Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024

Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 retains the globe-scale free flight, live weather, online traffic, and satellite-derived scenery systems of the 2020 game, while adding a more explicit activity structure around aviation jobs and skill progression. Its career mode allows players to begin at an airport of their choosing, gain experience and reputation, earn certifications, and unlock aviation specializations ranging from medevac and remote cargo operations to aerial firefighting, search and rescue, and airline passenger transport.

Mission types include aerial firefighting, air search and rescue, helicopter cargo hook transport, air ambulance, cropdusting, mountain rescue, skydiving, commercial aviation, aerial crane construction, outsize cargo transport with the Airbus Beluga, arctic cargo transport with the Airbus A400M, VIP air charter and executive transport, air racing, weather reconnaissance, experimental aircraft testing, and nap-of-the-earth flight with the A-10 Warthog. New aircraft categories include gliders, airships, hot air balloons, and electric vertical take-off and landing aircraft. The game also includes non-career activities such as landing challenges, rally races, low-altitude challenges, World Photographer objectives, and free flight.

Asobo Studio served as the game's lead developer. A team of more than 200 at Asobo mainly worked to update the game's client to accommodate its new features, while Xbox worked with more than 30 external partners on various aspects of the simulator.

The game was released on November 19, 2024, on Xbox Series X/S and Windows. During State of Play on September 24, 2025, Microsoft announced that the game would be released on PlayStation 5 on December 8, 2025, making it the first entry in the series to be released on a Sony console. PlayStation VR2 support was later added as part of Sim Update 5 in April 2026.

Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 received "generally positive" reviews according to review aggregator Metacritic, with several publications praising the game for its new features, enhanced visuals, and landscape streaming features. Criticism was directed at long loading times and missing content during launch, caused by high demand and server-side problems. Players encountered long virtual queues and, in some cases, could not reliably access the simulator.

Flight Simulator head Jorg Neumann apologized in a developer video on launch day, while Asobo Studio CEO Sebastian Wloch said that a database cache had been overwhelmed, causing loading failures and missing content. The issues led to an "Overwhelmingly Negative" user-review rating on Steam shortly after release, with media outlets including GameSpot reporting that the game had been review bombed. Microsoft later stated that additional server capacity had been added while the team continued working on launch issues.