Strange, of course, it turned out that in the review of the flight simulator we talk about the planes themselves only secondarily, but here, nevertheless, the game has no less merit. Microsoft Flight Simulator recreates the flight control process with commendable care. There are really many different settings and adjustments. And if the main ones, such as control of flaps, rudders, trims and engine speed, are quite accessible to an unprepared player, then much more for a person who does not have knowledge in the field of aviation remains “behind the scenes.” This is especially true for large passenger aircraft, the dashboard of which has so many different buttons and sensors (and most of them are fully functional) that I even find it difficult to remember their name, let alone their functionality. So welcome to YouTube to learn how to properly tune your fuel mix and what it does.
But do not be alarmed – the game assumes that not everyone who sits down at it has a pilot’s license, and offers a rather flexible system for adjusting the complexity of the gameplay. Here you can shift many routine tasks (such as communicating with the dispatcher, launching the aircraft’s auxiliary systems, trimming, and so on) onto the shoulders of the AI, which will also take control on long-distance flights, adjust the probability of engine failures, the impact of critical overloads on the aircraft, and also guard against mistakes that will result in stalling. As a result, nothing prevents you from just flying for half an hour, only directing the plane in the right direction – you don’t even need to take off, you can start flying in the air. On the other hand, avian nerds will also be happy, spending the extra half hour pre-flight preparation and taxiing to the desired runway.
As for the game modes, there are several of them: training mode, free flight, excursions and landing challenges in various conditions. In free flight, you are released on all four sides with complete freedom of action. Choose a plane, a point of departure at any airport or a place on the map to start in the air, as well as your destination, if you need one, and forward, more precisely into the sky. Excursions offer to visit one or another geographically significant location with calm, but therefore no less epic music. True, the rather modest selection of excursions is a little frustrating, but it seems to me that this is the subject of future updates and content additions. And landing tasks offer to test and practice your skills in several groups of events, united by a common feature – ordinary, unremarkable landings almost in a straight line, landing in adverse weather conditions, or landing at the most dangerous airports in the world (take at least Paro airport in Bhutan, surrounded by mountain peaks, where only a few hundred pilots in the world are allowed to land).
This whole tirade of enthusiastic emotions, however, will have to be interrupted by a story about the problems of the game. Let’s start with the training mode. Yes, it cannot be called completely superficial. Here you will be taught takeoff and landing, the peculiarities of aircraft control on the ground and in the air, as well as navigation in accordance with the established course and topographic landmarks. And yes, this will be enough for most people who want to just fly and gaze at the local beauty. But no one will explain more subtle nuances to you. Thus, how to communicate with the dispatcher, how to fully curb at least some of all these buttons and switches in the 747’s cockpit and correctly draw up a flight plan, please, find out yourself somehow.
A far more palpable issue with Microsoft Flight Simulator concerns its monotony. Yes, for the first few hours your eyes will scatter in the choice of what to occupy yourself with: which plane to fly, what lesson to repeat to consolidate, which place to see, or maybe wave to your relatives in Surgut? But then, when you get used to it a little, you realize that a flight of several thousand kilometers is more than a dozen hours of real time, during which only the beginning and the end are some kind of active actions, and then on a cruise you either completely switch to autopilot, or make minor adjustments to direction and altitude if you decide to fly the plane yourself inside and out. Yes, the game gives you the opportunity to skip the monotonous flight and immediately after takeoff go to the approach, descent or directly to the landing at the destination. But in such cases, you always wonder if you missed something interesting along the way.
