# Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024

Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 is a flight simulation video game developed by Asobo Studio and published by Xbox Game Studios. A successor to Microsoft Flight Simulator (2020), the game was released on November 19, 2024, for Windows and the Xbox Series X/S.
It was announced at the 2023 Xbox Games Showcase on June 11, 2023. It includes a career mode with missions such as agricultural flight and firefighting. It uses Asobo's in-house engine.

## Gameplay

New mission types include aerial firefighting, air search and rescue, helicopter cargo hook transport, air ambulance, cropdusting, mountain rescue, skydiving, commercial aviation, aerial crane construction, outsize cargo transport with the Airbus Beluga, arctic cargo transport with the Airbus A400M, VIP air charter and executive transport, air racing, weather reconnaissance, experimental aircraft testing, and nap-of-the-earth flight with the A-10 Warthog. New aircraft types include gliders, airships, and hot air balloons. New environmental features include wildfires, snow, tornadoes, auroras, animal migration and herds, live marine and flight tracking, the four seasons, and better ground traffic reporting.
Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 is a standalone version, but Microsoft stated that "virtually all" addons purchased on Flight Simulator's online marketplace for the previous version will work with the new release. Whether external third-party addons will be supported is unclear. The company described the new missions and aircraft as part of aviation career modes. 2024 features an electronic flight bag, improved physics engine with greater control for addons' flight dynamics, improved electrical, pneumatic, fuel, and hydraulic aircraft systems and avionics, and multithreading for better performance.

## Development

Asobo Studios serves as the game's lead developer. A team of more than 200 at Asobo mainly worked to update the game's client to accommodate for its new features, while Xbox partnered with more than 30 external partners to work on various aspects of the simulator.
The game was released on November 19, 2024, on Xbox Series X/S and Windows.

## Reception

Aggregate score :
| Aggregator | Score |
| Metacritic | 77/100 |
Review scores :
| Publication | Score |
| Eurogamer | 4/5 |
| IGN | 9/10 |
| PC Gamer (US) | 90/100 |
Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 received "generally positive" reviews according to review aggregator Metacritic, with several publications praising the game for its new features, enhanced visuals and landscape streaming features. Criticism was directed at long loading times due to the large influx of players causing server overload. This later resulted in players sitting in virtual queues for long periods of time when attempting to play the game. Flight Simulator head Jörg Neumann issued an apology in a YouTube developer stream that was posted on the day of the game's release, while Asobo Studio CEO Sebastian Wloch said that a database cache was "completely overwhelmed", causing loading issues and missing content. The issues led to the game receiving an "Overwhelmingly Negative" review rating on the Steam platform after its release, with media outlets including GameSpot suggesting that the game had been review bombed. The following day an update was posted to the official Flight Simulator support account on X, stating that more server capacity had been added, but there were continued issues accessing the game.