Recent years have felt like witnessing the birth of a new generation of virtual flight enthusiasts. With the tantalizing promise of a full-scale, one-to-one recreation of the globe, 2020's Microsoft Flight Simulator has turned countless amateur aviators who began with a passing interest of buzzing over their high school's football fields into genuine flight sim enthusiasts. More of my friends know how flaps work now than I ever would've expected.
2024 games: Upcoming releases
Best PC games: All-time favorites
Free PC games: Freebie fest
Best FPS games: Finest gunplay
Best MMOs: Massive worlds
Best RPGs: Grand adventures
Four years later, Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 has made its landing in a world where its predecessor had us Googling HOTAS setups and yokes (yes, you need pedals too). Searches for ILS approaches have spiked the world over. But leaving the cruel confines of the earthly plane only makes gravity more unbearable. Microsoft just got us hungry for more.
This list of the best flight sims is dedicated to the breadth of experiences you can have in an imaginary cockpit, like dogfighting instead of cruising between airports. Or dogfighting, but in space. Or piloting a helicopter. There are some great flight games out there—play them to keep your HOTAS from getting sad and lonely.
Best civilian flight sim
Microsoft Flight Simulator
Release date: 2020 | Developer: Asobo | Steam
Okay, before I get to the rest of those recommendations—this is the first game anyone with even a passing interest in flying planes should check out right now. Flight Sim 2020 feels like it’s skipped a generation and given us a glimpse into a future built from cloud AI grunt and, oh, just the entire world’s map data. Petabytes of it.
Azure AI and Bing Maps combine to create a world map that even those completely ambivalent to a Cessna’s power-down procedure are drawn to explore. It’s rich and gorgeous, if not quite perfect, but if anything its glitches, like the lone 600-storey house in Melbourne Australia, add to the thrill of exploration.
The flight model’s rewarding for those using a pad, but it’ll definitely feel more immersive the more bespoke peripherals you throw at it.
While our Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 review granted the follow-up entry at a very positive 90%, its early weeks since launch have been marred by widespread reports of bugs in progression, airplane function, and general usability. While Flight Sim 2024 adds a lot of be excited for in career mode and flight activities, we can't recommend the new model until over the tried-and-true 2020 edition until more of those wrinkles are ironed out.
Best space combat flight sim
Elite Dangerous
Release date: 2015 | Developer: Frontier Developments | Steam
How Frontier Developments must have laughed when we all struggled to get our heads around Flight Sim 2020’s 1:1 scale replica of Earth. They did, after all, manage a 1:1 scale replica of our entire milky way in Elite Dangerous, and they released it before 2014 was over and done with.
Granted, you can’t fly over your house, but what you can do is genuinely too varied to detail. Suffice to say the combat gets very intense with a good HOTAS setup, and even moreso if you’re in VR.
But there's so much more to do. Trucking and trading. Soon, even getting out of the cockpit. There’s a stoic satisfaction to just nailing a docking procedure or successfully navigating the yawning black infinity and landing at the hunk of rock you actually intended to. Preposterously vast in scope and wonderfully accomplished in the small details, this is a flight sim for ‘big picture’ types.
Best dogfighting flight sim
War Thunder
Release date: 2013 | Developer: Gaijin Entertianment | Steam
There are also tanks and naval vessels blowing each other to smithereens below you, but in War Thunder the real joy has always been aerial combat.
Part of what makes the experience is the sense of ownership, which is an ironic thing to say about a free-to-play game. But rather than just picking a plane out of the hangar, you really invest in hardware, upgrading it over time and learning its quirks in the skies.
The other part is a truly detailed combat model which simulates armour penetration on a level that even real bullets probably can’t be bothered with. When you actually shoot another plane out of the sky in War Thunder, you know you’ve really pulled off something to be proud of.
Most realistic flight sim
X-Plane 11
Release date: 2017 | Developer: Laminar Research | Steam
Hoo boy. This will be a contentious denomination for a while, but in the current state of release of both sims, X Plane-11 simply goes into more detail than Flight Simulator 2020. ATC, in particular, has a full working model that many professionals have used as a training aid, and particulars like fuel burn and engine behaviour at precise angles of ascent are modelled with greater precision.
Of course, X-Plane 11 has the advantage of a vast modding database and a passionate community, so we’ll see where this debate goes as Flight Simulator 2020 enjoys user-created content of its own, but if you’re prepared to trade off some of the gorgeousness for detail and add-on options, this is the one.
Best arcade combat flight sim
Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown
Release date: 2019 | Developer: Bandai Namco | Steam
This is about as different as it gets from X Plane 11. Ace Combat is bonkers, and yes, you can control its planes with one hand while cooking dinner with the other and holding a phone call on speakerphone. To even begin to attempt any understanding of its plot is to stare at madness itself. But simplicity and eccentricity are no bad things.
It has such an eye for spectacle, from absurd experimental planes spewing drones at you to perfectly timed collapsing building, as if they were waiting for Michael Bay’s cue when you fly past. These flourishes make every mission memorable and challenging. There’s a hangar full of authentic planes, too, whose loadouts are customisable to the nth degree.
Best space flight sim
Kerbal Space Program
Release date: 2015 | Developer: Squad | Steam
This one’s a bit different, isn’t it? For as much as it’s a game about cute big-eyed characters getting into slapstick escapades, it’s also probably the most rigorous simulation of actual rocket science we’ve ever had. Anyone with Scott Manley vids in their YouTube suggestions bar can attest to how incredibly detailed the simulation of ballistics, drag, gravity, and other things I wasn’t paying attention to in physics lessons gets here.
The twist is that you’re not just hopping into a spacecraft, but also devising it beforehand too, which makes eventual success feel like a truly tremendous accomplishment. We’d like to see you try and match that, Flight Simulator 2020.
Best helicopter flight sim
Digital Combat Simulator World
Release date: 2013 | Developer: Eagle Dynamics | Steam
There’s a commonly repeated falsity that helicopters shouldn’t be able to fly, and if you ever want to know where the origins of the notion came from, load up DCS and have a go in a UH-1. After a few minutes spent trying to wrestle its opposing forces into something resembling sustained flight, the only natural conclusion to draw is that little pods suspended by whirling blades have been a massive hoax all along.
DCS does much more than rotor-blade flight, providing one of the most detailed combat flight sim experiences out there in spite of its advancing years (the original version dates back to 2008). But the helis are particularly well done here.
Best flight sim that isn't really a flight sim
The Crew 2
Release date: 2018 | Developer: Ivory Tower | Steam
Can it train a budding pilot to understand the interior of an airliner cockpit? Not in a million years. In fact, a good portion of The Crew 2 is spent very much on land, in a car, nowhere near a jet engine or a wing. Still, though—and hear me out on this—when it comes to virtual tourism, it’s up there with Flight Simulator 2020.
The Crew 2's condensed version of America is a wonderful thing to explore by air, particularly with a few mates in co-op. Take in the sights, do a few loop-de-loops, race to this landmark or that, and when you get bored, transform into cars or boats at the press of a button. Unique, imperfect, and still a curiosity worth shouting about.
