I’ve made my way through the training scenarios, the challenges, and I even dodged a sandstorm in the skies over Arrakis in the Dune themed expansion for Microsoft Flight Simulator. Here’s a look at what it offers!

Flying an Ornithopter

The star of the Dune expansion for MSFS is of course the Atredies Ornithopter. This aircraft is a sci-fi aircraft coming from the imagination of Dune author Frank Herbert. At the same time there is a bit of reality injected into the design with it very clearly being influenced by a dragonfly.

From what I gathered from a few comments on the last MSFS Q&A stream, the MSFS team didn’t just throw this aircraft in there with a canned flight model and call it a day. They did some work here to make it fly and give it some unique attributes.

The Ornithopter as a result is surprisingly satisfying albeit challenging to fly. It’s not hard to takeoff as it rises up like a helicopter, one unburdened by a tail rotor, so it’s surprisingly easy in that respect. The challenge is more in managing the types more sophisticated capabilities with its ability to rapidly tuck in and deploy its wings. A satisfying thunk can be heard as the wings tuck in and the aircraft plummets to the ground – another thunk and the Ornithopter is flying again. Great for losing altitude rapidly.

Wing brake is like an air brake system built into the wings. Hold the appropriate button and speed decreases rapidly. When managed correctly the Ornithopter can approach a landing site rapidly and then slow down quickly for a potentially graceful landing.

As contrived as this all is, the motion of it feels very satisfying and, unsurprisingly, dragonfly like in many ways. The best sci fi asks “what-if we could…” and in this case the rest of the question is make an airplane that flies like an insect. That answer is captured surprisingly well here.

The exterior modeling is great and so is the interior. It looks accurate to the movie models which is a great tick box for a movie tie in of course. Start up, shut down, wing controls, animations and everything you can see is well rendered and reasonably functional too. I love the way that the wings sweep out on start-up. My only issue is that there’s a lack of instrumentation.

In a quest to make it movie accurate they have made it less accessible. If you fly with the game HUD off as I do there’s no speed or altitude indication that you can read. There is one but it’s not readable (or in an understandable format) even on a large 4K monitor. There’s also no landing gear indicator that I was able to spot. This means you really have to rely on memory for the gear position. Or fly externally. This is made harder by there being a training mission where they want you to hold an altitude but I never knew what my altitude was.

Training and activities

To get up to speed on flying the Ornithopter there are three training missions that take you through the basics. They are valuable as the aircraft has some unique controls (some that you may wish to bind to a controller) and unique flying abilities. Even if you’re an accomplished GA/helicopter/airliner or fighter pilot… this is different so go do them first.

Then you’re on to the challenges. Most of these are presented in a race format a bit like the ones for Top Gun Maverick. These Touch and Go Challenges have you flying from pad to pad across the dunes, rocky formations and deserts of Arrakis. It’s part race, part obstacle course, and good additional training. And your friends scores show up in the UI too so you can see how you’re doing relative to everyone else… I repeated a few courses half a dozen times just to try and nab the top score. I tried anyways!

Then there’s one more challenge which pits you in a race against time versus an oncoming sandstorm (a coriolis storm for Arrakis). First you have to rescue your crashed instructor and then you have to zoom through the rocks and tunnels before making your way to a safe landing pad. It’s challenging and difficult to pull off.

Final thoughts

I have to hand it to Asobo and Microsoft for enabling Microsoft Flight Simulator to display so much range. Last year’s Top Gun: Maverick movie tie-in was fun and interesting to experience but it wasn’t quite as far off the beaten path as something like a classic sci-fi epic that Dune is. Yet they approached it with enthusiasm and fun in mind and came away with something that is surprisingly well realized.

There’s not a ton of depth here. Maybe 2-3 hours of fun tackling and completing the challenges – multiple times if you’re me – and then if you want to you can keep on flying the Ornithopter in the real word too. But for a free add-on this is very well realized.

The Ornithopter is lovingly recreated from the movie with good sounds, a reasonably good list of basic functions, and performance that both connects with the movie and makes for some fun challenges. Speaking of the challenges these are also fun and well done. There aren’t many but its just enough to blast your way through and the training beforehand helps you get settled in.

Aside from my gripes about the lack of instrumentation in the cockpit, this is a good add-on that’s fun and engaging for a couple of hours.

That we can have this in the sim next to bush plane flyers and dedicated airline flyers I think is pretty cool. For some it won’t matter, but for others its a fun diversion from the usual and a great way to get hyped about the upcoming movie.

Dune: Part Two is arriving in theatres over the next couple of weeks (depending on where you’re reading this) and stars Timothée Chalamet, Zendaya, Rebecca Ferguson, Josh Brolin and others in this Denis Villeneuve directed follow-up to the first movie. Looking forward to it!