Is it worth it now? The question is frequent on community forums all across the internet. Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024’s initial launch scared away or paused a lot of upgrade plans for many users and caused others to revert back to 2020 until the situation could be sorted out. Now that we’ve had four major sim updates, countless content revisions by third party developers, and a year to experience it the question is still coming up. Here is my answer.

The rough start and the road since then

Before we get into the review, a little bit of history and context is required. Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 launched in November of 2024 after about a year of build-up. The new sim promised enhanced visuals, a huge new slate of aircraft, compatibility with content from before, and better everything. And on paper, the sim absolutely had and has that. Unfortunately, a difficult launch week with crashing servers and performance problems marred its initial reputation. But there were other problems too that had nothing to do with the launch issues and suggested something more troublesome at hand.

Over the last year, Asobo, Microsoft, and various partners all associated with the product, have worked hard to resolve the sim’s teething issues. And they are teething issues that have been gradually resolved over time.

Though I have no inside story to corroborate this, my personal experience with the sim from launch until now suggests that 2024 was launched too early, without enough time for testing, and essentially shoved out the door to the waiting public. I don’t think the developers behind the project are responsible for that but rather market forces and decisions made to get it out as soon as possible… and fix it later. Its a familiar story industry wide and it appears to have happened here too.

Sim Updates 1 and 2 came and solved some of the immediate pressing issues with performance and stability but it wasn’t until Sim Update 3 where a huge list of fixes came that I felt like we had started to turn the corner. Sim Update 4 has arrived now and I think here is the moment where MSFS 2024, though not perfect, has finally begun to overtake its predecessor. MSFS 2020 too launched with lots of issues and gradually worked its way to a level that was impressive. Now its MSFS 2024’s turn to spread its wings and I think it’s finally starting to do that now.

How are the core features looking?

Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 boasts far more changes under the hood than I had initially assumed going into it from 2020. Sure, there were a few tweaks here and there and a bunch of new content, plus the new career mode. I figured that was what would be the bigger draws for me but honestly they changed much more under the hood. I think that’s part of the reason why its taken so long to get things sorted out.

We now have the best and most believable flying aircraft in the MSFS series to date, for the aircraft that are fully taking advantage of the CFD flight model anyways. They have much more feel and nuance now. The nose drifts around in a believable way, they feel good in crosswinds, they don’t float as much as they used to in the ground effect, and the interaction with the weather system is really impressive to behold. Aircraft also orock back and forth on their tires while the engine is running, taxiing doesn’t feel quite as glued to the ground as it did before and there’s at least some tire deformation physics at work now. The aircraft even leave trails on the ground when you’re not operating on hard runways. It’s still not on par with X-Plane 12 but its getting closer and its clearly evolved a fair bit from back in the earliest 2020 release days.

The flight planning for MSFS 2024 is far better than what we had in 2020 as well. The new EFB tablet is expandable, extendable, and it works well on its own as a flight planner. You can use the web version and plan ahead of time or you can plug it in on the world map and send to ATC and avionics. This doesn’t work with every airplane but it does work with many (or even most) of them. This is much more nuanced and detailed VFR and IFR planning than the old sim had on the world map. It doesn’t always replace SimBrief but I’ve done entire cross country journeys with this system and it’s really quite good now! The same EFB experience is also where you do the payload, fuel, read available charts for different airports, and go through the interactive checklist system. All as good as or better than anything 2020 had.

There are parts that I don’t like and I find some of the imagery for things like weights and fuel information is not all that intuitive. So it still has work to do. But I do like the direction a lot. This EFB, by the way, can be in a 3D cockpit, overlayed as a window, and its part of the menu too so there’s a lot of constancy. You don’t have to go back out to the map screen to make an adjustment anymore.

The live systems are significantly improved too. Possibly the worst part is air traffic and ship traffic which, while great to see, do suffer from some bugs. Still, the sim is importing live data and showing you real time ship and aircraft positions making things feel lively.

Live weather continues to be a standout feature that’s made even better with a 24-hour history that you can jump through. This is, for me, a big advance over 2020 where I can time shift back several hours and experience the sun and weather conditions that were occurring then. Ideal for my flying in Europe during the morning or afternoon when I’m sitting down for an evening flight in North America for example. And no longer am I seeing weather that is inappropriate to the time of day… now its all synced together. Mid afternoon thunderstorms, mid-winter snowstorms, and everything in between.

