At long last, we can take to the skies on console, with Microsoft’s amazing Flight Simulator
Whether you want to fly enormous jets or cut your teeth on a single-prop, there’s something here for you.
Flight Simulator is, simply put, enormous. You can fly anywhere in the world in real-time, and visit over 37 thousand airports. Within the game there are 2 million cities with 1.5 billion buildings, 2 trillion trees and much, much more.
Fly at any time of the day, or switch to real-time weather conditions with accurate cloud coverage, wind speed and direction, rain and even lightning. Having played on PC, we can attest to just how good Flight Simulator looks, and if the consoles can muster even a fraction of the graphical prowess of the PC, it’s going to look spectacular.
Not everyone is a professional pilot, so if you just want to jump in a plane and go sightseeing, Flight Simulator has a comprehensive range of assists to keep you in the air. At it’s most helpful level, even my kids managed to (reasonably) successfully fly past the pyramids in Egypt. Should you fancy more of a challenge, though, then full manual piloting gives you control over every aspect of gameplay: From communicating with ATC to maintaining flight speed and trajectory, it’s as close to real flying as we’ve ever seen on a consumer level.
You don’t have to go it alone, either. Cross-platform multiplayer will be available from launch on console, so you can squadron up and join your friends on PC.
The best thing about it? It’s coming to Xbox Game Pass on day one, 27th July, for Xbox Series X|S.
