Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 – Standard Edition (Windows 10)
Microsoft Flight Simulator is the next generation of one of the most beloved simulation franchises. From light planes to wide-body jets, fly highly detailed and stunning aircraft in an incredibly realistic world. Create your flight plan and fly anywhere on the planet. Enjoy flying day or night and face realistic, challenging weather conditions.
The world at your fingertips. Take to the skies and experience the joy of flight in the next generation of Microsoft Flight Simulator.
Explore the world. Travel the world in amazing detail with over 37,000 airports, 2 million cities, 1.5 billion buildings, real mountains, roads, trees, rivers, animals, traffic, and more.
Earn Your Wings. Hone your pilot skills in a variety of aircraft from light planes to commercial jets with an experience that scales to your level with interactive and highlighted instrument guidance and checklists.
Test Your Skill. Fly day or night with live real-time weather including accurate wind speed and direction, temperature, humidity, rain, and lighting.
Product Features
37,000 airports (30 in high detail)
20 aircraft
2 million cities
1.5 billion buildings
real mountains, road, trees, rovers, animals, traffic and more
Contents: 10 x PC DVD ROM, poster showing key assignments, 68 page manual
Like many I found this tricky to download and install, didn’t actually need the discs in the end, just downloaded using internet (Microsoft store recognises the product key) but it took most of an evening on a Virgin wireless connection. When installed it took up all the disc space on our (new) pc though! Deleted and re-installed on an external hard drive, which works fine for me. Also had the space to download UK scenery etc on the external drive. Very pleased with the simulation, I am still learning, though.
The bad – The box comes stuffed with 10 CDs which take a very long time to install. Once they are installed, you discover you STILL have hours for downloading from the Microsoft site still left to do.
Once installed, it regularly has updates it needs to do and they’re huge too. If you have a monthly data limit, this is not the game for you. It also requires a fast Internet connection. We have fibre broadband and it still tells me my connection speed is too low sometimes.
The Good – There no other flight simulator to match this. The graphics are spectacular (if you have a graphics card that’s up to the job). They digitally mapped the entire planet. You can fly down the Seine and look at Paris or the Thames and see London. You can even land at Area 51. It’s not perfect, but it’s the best sim out there.
As you will be aware, this is a mahoosive flight simulator and comes on ten DVDs. It takes ages to load, and I do mean ages! It takes approximately 20 minutes per disk to load, which wouldn’t be too bad if no errors are detected, if they are, you have to start the installation process all over again, from the very beginning, it doesn’t save up to the point where it failed. So, if like me, disk 9 failed, I had to start the process from scratch. I was not happy, especially as it happened on 5 or 6 occasions. I kept on getting a CRC error, which is a Cyclic Redundancy Check error, which points to one of three possible faults.
1) A dirty laser/LED on the DVD drive, so I cleaned it; made no difference.
2) Dirty mark on the disk, so I cleaned it; made no difference, and
3) A bad sector or corrupt data on the disk. I had no way of checking this, but as all the other disks had installed without any problems, and disk 9 kept on failing at the same point, I assumed this was the problem.
Amazon were fantastic, 5 stars for them. They accepted my return and sent a new flight sim out to me which arrived the following day. This time, the installation went smoothly without any problems; the time it took was still an eternity.
Once the last disk had been installed, I was eager to try it out, however, every time you start the flight sim, it looks for updates. You have to put disk 1 into the DVD drive, and n the first time you try to use the sim, the update is huge, mine was 126GBs, which again, took ages, even with a very fast Internet connection (360Mbps).
Once the updates have been downloaded and installed, you can get on with the flying, probably the day after you started all of this. It soon becomes apparent, why this flight sim comes on ten disks, because the scenery if outstanding. The aircraft, the instruments, the weather, in fact everything about it is so clear and detailed. I was using an old Microsoft Force Feedback joystick on my old flight sims, but it’s not very good with this one, so I invested in a much better one (Saitek/Logitech X52 Rhino) which has made a whole world of difference. I would recommend upgrading the joystick if you are thinking of buying this flight sim, if like me, you have an older model.
I would definitely recommend this flight simulator, but just be prepared for a long wait for the installation and updates to complete.
Finally, a special thank you to Amazon for replacing the defective flight sim so quickly.