The biggest issues here are that puddles dry up almost instantly after a rainshower passes through rather than sticking around for a long time. While X-Plane 12 has been called the puddle simulator and has its own live weather challenges, having standing water around during a landing is kind of an important factor. Not fully simulated here yet.

More of the world is rendered in details with the machine learning systems filling in details on mountain peaks, and adding rocks, trees, shrubs and other terrain and foliage elements everywhere. The world looks and feels much more real. It’s not as big a deal for airliner flyers but if you also like doing GA, bush flying and helicopter ops, this is a significant step forward for the sim. Especially when you go to land off field!

Trees are also now fully 3D rather than 2D voxels as before and tree foliage is now accurately represented for the time of year. Autumn leafs change naturally through the whole season. Its a natural progression too from a few colours in September through the range of visuals into November (in the northern hemisphere) where the trees have largely lost their greenery by the end of the season. Its beautiful and believable!

Generic airports have also seen some improvements. The vegetation around the runways, the runway markings, scratches and paint lines are all better and more believable than they were under 2020 as well. The layouts are still very basic and Microsoft’s efforts to have their own world hub where airports are, using a common set of assets, customized by the community has yet to fully pay off. They did an alpha test but it’s taken a back seat to the 2024 release and core issues. Maybe in 2026 that will improve. For now, generic airports are barely functional in some cases and quite passable in others. But that’s nothing new for the series.

Air Traffic Control (ATC) continues to be a weak spot. The improvements are more and more realistic voices so that you don’t get the same voice every time you switch channels. That aside, the ATC remains virtually unchanged from 2020 and its missing a bunch of things that would be nice to see… like the ability to do vectoring. There are third party integrations that take things much further along (often with voice recognition) and of course VATSIM exists if you really want to get the authentic experience with real human controllers. But if its the default ATC you want, you’ll have to fight your way through some challenges with it doing things like descending you into a mountain, telling you to descend to a few thousand feet while you’re taking off, and other various problems. It does work but it could be better.

Keybinding UI remains a bit clunky though its much more adaptive and specific than before. That added ability comes with complexity and it can take ages to try and figure out the controls. That said, we’re a long way away from early iterations of the sim where changing any profile often involved a minute or longer loading screen. Its much more responsive now!

Now something that they did do really well was the lighting! It wasn’t advertised as a big new feature but I think its a big step forward. There’s still some times where I don’t think they quite have the illumination of aircraft and clouds right but its still very good. It has great nuance, the rays of light from the rising sun interacting with mountains, fog and clouds are spectacular and whatever issues I have with it are overshadowed by generally how beautiful it is especially at low sun angles.

All of this does seem to come with a bit of a price to performance when you turn all of the bells and whistles on.

While Sim Update 4 has made tremendous strides in performance, there are times where MSFS 2024 remains heavy on VRAM. I have 12GB of VRAM on my GPU and I’m frequently seeing utilization in the 14GB and up range at 4K resolutions. I’ve had to turn some details down, turn off the nice but VRAM intensive ray traced shadows, and some other items and still a few aircraft and scenery combos like to push things up above what the GPU can handle. Most non-airliner aircraft do perform far better than that and in many cases, with frame-gen on (another built in feature new in 2024), I can get 50 to 70 fps and it is smooth as butter.

All about the aircraft

MSFS 2024 has worked hard to offer not just a breadth of experience but also deeper experiences than you typically can expect from default airplanes and its also offered up a tremendously long list. It’s one of the things that Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 was able to tout on launch.

Some of these aircraft have been provided by Microsoft and Asobo directly while many others were developed for the sim by partner developers. GotFriends, iniBuilds, FlightFX, you probably recognize these and many other names and they’ve all contributed to the collection. Although the goal was ambitious, it’s taken the better part of a year to try and solve some of the challenges with such a huge collection of airplanes.

Many aircraft shipped more or less untested (or so it appears anyways) as many of them had bugs that made the aircraft difficult to use or unflyable in some circumstances. Lights and screens didn’t work, systems refused to function correctly, some fuel consumption rates were double what they should have been, WASM crashes were frequent on certain planes, and on the list went. Some, like the 787, had all new models for the sim but they were clearly unfinished. Sim Update 4 has finally been the point where a lot of those problems have been resolved.

I could probably type paragraphs worth of commentary on this but I wanted to make this editorial digestible so let’s move on from the problems because, by and large, there’s been a significant redemption here for most of the aircraft included in the sim.

