Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 — My Lack of Thoughts and Words

Where do I begin…

Let’s start with the graphics. This is definitely a 2020 game and Microsoft isn’t afraid to flex is eye candy nor cloud computing muscles here. Now only can you fly literally anywhere in the world with the help of Bing’s 2PB (Yes, as in Petabytes) of map data and AI-powered map data processor to render this in 3D, but it can all be streamed to your local computer. Given, you need a decent internet connection and a much more decent gaming PC to handle the game… Nah, those are rookie details.

It’s not all sunshine and unicorns, Bing Maps isn’t Google Maps so there’s that to consider. The map-data-to-3D-game-rendering AI algorithms are still learning the ropes, so you might find PS1/PS2 style graphics here and there. Luckily for those with not-so-hot internet, you can also download low, medium, and high-quality sections of any part of the world in which you intend to fly. However, make sure you clean up some disk space and start the download while you’re sleeping… cause you won’t be downloading a handful of text files. We’re talking gigabytes of some major cities alone, let alone whatever you wish to download for offline use.

Disclaimer: I’m still a “newb”

As my “newbpcsir” LBRY, YouTube and LBRY channel name implies, I’m a noob (with different letters). Especially in the world of flight simulation. I played SimCopter a few times in middle school, but even then I would mostly crash my helicopter on purpose and wander around as a pedestrian. My middle school humour would be ignited whenever your pedestrian character would glitch out, resulting in being “stuck” in the section of the map. This also came with… questionable noises that emitted from the character.

Since my middle school days, I never was really drawn to flight simulator games. I loved other simulation and real time strategy titles, but flight sims never really had that “eye candy” I wanted. Also, I was never a serious pilot so the hardcore sim aspect of past Microsoft flight simulator kind of scared me away.

Enter: Flight Simulator 2020. Ever since I heard about the potential this game offered in 2019, I followed its development like a hawk. Once word of the game using real world map data with live weather reached my ears, I couldn’t help but want to play the game. Even before the craziness of 2020!

The timing could never be more perfect

Microsoft not only knocked this game out of the park, but its unintentional timing could never be more perfect. Living the “quarantine” life has affected all of our summers to some extent, especially those who love travelling abroad. Now, you can travel abroad like never before. Literally, like never before. Sure, there’s international documentaries you can watch. Google Earth introduces a slightly more interactive aspect. However, nothing (to my knowledge) has nailed the concept of travelling abroad anywhere, anytime from home quite like Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020. With a decent PC gaming setup and an internet connection that’s 15Mbps and above, you can spend hours exploring anywhere on earth for as long as you like.

Sure, they could have brought the release date back a few months to make the timing truly perfect, but I don’t think that could be possible. With all the work put into this game, I feel like an earlier release would have affected the quality of the day one product even more than the few bugs I’ve heard of and/or seen thus far.

All in all, I’m in love and definitely intend on making more time lapse videos and other types of content with this sim.