The graphics and playing experience are awesome sadly in order to really enjoy this you need a lot of room on your hard drive 105gb for the discs and there was a 76gb update once I’d got it loaded. The program is really resource hungry which means you need at least 16gb of ram and a decent sized hdd, I bought a new i7 8gb with a 1tb ssd drive, I was due a new computer, and it runs ok but not ultra, but believe me the maps are all in the right place so you wil probably be able to fly over your house, though it may not quite look like your house due to the restrictions of the program, but still over all its Awesome
FYI you don’t need the cd in the drive after installation, nor do you need to create an iso. It just links the key in the box with your MS account. Not sure if this is a recent change from MS as I’ve read that others were required to have ‘disc one’ in at all times. This was not the case for me.
The graphics, control and features are impressive but the game needs some skill to configure and install. I managed to install everything on a second SSD which required some skill. Initially the game kept crashing even with 16 GB memory. This was solved by setting a fixed size paging file on a SSD. I used 32G paging file but a smaller file may work. Loading the game takes about 3 minutes even with a SSD. The experience will be painful if you only have a hard dive.
I have a fairly good gaming PC with a GTX 1080 GPU and Intel i7 CPU with all GPU and Windows 10 updates carried out and no matter what I do this simulator just keeps on crashing. It gives no indication to the cause of the program crashing and just shuts itself down which is just beyond annoying. I was really excited about MSFS 2020 release but now I just feel totally let down. I have spend many hours on YouTube seeking other user advice for the constant crashing but nothing has worked so looking like a huge waste of my money and time. I have reverted back to Aerofly FS2 which in comparison is far less complex but atleast it works and you can get to fly a plane rather than waiting ages for MSFS2020 to load and then crash. Sure it could work if you have a super computer supplied by GCHQ but for normal PC’s it is useless
Graphics and reality is superb however I built a new pc based in the recommended spec. This is nowhere near good enough to wind thing up to max. The disc version takes ages to load and has to be monitored and then the extra download is enormous.
absolutely fantastic product amazing details and so much has gone into programming the software a must for beginners and experienced players, truly outstanding & updates the program periodically which is another amazing thing. MICROSOFT WELL DONE!
Had to upgrade my processor and video card which I expected as they are both 5 years old. Also need at least a Hotas joystick to fly comfortably. Pleased with the sim and of course flew over my house.
Let down by the laboured and unreliable installation process which will take hours even if it works first time. Lot’s of annoying little but noticeable bugs. But. This hugely ambitious project is truly a remarkable simulation unequalled by any other. I cannot put it down. Now when the bugs are fixed and the VR is added I really cannot imagine anything ever surpassing it!
As the headline suggests. You can download a copy of MSFS2020 Standard for 1.99 from the Microsoft Store, and evaluate this ground breaking Simulator for a whole month. Then you can decide if your potato PC can run it.
My system specs:
Intel i5 6600K @ 4.7Ghz
Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080
32GB 3000Mhz GSkill RAM
500GB m.2 NVME dedicated drive for MSFS 2020
250GB SSD dedicated to rolling and manual cache
As you can see, my PC is a roast potato. The best of all potato’s. Not the best spec in the World, but runs MSFS 2020 at 50fps on medium to high settings just fine. Very smooth, with almost zero stuttering. Even at these settings, the fidelity blows any flight sim out of the air before it. No need to buy any scenery (unless I really want that high fidelity local airport), no need to buy a weather engine, there really isnt any need to buy planes, as the bugs are being fixed in rapid succession. I’ll be buying the a2a 182, and the Majestic Q400 as they are pinnacle of sim aircraft. The rolling cache is genius, and improves performance that allows you to run the sim on a cold boiled potato.
The thing with flight sims is, you have to start with everything going in your favour. A properly formatted hard drive (preferably an SSD or even better an NVME m.2). A fast, stable internet connection (I’ll get to this later), and above all else patients.
I feel for the people that bought this game on a disc. Trying to install 110GB’s of data from a DVD must be soul destroying. Hence why I went for the cheap, easy option, and paid 1.99 for my first month, and downloaded the game from XBox game store. I have Virgin Media 200mb Fibre Broadband, Costs me 30 a month. I had the game downloaded and installed on my hard drive in about an hour and twenty minutes. Unless you live on a mountain in Wales, nearly everyone in the UK has access to these speeds, not that you need 200mbs. A 50mb connection would have the sim downloaded in time for your roast dinner.
