 on a regular basis, spent more money on virtual planes and control systems than I care to admit. But boy, do I have stories to tell, like the time I crossed over Mongolia in a DC-3 Dakota on a round-the-world trip over the Himalajas... or made an ILS approach to Cracow airport in an absolutely abysmal zero visibility conditions in a conga line of other virtual planes on VATSIM... or just took off in a small biplane and flew over Yosemite... or cruised at FL400 in a fast business jet... or crossed the Atlantic in planes that were barely designed to do so...
• Recommended Posted February 26, 2026 on Steam For a second the airplanes sounded super realistic... then i realized it was my pc 10/10 highly recommend
• Not recommended Posted June 10, 2025 on Steam Do you want to fly for two hours on a mission? Do you want the game to not count the mission after said two hours? Do you want this process to happen 30% of the time in carer mode? Then this is the game for you!
• Not recommended Posted February 17, 2026 on Steam The game is not finished being made as of February 2026, yet they charge full price and call it the '2024' version. I've had a lot of fun, but I do not wish to support the business model of "we'll (maybe) get to that feature eventually." I don't trust that the heavy airline cargo certifications will be delivered (as I've already paid for) until the next game comes out. Then, Microsoft will use this as an argument for never finishing the Career Mode certifications and instead will market the new (probably also unfinished) game. Just like Call of Duty, which will likely never get another dime from me, I cannot support the marketing of a complete product at full price (baiting) and changing the actual delivered product (switching) with promises. Call it a beta release, or make a decision to actually finish the development before sale.