On the surface, this is an incredible achievement and a glorious experience. Graphically, an immense step up from previous simulators, using Bing Maps and Azure technology to stream in near-photo realistic surrounds in the simulator, with live weather, live aircraft, etc. Although the simulator takes quite a beefy rig to play when you do find yourself in the thick of things you will be consistently taken aback by how beautiful the simulator can be. Your first flight and first few experiences will be breathtaking, whimsical, and exhilarating.

About a year I was stated that this is not the best simulator, in my case however it's getting closer and closer by the day, in fact, it's starting to be like a simulator more than just a game. It is great in so many ways at least but not it's not worth paying £120 for the full package. I cannot stress how UK eccentric this is though, as the majority of photorealistic cities are in the UK. Even FSX had high def bump mapping and scenery in the UK and USA, and the rest of the world was lower quality, much lower lol. Still, with more products and addons being released, I'm changing my mind regards to that. Yet FSX is 20 years old. As for flight controls, I upgraded (2022) to a great device "Thrustmaster TCA Captain Pack Airbus Edition" before I was using a cheap Logitech joystick and the setup is so easy but a pain in the butt at times, and when you are able to get it to work, it works very well, plus once set up right, you no longer have to play around with those settings as it's saved to the cloud. On that note, third-party developers also make flight controls easy with their products and own built-in setup whiten in their EFB. The simulator has sensitivity controls, and over five pages of A4 are needed to print out the keyboard assignments. One downside is that two of those pages are for camera controls, and there is no replay built into the simulator, however, you can pick up a freeware addon!

Then, the honeymoon phase will wear off. The more you learn about the aircraft provided, the more you learn the avionics systems and how to actually pilot these planes, and the more frustrated you will become. There are still glitches and more rampant. It can be from something annoying, like having to press a button a couple of times in a row to get it to act right, to something game-breaking, like engine failures, autopilot crashing you to the ground, or autopilot not letting you follow your course. I haven't even scratched the surface, but the two main planes I personally enjoy flying are getting there. Third-party devs, like the FlyByWire team for the A320, are amazing, they have come down a long road to get to the point where they are now. I cannot help but feel sorry for those who had issues in the first weeks, but the truth is that many issues have been fixed, and fairly quickly. FSX is around 16 years old, and I have been using it for the last six to seven years and had fun with it, it worked out to £3 a year (PAid under £10). If this one keeps going for 10 years maybe 20 years, it's going to be worth it.

Now in 2022, it's incredible the amount of modern-day DLC and payware addons for the simulator that you can get your hands on, from 100s to 1000s of freeware to payware, Yes expect bad and good addons. I always ask you to review before buying third-party addons, and also these that support regular updates. When first announced regards the simulator we had nothing, now we have the Boeing 737 series from PMDG and Aaerosoft has confirmed that they are aiming to release A321, A330 and also A350 as mentioned they already have Twin Otter (DHC-6 ) and CRJ 550/700 available to buy from the marketplace. Those that are legitimate about flying may also hear about the Fenix a320 coming in late summer. I expect my flight sim to be more complete by the end of 2022 with payware to good freeware aircraft, at least two good freeware helicopters, and all the functions of FSX in this one, so to find that the A321 in FSX has more functionality than the default A320 was disappointing, yet I fly the FlyBywire mostly. That coupled with the fact that Asobo is knowingly and admittedly rushing out patches from the start and continuing to break things as normal, however, they are improving and had many fixes and happens that when you fix things something breaks the simulator with each patch as normal but that's Microsoft for you, that being said we had amazing third-party developers like FlyBywire and salty for the 747 mod make a stranded default aircraft in something more realism. The phrase, "one step forward, two steps back" certainly was a big problem from the start and now, It's improved by a long dog. We learn from mistakes and also find a workaround for in-game bugs and errors, I'm not a game developer, and while like most people realize that modern-day publishers do not force developers to rush development as they want the finished workable product, it's just not acceptable in the realm of reality to push broken patches and break the game in such a manner, especially when a said company doesn't really do hotfixes.

The community meanwhile is growing, growing fast. There are so many addons/mods available, and the A32NX project is restoring the functions of the A320 MFD for free. We already have so many airports being released for free and utilities as well, so many that I can't keep up with it all myself. It's not all pay to play. For those who are into 747, we have a developer of daily making their own standalone 747 Aircraft, plus freeware workable simbrief integration A330 that uses the FlyBywire system. If you have forked out a small fortune for the Premium package, it's a real shame that there aren't many aircraft and from the start, you really think we should get two helicopters for free, instead, we get them through the world update packages. Or they release as extra money-making, Similarly, there is float/seaplane to get rather for free or payware, and that also is a bit off. As years go on we are finally getting more. So this is a technically impressive simulator, the scenery, graphics and AI are pretty high quality though, and flying at night and across scenery in the daytime is pretty damn amazing. It's great, beautiful, and serene at times when it works, but it will hopefully be addressed in time. it's going to be a long road still since the release back in 2020. Yet, as I'm typing now, it's amazing how far it has come alone. I have read reports that tell you the flight characteristics improving, aren't like when it was first released, once again thanks for the great support from the community, from others flying the Cessna 152 in real life, I know they will eventually improve it as time goes on, but given the way things are going, I have read people saying "you shouldn't be able to fly upside down!!" You know what? I don't care, most are in for the enjoyment, Myself for the realism. I used to use FSX and P3D and have flown too many aircraft, and this one is 10 times more realistic than FSX. I have also watched and listened to several real-world airline pilots flying the A320neo in the sim, and they are saying it's pretty realistic, so I think we have to say that it is more than 55% realistic or using third-party aircraft is 80% with the A320N, and at the end of the day, that's good enough for most people.Not everybody will share this "zero-criticism" but when you try to model 110,000 airports around the whole world, even 0.5% is going to be a large NUMBER of mistakes. The WHOLE world's terrain and is impressively accurate, but with the help of mainly freeware mod. MSFS has still a way to go but is almost endlessly expansible too; the default install package includes

To conclude, I absolutely love this Flight Simulator game but it has a few flaws to it that I can recommend for new players unless you're a pilot or trainee or a beginner like me that very fully invest in Simulator games I highly recommend it!