Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 is an unplayable mess after a disastrous and disgraceful launch on Xbox and PC

It's always been a visual marvel, and our hands-on preview of Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 promised even more improvements to its fully realized virtual rendition of planet Earth.

Streaming its assets from the cloud should help bring the total installation down from its bloated 150GB of the previous game, but it brings doubt to the sustainability of constant bandwidth usage for such a high-fidelity game.

Unfortunately, Asobo Studio launched the game to a wealth of problems on November 19 as many players couldn't pass an initial loading screen or were met with gripes and crashes later. Twenty-four hours since its release, has the situation improved at all, or are players still waiting for critical patches? Here's what I've experienced since launch.

What is Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024?

Microsoft has kept its Flight Simulator series running since its initial release in 1982 for IBM-compatible desktop PCs.

Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 is the latest entry, though it acts as more of an expansion on what developers Asobo Studio achieved in the Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 reboot.

Encompassing the entire globe, players are encouraged to plan a flight across any country and continent with total freedom or opt for a set of challenges within a career mode that starts with basic instructions in a virtual flight school.

Compatible with a traditional mouse and keyboard setup on PC or a standard Xbox controller on consoles, gamers could opt to use a dedicated flight stick for an ultra-realistic experience on either platform.

At its launch on November 19, 2024, Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 is also available to users with an active Xbox Game Pass subscription, commonly listed for a far lower monthly price than its $69.99 MSRP and the best way to try a game if you're unsure of its appeal.

Does it run on PC gaming handhelds?

Steam Deck compatibility currently remains 'unknown' for Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024, but the previous version of the game, released in 2020, reportedly runs with the lowest graphical presets (via ProtonDB.) While Asobo Studio prioritizes cloud streaming for the new release, its PC requirements are relatively modest and even lower than those of its predecessor in some areas.

While I haven't had any success running the game on my own 256GB Steam Deck (LCD), it's reasonable to expect the game to run with similarly reduced visuals when its issues are fixed.

Windows-based handhelds like ASUS' ROG Ally X and Lenovo's Legion Go benefit from running native code rather than the Proton compatibility layer required by Valve's Linux-based Steam Deck. Even the original ASUS ROG Ally with an AMD Z1 processor offers more raw performance than the Steam Deck's custom APU and should handle Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 with improved performance.

Again, my real-world testing will follow as soon as the game is playable, at least with a Z1 Extreme-based ROG Ally, but I expect ASUS' and Lenovo's offerings to perform better here.

Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024: Launch day issues

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Players had a chance to pre-install 330MB of Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 before its launch on November 19, a proverbial drop in the ocean compared to the 32.2GB of total storage space on my Xbox Series X post-launch. That's 1.02% of the game available for pre-load before release day, which left fans lamenting on social media and Steam's community forums that it wouldn't dent the expected day-one download, and sure enough, it did not.

As MSFS 2024 launched at 11:00 AM ET, I joined waves of expectant fans and launched the game, whether we paid full price or accessed it through a Game Pass subscription like I initially did. An endless "Loading unusually long ..." message prevented progression past 97% after a slow-moving experience as assets were downloaded from the cloud, and Microsoft soon recommended rebooting the game.

Unfortunately, I experienced a second brick wall for the rest of the launch day as MSFS 2024 placed me in a login queue displaying a message, "Too many users are trying to connect at the same time." After countless reboots and several restarts of my Xbox Series X, I gave up on the game after around five hours. Chalking the experience up to server overloading that often happens with big game launches, I tried again after sleeping on it.

Relentlessly, the issues remained 17 hours later, and I'd get no further than a "Customize Identity" screen that failed to load any content. With few other troubleshooting options and the blessing of Gigabit downstream speeds from my ISP, I uninstalled the game and started fresh. No such luck on the first boot, but two hours of constantly rebooting the game saw me finally reach the menu. Unfortunately, it didn't lead to smoother sailing (or flying) from here.

Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024: Bugs and crashes

Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 crashed so many times on my Xbox Series X that I stopped counting after the fifth exasperating occurrence. If the game wasn't struggling to load previews of the cosmetic items for your virtual pilot on the 'Customize Identity' screen, it was sending me back to my Xbox dashboard with a hard crash, missing any warnings or any obvious reasons.

I don't see any error messages or codes to help troubleshoot, and I expect any casual onlooker would have given up on the game by now. Worst of all, I found it hard to replicate crashes by repeating the same steps; they're seemingly random. However, the most consistent problems happen within the new career mode we saw previewed earlier this year.

I'll preface any further complaints by pointing out that my internet connection is fast and reliable, with speed tests throughout the day showing no issues on my side. Nevertheless, attempting to 'Choose a start location' in career mode showed Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 struggling to generate anything better than low-resolution blurs and messy blobs on its virtual globe.

Repeated attempts to plot a flight path from any combination of large and small airports led to crashes at different intervals in these menus. With patience, the world eventually stops rendering itself out of joint and manifests into a clear, video-game-style spinoff of Bing Maps in satellite mode, but interacting with the interface crashed the game so frequently that I never saw any gameplay here.

Switching to 'Free Flight' mode brought me closer to seeing developer Asobo Studio's rendition of planet Earth, but only as a real-time rendered view of cloud cover from above. The game would hang in this top-down view forever or crash to my Xbox dashboard yet again. Curiously, repeated attempts to enter this mode eventually led to me being awarded the related achievement of 'Complete a flight in any game mode.'

Trying repeatedly, I eventually gave up on 'Free Flight' just as I did for 'Career' with nothing to see in either mode besides constant crashes. At this point, the two modes I was most excited to try were both unplayable. Career mode promised an update to the game's flight school, and free flights fulfilled the always-present urge to fly over my hometown and see how it looks as a realistic 3D environment from above.

Switching instead to the 'Challenge League' for an attempt at a high-speed rally race over the Grand Canyon in a Boeing F/A-18E Super Hornet fighter jet saw the most success in Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 as I finally managed to load into the game. It wasn't a flawless experience by any measure, as the preview screen for this minigame failed to show any decent render of the environment.

Things didn't get worse from here, but they certainly didn't get any better. While I didn't experience any crashes in the challenge league, it came with its own set of disappointments when I saw how poorly the gameplay turned out to be in a curated flight around a designated area that resets your position if you wander too far. I might excuse slow-rendering textures on a distant map, but I can't abide this.

With basic knowledge of how most flight simulator controls work with common joypads, my fighter jet fired across this murky, almost unrecognizable representation of the Grand Canyon, and I started navigating through the barriers. It started ugly and never improved, as even the jet plane itself suffered from broken textures rendered as blocky rainbows.

Some areas of the canyon would load in with higher-resolution assets, but they wouldn't remain on screen for long due to the incredible speed at which I was traveling during this challenge. Repeating the race a few times over, the same problems persisted, as the cloud-streaming couldn't keep up with my gameplay, and I was perpetually flying over a clay-like mess until I lost all interest.

Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024: Should you buy it?

At launch, it's impossible to recommend Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024. I'm refraining from awarding the game with a score, even a low one, because I don't feel like there's anything to assign points to. I can't correctly assess the gameplay, add-on ecosystem, or peripheral compatibility simply because it doesn't function in the most basic manner. For now, I don't recommend buying the game outright and suggest using an active Game Pass subscription to test its stability first.

As a fan of its predecessor, I'm disappointed in MSFS 2024 but optimistic that its developers at Asobo Studio can recover. The technology behind the game has phenomenal potential, but the servers have proven that they can't handle the stress. If I see a significant set of updates to the game and things improve to the point of genuine playability, I can revisit and assign it a proper score, but this shaky launch will undoubtedly turn some new players away.