The aircraft included, once fixed and updated, have been really quite an impressive slate of experiences. Asobo shipped their first complex airliner with the 737 MAX 8 and they have continued to improve the aircraft to the point where its a credible 737 simulation – its not as full featured as its payware competitors but its a decent experience most of the time. I hope they keep at it!

iniBuilds shipped a whole bunch of airliners including the A320neo (initially offered as the V2 upgrade for 2020), A321LR and the A330 (in -200, -300 and -F variants as well as the Beluga XL). Asobo, iniBuilds and Working Title also contributed to the now fixed 747-400GST and LCF as well as the 787-10.

These are all airliner experiences that several years ago would have been considered good payware options but these are just the defaults. Yes, third party developers continue to surpass them but these are still good and for the budget conscious simmer – you can’t really go wrong with these now that the majority of their bugs are sorted. A few of them I would still like to see more options like SimBrief integration but many of them already have that. It often depends on the developer of the aircraft.

The general aviation space has a massive list of new aircraft adding to the already large number of options available. From MSFS 2020 classics like the Cessna 172, DA62 and SR22 to new aircraft like the Cirrus Jet, Cessna 400 Corvalis TT, Cessna 404 Titan and Dornier Seastar. Nearly everything that was in 2020 has been upgraded with more liveries, more modifications, options, and alternate cabins. In some cases, where no cabin was present (like in the business jets), one has been added too. A lot of work has been done even if its a familiar type that you’re used to flying in 2020.

There are some interesting special mentions too. The sim has its own DHC-6 now which replaces the old Aerosoft one. Remember the controversy when they took that off the market? Its included in the sim now!

The bushplane selection is excellent! The list of types like the Savage Cub and XCub from 2020 is now joined by a few additional options. Developer Got Friends brought significant expertise to add the Zlin Norden and Draco X. We’ve also got the turbine powered PC-6 from before with some good upgrades and updates. Of course, the classic DHC-2 Beaver from Blackbird is a standout bushplane choice!

The sim has a good selection of gliders that now have complex glider specific avionics. GotFriends contributed most of them (like the Pipistrel Taurus pictured below) and made some big contributions to the avionics too. Now, gliding is still sometimes a bit of a challenge with the weather systems and thermals being difficult to capture, however, it does seem like this side of the sim continues to improve.

For helicopter lovers, we have some interesting types included with a few new ones. The one I was most interested but the one that has spent a lot of time not doing much of anything in my hangar is the H225. Brilliant visually but unfortunately beset by bugs which have only started to be solved in SU4. One of the free additions made over the course of the year was the EC 135, however, I’ve not been impressed by its handling. Most of the helicopters in the sim remain overly twitchy and quirky to fly… even for helicopters.

There are some truly unique additions as well. We’ve got a blimp, a hot air balloon, a couple of eVTOL aircraft like the Joby S-4, an autogyro, and even a powered hang glider. The sim also features military transports like the C-17 and A400M, an A-10, F/A-18E and a few miscellaneous other items as well. The list is extensive.

Now its not all roses as there are some aircraft that feel under developed. Neither the F/A-18 or A-10C feel anything remotely close to their DCS counterparts and I don’t think they are worth spending much time with. Others still have bugs that need attention and development. But the successes and the great experiences far outnumber the bad ones.

To sum things up, we’re now finally in a really good place with aircraft in MSFS 2024. Nearly every major developer has upgraded their aircraft with very few exceptions. Most aircraft are now either compatible with few or no issues or fully native in the new sim and things look great for both the first and third party aircraft scene. It took some time to get there but I think we’re mostly there.

Third parties

If none of the included types strike your fancy, we’ve seen third parties take advantage of new features in 2024. Improved CFD flight modeling, detail textures, more modular LOD systems for better aircraft performance, walk-around inspection mode, and improved avionics.

Microsoft’s statements that third party aircraft would port over easily to 2020 have met with mixed success. Some types worked well while others needed significant work to get into a good place. Most developers have worked through the year and the vast majority of aircraft that you owned before are working now either as a native airplane in 2024 or in compatibility mode from 2020. A few have been paid upgrades but the vast majority have been free upgrades which has been really good to see on the consumer end. I hope the goodwill and added sales have been good to developers too!

Career mode still has lots of issues

The thing that hasn’t yet panned out for MSFS 2024 has been career mode. It was probably the most requested and most in demand feature for the new sim but its the thing that has consistently not been in a good place.

