- Release date: August 18, 2020
- Developer: Asobo Studio
- On Game Pass: Yes
Microsoft Flight Simulator is the most open-world game out there, especially when you consider, oh, I don’t know, that
the entirety of planet earth is playable. It’s astonishing what Asobo Studio has managed to pull off with the simulator. Microsoft Flight Simulator uses map data from Bing to produce the game’s open world, and it does so with incredible accuracy.
If you take off from one of the 37,000 airports included in the game — over 40 of these are hand-crafted to a high level of detail — and fly towards your house (which is probably one of the first things you’ll do), I can guarantee you’ll be amazed at just how true-to-life the sim looks.
Sure, Asobo hasn’t painstakingly modelled your street exactly, but it will be fairly close. It has modelled most of the major cities, big points of interest, and a boatload of planes, all of which look visually fantastic when running on either Xbox Series X|S or PC. The gameplay/simulation may be a little dry for some people’s tastes, but even so, it’s still worth checking out, even if it is just to crash a 747 into that one annoying neighbour’s house who constantly has parties that go on until 4am.