Initial Impressions of Microsoft Flight Simulator
The Aviation Blogger got access to the pre-release retail copy of the Flight Simulator on 14th August 2020, which was four days before its global release date. Hence, with utmost pleasure, we are here to provide our initial impressions and insights of Microsoft Flight Simulator after a week of intensive flying. We are also coming up with an in-depth review article ahead, so stay tuned.
Since the team was based out of Mumbai, I decided to start with Mumbai-CSMIA as the first airport to fly out from. I took the Cessna 172 Skyhawk equipped with G1000 to aid with my departure and arrival in this aircraft, with all AI assists turned off. Decided to spawn at one of the parking bays close to where General Aviation terminal and Air India Maintenance Hangar is located with plans to take off from Runway 09 with a roughly estimated VFR flight-plan set to fly towards South of Mumbai and then headin towards the Northern Region before heading back towards Navi Mumbai and finally turning for a RWY 32 arrival, which awkwardly had cross marks at the start indicating the runway is non-operational. Possibly a glitch or error from the side of the developers.
After the flight simulator had successfully loaded up with my aircraft and scenery, I just opened up the drone cam to check out how the airport buildings have been rendered. It definitely wasn’t true to life since it doesn’t come under the list of handcrafted airports, but again it was way impressive than the ones we’ve seen in its predecessor and other competing flight-sims. Started off by shifting into cockpit view, I was getting used to all the buttons, toggle switches and levers that are required for crucial stages of the flight, and at this place the in-built aircraft checklist came under action and was really helpful by letting me know where the switches were located at.It is definitely a boon for new players who are looking forward to flying in this flight-sim on their own.
