After a four-hour flight, I landed at the correct airport, but the parking position was listed at a different airport (45 NM). So I saved fuel and flew to the other airport. After reaching the airport with the parking position, the mission failed because I landed at the wrong airport... WTF???

On every flight, communication with air traffic control malfunctions, so there's a penalty.

I would/will never buy this junk again, I'm requesting a refund.

payed 69$ after 9 months. guess what? the game is bugged and autopilot is not following flight plan. solid 0/10. dont buy this game for the next 5 or 3 years, idk if they will ever fix it. i also tried to contact support but they did not answered. i will say it again. dont waste your money on this garbage game. this review was written on september 2/2025. As a aviation enthusiast this game is absolute garbage...

I get that this is more of a simulator than a traditional game, and I love the realism.

That said, I’m not too happy with Career Mode. I crashed my first aircraft, and now I’m stuck grinding to earn enough credits to buy a second one. Sightseeing missions only earn around 20,000cr per flight, but the cheapest cargo plane costs over 280,000cr. That’s more than 15 flights—grueling ones—even when using sim rate and skipping. It’s a serious time commitment.

I understand that crashing a plane should have consequences, but at the end of the day, I’m a gamer, not a pilot. Why not add a special mission that lets you earn a big chunk of credits—like transporting royalty or a high-profile client? You could even balance it with alternate missions that offer more reputation and less cash, like flying for charity.

The grind is making me lose interest in Career Mode. It’s just too much for someone looking for a fun, engaging experience.

They grape your Bandwith

This game is addictive

I didn’t get it on launch, have been playing mainly since simupdate 3 was released in August 2025

I was a big fan of the previous MSFS2020, but in my opinion it lacked the “game” aspect. That’s why I was so excited by the new career mode.

My first impressions were mixed. The biggest positive surprise was the small initial download size and the fairly rapid load time to main menu (compared with MSFS2020). The first letdown was the graphics / performance.

I run it on an aging 2021 rig (i9-11900K / RTX3080) with triple screens 3k (3x 1920x1080 at 60 degrees) resolution, which works well btw. In the beginning I struggled to get more than 30fps with blurry graphics and occasional weird graphical clippings at the edge of airports, looked nothing like the screenshots, weird looking houses and trees. After hours of youtube videos and reading forums, I turned off something called “photogrammetry” (removed the weird objects), turned on AMD FSR (which does 2x frame generation, but says “might crash on some nvidia cards”, it didn’t tho) and put anti-aliasing on DLSS quality with additional sharpening, and then fiddling with countless other options which I will not go into. Now I have crisp graphics running at 60fps and going down to 40fps on busy airports. So, getting this game to run on your hardware (and looking nice) may require some effort to say the least, if you don’t own the latest generation top rig.

The career mode, which was the main reason for getting this is very addictive for me. I don’t seem to have the many bugs others are experiencing. I enjoy the slow pace of it. Basically, you start of without your own plane making like 2k per mission. Once you rack up like 30k you can buy a Cessna 172, making like 150k per mission, next step may be a used Cessna Caravan costing like 3mil, which makes you like 500k-1mil per mission, and so on. I’m 80 missions in and own my fourth plane (cost 8mil and making 1-2mil per mission) saving up for a jet (at 32mil). The bugs people are talking mainly relate to the weird blue boxes the sim wants you to fly through. Forget those, I have turned them off, you don’t need to follow them, you only need to stop short of runway at blue box, go through assigned waypoints (in IFR flight) and enter correct final on assigned runway, then stop short of taxi when landed (blue box) and then park at assigned location (blue box). You do not need to follow the markers, they are borked and takes away immersion anyway. Btw, you can use accelerated time in career mode (with full payout) or just skip the whole flight once you have reached cruising altitude (but then your payout is lower).

The thing that’s not very intuitive is how you get more missions, and its basically that you have to “unlock” new areas by either landing at airports you haven’t visited or just fast travel around the map to unlock new areas (this of course costs money, as does moving your plane(s) to new locations. And also, that you have to pass certain certifications and do a “golden” mission for any new type of missions to appear.

The physics are great with lots of turbulence making many landings quite challenging, not sure how playable this game is without proper HOTAS setup / rudder.

I’m having a lot of fun with career mode, I never land on the same airport twice, lots of places to fly to, even the small airfields are beautifully recreated.

Full but full of glitches, never seen a game with so many glitches, i don`t recommend it , better get the previous one from 2020

microsoft ? Make a game whit no bugs ? I payd 80$ just to start a flight and full od bugs, I think the cumunity cant play yet please tell to the unwplowers to work more in the next update

This game has no right to exist. Buttons not working in default planes, so called "updates" removing functionality, unoptimized mess. For the current price tag I don't recommend even the standard edition. Played through most of the career excluding helis but certain planes are inaccessible due to their trainings being not implemented! That shouldn't be allowed in a non early access game. The game cant run VR at more then 40fps on settings which look awful in 2880x2880 per eye resolution with DLSS and Quad Views on a 5070ti and 9800x3d. The AI control towers and mission markers in career are on a whole different level. If you don't review your route precisely before and right after starting a mission, you might get stuck after 2h of flying because the game sometimes fails to load the flight path from the menu into the actual game. I come from DCS so the first plane I tried was the F/A-18E super hornet. We have the F/A-18C legacy hornet in DCS. They're quite different but the idiots at Asobo and Microsoft couldn't even get the freaking APU switch to work - it just always stays on. I used to fly the PC-12 a few months ago, I come back and a whole panel, which was at least clickable turns out to be inoperative. I might come back to this game when its going to be possible to run it with OK settings and without a ♥♥♥♥ load of ghosting - we're talking about 2d in 1080p@75fps. You can't even read the rmp gauge when its moving by more then 3 units/s. Thanks for another awfully optimized game Microsoft.

I only have an antiquated joystick and keyboard and can still manage to fly with ease. Well that being said, there are a lot of settings you have to master and set before you can fly. No-one told me this. I've been flying FSIM since version 1 on an Apple II. The progressed thru all the versions never really mastering everything.
I could however fly and enjoy the ever improving scenery. It was with FSX that it truly came to life. I learnt all the features of each plane and mastered all the GPS, AUTO PILOT, maps and procedures. YT was overflowing with instructions and helpful hints.
Fast forward to FSIM 2024. Scenery, install/download times exploded. Desktop requirements also increased.
But the thing that almost put me off, was the complexity of the planes and the need to know it all before you could fly. By using the ICON and Cessna 172 I could take off circle my house and return to the airport AND land. Required mapping functions to joystick was still a problem. Not being on it day and night like some, it was difficult to keep up. But with the latest SU3 you can mop your setting of your peripherals once, and say APPLY TO ALL AIRCRAFT. This was great.
In the meantime the scenery kept improving and everything just got better. Having a good internet, fair desktop and love for flying kept me going.
With a little dedication and a ton of YT's we will all get there.
I must mention, I only do the training missions, and free flying. I have kept away from career mode.
Also, some of the exploratory flight require helicopter skills. And I can't do that yet. It would have been great if that was mentioned before I started them.
Yes buy it now. As I don't buy add-ons, maybe a Spitfire and T6/Harvard, i run pretty much with the delivered product.

Once I learn how to set this up and then operate all its add ons, technical apps (Navigraph) for instance and all the in game links, controls, tool bar, etc etc etc this will be an amazing experience!

Unfortunately the learning curve is not user friendly, and it has been months, no, years in the making.