One thing I found a bit lacking in the 2020 version of Microsoft Flight Simulator was structure: there wasn't any. I enjoyed flying planes around the planet, but without any specific missions or progression system, no matter how far I flew I never felt like I was getting anywhere. That's why I enjoyed a mod called NeoFly that let me make a living as a bush pilot: I could earn money with each successful mission, which would eventually let me buy new aircraft to fly more missions.
Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024, which launches today, has a progression system like that built in. There are 26 different career paths, from cropdusting to aerial firefighting to VIP charter flights. Those careers give you a chance to earn money and progress through multiple missions, to the point where you can create your own company and become your own boss.
You can take it even further: when your company gets big enough you'll be able to hire virtual pilots to fly missions for you. Jorg Neumann, Head of Microsoft Flight Simulator, talked to PC Gamer last week about how this career system works, describing the different levels of the system as "loops."
"So loop one, you're an employee. You would say, 'I want to go work for that crop dusting company somewhere in the Midwest,' or whatever, in Thailand, whatever your pick is, right? And then you get increasingly harder missions," Neumann said. "And once you enter loop two, you can do the same, but you end up owning the plane."
Once you've earned enough money flying your own plane, you can enter a new state "where you don't pilot all your planes anymore. You can found a company, you can paint your own livery," Neumann said, "and then you have pilots that fly for you. And it's basically an economy sim."
Your companies can handle flights all over the globe, too. "For example, I have an airline company in Europe, I have a helicopter outfit in Hawaii, and I have another company in the South Island of New Zealand. That's where I'm currently at in my career," Neumann said.
But being the boss means a lot more responsibility. "So what happens in loop one, if you ruin the plane on landing? The company [you work for] actually pays for that, so you're a little bit protected. Once it's loop two, and you own the planes, you have to pay the bills. So you look at your planes quite differently."
Neumann said his own virtual pilot career had a financial setback at one point. "I remember when I hit that stage, I actually wrecked the plane," he said, laughing. "It was really expensive."
I asked Neumann if career mode could be tackled in multiplayer, say by running a company with friends or hiring other players to fly missions for you. "Not yet, is the answer," he said. "But yeah, we want to do that. We want to also do collaborative firefighting and those types of things, because there's spotter planes, and the actual planes that put the chemicals down. But we will do that in the future. We don't think of this as a one and done, right? This is a game as a service. So we're going to keep going."