The idea around it was good. Create a curated experience that has you qualify your virtual pilot for different types of aircraft and flying with interactive activities that you could interact with all over the world. This would help newer pilots get in and give veteran pilots structure to build their gameplay around.

The experience, though good on paper, has been marred by bugs and more bugs. Spawned aircraft dropping from a height causing a detected loss of airframe, various crash bugs, impossible to complete objectives, passengers appearing on the wing of the airplane midflight, repeating and annoying dialogue, and a lengthy grind to get to some of the fun activities have all been problematic with either the design or the execution of the experience.

There’s also the fact that the skill tree locks away a lot of different experiences behind a bit of a grind. Heli-simmers in particular are ill-served by the system and have to complete a general aviation segment before they can specialize on helicopters.

Personally, I wasn’t all that invested in this feature and its not the mode that I’ve spent much time with (as you can probably guess from the screenshots). I’m not in the majority on this and for many it was the career mode was the “killer feature” of the new sim. It unfortunately is the least developed part right now. Still, I understand that the core of the sim was also not ready yet and the developers needed to get that right first before turning to career mode. It is something that the developers are reportedly planning to spend more time with in 2026, now that the core of the sim is in a much better place.

Some have grinned (or grimaced) there way through the bugs and had a decent time but with obvious frustrations. If you want that curated, guided experience you’ll be continuing to wait, dealing with frustrating bugs, or start looking at freeware or payware career options.

Other experiences and activities

There are other experiences to be had in MSFS, though, I do wish that some of the activities from career, firefighting and search and rescue for example, were also part of of the activities modes within the sim. They don’t have any plans to do that but I do wish it were the case.

There are quite a few other activities that are worth paying attention to. While bushplane journeys haven’t returned yet, there are some great challenges in the sim including the landing challenges, timed courses, Red Bull Air Racing, and the photo adventure modes that encourage you to take in the scenery at some truly impressive places around the world.

Some of these are quite fun and well thought out while other experiences are just ok. Early on, I had a lot of trouble with photo mode for example and it just not registering the photo that I had taken. These days its not too bad and you can have fun!

Red Bull Air Racing is fairly new, its not been given all that much attention, but I actually think its quite fun. Time trialed scenarios, quick and fun action, and lots of challenge to try and get anywhere close to what the top folks on the leaderboard are doing. The scenery in the background is usually some of the series best too!

One thing that is still missing are the bush plane adventures. Those were fun and I’m missing them as they haven’t yet made their way over to 2024. Apparently that is something that might come in 2026 and I really hope it does because that is a miss. More, I hope that bushplanes comes back with full multiplayer support. The best adventures I had were flying with friends in a group, something you could do early on in MSFS 2020 but strangely was taken away later on (unless you went in and edited an .ini file). So that is still something to wait on.

For nearly everything else though, there’s more to do in 2024!

Final thoughts

Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 is not a perfect product and its certainly had a difficult release but I’m finally at the point where I can recommend it to nearly everyone. This is a sim that has taken a long time to get to where it needed to be, and it is admittedly still missing a few things, but it has finally surpassed its predecessor with the most recent updates.

It took an extra year of development to get there and I think, truly, that it was pushed out the door to meet a scheduled deadline that really didn’t understand the breadth of what had changed under the hood. The upshot is that the community, the developers and all of the third parties that help make this all go have had the time to put things right, expose issues, solve them, and get things into a good place.

What I wouldn’t upgrade for right now is career mode. It remains underdeveloped and buggy. Its just not what I had hoped it would be. It has promise, it has great ideas, but it needs better execution before I can recommend that specific feature. So, if the only reason that draws you in is career mode and none of those other new features appeal to you, go right on enjoying 2020. If the other features appeal, then 2024 is for you.

If you’re perfectly happy with MSFS 2020 and you just don’t feel the need to shell out for the new version. Nothing wrong with that either. MSFS 2020 will continue to live on for quite some time and while aircraft and updates will become more catered to the newer sim, what you have right now should continue to be a source of fun for a long time to come.

As good as MSFS 2020 is, I’m now at a point where there’s nothing holding me back in the other sim. It doesn’t matter if I’m flying airliners, bush planes, general aviation, gliders, or helicopters, I think you’ll find that MSFS 2024 is everything that its predecessor was and more. It looks better, flies better, most of its interface is better, most of the activities are better and generally there’s just everything you had before and more.

Screenshots