Microsoft Flight Simulator X Updated Hands-On - Missions, Controls, and a More Realistic World

With Microsoft Flight Simulator coming up on its 25th year as a franchise, it's amazing that a series with no guns or missiles has proved to be so long lived and popular. Then again, there's a reason why Flight Simulator is so durable, as this comprehensive flight simulation lets wannabe and real-life pilots alike take to the skies in a variety of aircraft, ranging from helicopters to light aircraft to jumbo jets. Flight Simulator is one of the few games that is practically an industry unto itself, as there are countless third-party add-ons (both commercial and free) that add scenery, planes, and much more. We got our hands on the latest work-in-progress version of Flight Simulator X for an update.

At this point, it might seem that Flight Simulator has no more worlds to conquer. Recent editions have already expanded the scope of the simulation to cover the entire globe, and you can take off and fly from thousands of airfields. Yet Flight Simulator X feels like a major upgrade to the series, thanks to the improvements developer ACES Studio has made across the board to boost the fidelity of the simulation. This remains one of the most accurate simulations on the market, but the good news is that there are plenty of ways to adjust the simulation in order to tone down some of the realism. That's good news for newcomers to the series, or those who just want the adventure of flying rather than the challenge of it. (If you fall in that category, the no-crash setting is certainly very helpful.) The learning center can provide information for new pilots, while there are handy tutorials for veteran Flight Simulator players and professional pilots to introduce them to all the new features in this version.

The most obvious improvement is with the graphics engine, as ACES wants to create a more alive world to fly around. For instance, terrain is modeled with greater accuracy, so you get a better sense of rolling landscapes, hills, ridges, and mountains. Meanwhile, major roadways have been modeled, so they can be used for navigation aids. Water is also vastly improved, as bodies of water look like liquid rather than a flat texture, and sunlight reflects off the waves nicely. The auto-gen system, which automatically decorates the landscape with trees, houses, and vehicles, seems much more powerful in Flight Simulator X. There are a greater number of objects in the world, and they're packed tighter together. In our test flight over Puget Sound, we got the sense of flying over densely forested islands and built-up urban areas. Of course, you'll need serious hardware to see these effects at their maximum, but we found that the visuals were still better on the older hardware that we used to run Flight Simulator 2004 on.

Another major addition in Flight Simulator X is the new mission mode. If you don't have a lot of time to fly a three-hour route, you can drop into a mission, which can be as short as 10 or 15 minutes, though some can take upward of an hour or more. Various training missions will help you get the hang of things, while those looking for more adrenaline can try some of the stunt missions. The easier missions are basically milk runs, requiring you to fly a short route, such as taking a floatplane from Seattle to the San Juan Islands. The tougher missions will challenge you with all sorts of nightmare scenarios, such as having to emergency land an airliner in distress or flying a helicopter rescue mission. We flew the emergency landing mission, and at one point had to try and glide our airliner over miles of ocean. This mission will require intimate knowledge of aircraft systems, as you'll have to go through the step-by-step process of shutting down engines. We did laugh at the voiceovers during the mission, as we heard the copilot explain to the passengers, in a coolly professional voice, that our engines were out and we were gliding in for a landing.

Flight Simulator X will ship with a hanger of about 20 aircraft, covering the entire spectrum of civilian aircraft. There's an ultralight, a glider, a helicopter, single- and twin-engine propeller aircraft, private jets, and commercial airliners. The list includes the Airbus 321, the Boeing 747-400, the Bell 206B helicopter, various Cessna and Beechcraft models, and the Douglas DC-3. (The deluxe version of Flight Simulator X will also include glass-cockpit variants of some of these aircraft, for those who want to ditch mechanical gauges and use electronic displays.) All aircraft come with realistically modeled cockpits, and there is the expected variety of cockpit cameras, including the beautiful virtual cockpit that lets you look around the inside.

We found the control scheme to be fairly flexible. A joystick would obviously be the most ideal controller, since it comes close to the flight stick, or yoke, in most aircraft. However, most gamers don't own joysticks, so you can use a mouse or even a gamepad, as well. The mouse-yoke system lets you move the mouse to move the flight controls, so moving down with the mouse is the equivalent of pulling up on the yoke (real-world aircraft controls reverse the Y axis). The mouse controls feel a bit tricky to learn, though, and we had a much easier time using a gamepad, which turned out to be a surprisingly effective controller. With a dual-thumbstick gamepad like the Xbox 360 controller for Windows, you can use one of the thumbsticks as the yoke and the other to pan your head around the virtual cockpit. That way, it's possible to bank the aircraft and look around the cockpit at the same time. With the mouse, you must disengage the mouse yoke first to move your head in the virtual cockpit.

There's a lot more to Flight Simulator X that we didn't get a chance to test out. For example, the new multiplayer capabilities allow for shared skies. Not only can multiple players fly in the same virtual world, but you can serve as an air-traffic controller to your fellow players, talking them through the skies. (The deluxe version will let you be an airport-tower controller overseeing the sky lanes.) And a new rewards system lets you earn trophies and collect a photo scrapbook of your aerial adventures. These features only touch on a fraction of what's in Flight Simulator X, but when you have a simulation that covers the entire world, that's to be expected. Flight Simulator X will ship in October.