The most vocal people in the flight sim community are the ones that are having issues, usually caused by their own lack of patients, and/or ability to install a game or configure their hardware properly. And it annoys me they then come online and 1 star the product. If you want to give the game 4 stars because you are not happy with the bugs every new game of this complexity will no doubt have, then fair enough. But even with the bugs, this is a 5 star piece of software. Revolutionary in every regard. Give the sim 6 months for all the major and minor bugs to be ironed out, and it will be so far ahead in the market share, their competitors will need to seriously think of other strategies to combat MSFS’s dominance. Great for the flight sim community.
I’m really sorry for the people that bought it on disc, but why oh why did you not just have some patients and download it from the windows store, and paid 1.99 for the privilege. In their defence, Microsoft should never have released it on disc.
Amazon won’t like this review as I am telling people not to buy the disc version, but Amazon won’t go skint. We’ll be buying all the flight yokes you can throw at us.
This flight sim is superb. Downloaded it over 14hrs.
It installed itself, very smooth graphics, good to fly over my house.
Just make sure your PC is beefy enough to run it. It really needs 6 core CPU.
I had to put a 500 graphics card in my PC. Now superb.
Benchmark your PC on the internet before you get the sim, save you wasting money.
PC Game Benchmark wiil check your machine.
Enjoy!
Fantastic game. The real world scenery generation alone makes it a worthy step up from FSX or Xplane. It’s a bit lacking in features (different types of plane / tutorials / missions), but as someone looking to fly VFR it’s great. I’ve spent a lot of time just flying round places I know!
Check your specifications of because minimum specs will look worse than FSX;the previous version.
Took all afternoon to install the the discs to a new dedicated SSD.Log into your windows account, download launcher,launch and then download update 16gb at present.
Long load times claimed online are partly untrue.4 mins from launch to fly.
Recommended by me at least Ryzen 3600 or intel equivalent.16gb ram.RX570 8gb or Nvidia equivalent,though better would be wise.The good internet access of above 20mbps is also a must as much data is streamed live whilst playing.You can download individual areas off line but it’s hit and miss at the moment.
Lots of little issues and minor bugs,have not caused any problems running the game.Its been very stable for a new release for me.
One thing I would say is get the top end version because even though it’s expensive its worth it.I got the standard one and regret not paying the extra.
Patches for bug fixes and a few updates will be coming throughout September.
Joystick and rudder pedals should also be factored in to cost also.
Very impressed so far.
Many hours to get airborne but worth it in the end. It seems that the xbox software in microsoft store is the key and it must be installed to get the sim to run.
The first one I received had a faulty disc 7 so couldn’t install, Amazon being so good as they are, quickly sent a second copy out and I returned the first. Installed perfectly and it saved loads of download time as it only downloaded about 20gb after the initial install.
The game is amazing, great graphics and I even found my house in Staffordshire, even the wind turbine near where i live was there and turning 🙂
The best areas are the handcrafted cities like New York, it’s breathtaking. 10/10
New to flight sim ok at moment will wait and see
This product is fantastic but you need a very fast machine to run it smoothly so please look at all the recommendations.
Like many I found this tricky to download and install, didn’t actually need the discs in the end, just downloaded using internet (Microsoft store recognises the product key) but it took most of an evening on a Virgin wireless connection. When installed it took up all the disc space on our (new) pc though! Deleted and re-installed on an external hard drive, which works fine for me. Also had the space to download UK scenery etc on the external drive. Very pleased with the simulation, I am still learning, though.
The bad – The box comes stuffed with 10 CDs which take a very long time to install. Once they are installed, you discover you STILL have hours for downloading from the Microsoft site still left to do.
Once installed, it regularly has updates it needs to do and they’re huge too. If you have a monthly data limit, this is not the game for you. It also requires a fast Internet connection. We have fibre broadband and it still tells me my connection speed is too low sometimes.
The Good – There no other flight simulator to match this. The graphics are spectacular (if you have a graphics card that’s up to the job). They digitally mapped the entire planet. You can fly down the Seine and look at Paris or the Thames and see London. You can even land at Area 51. It’s not perfect, but it’s the best sim out there.
It’s a massive install – 10 DVDs and then it requires a 112Gb mandatory update download so make sure you have plenty of spare hard disk/SSD space.
Lots of terrains to choose from. Will give hours of pleasure and flight experience. A must for all budding pilots out there. Good value for money.
As you will be aware, this is a mahoosive flight simulator and comes on ten DVDs. It takes ages to load, and I do mean ages! It takes approximately 20 minutes per disk to load, which wouldn’t be too bad if no errors are detected, if they are, you have to start the installation process all over again, from the very beginning, it doesn’t save up to the point where it failed. So, if like me, disk 9 failed, I had to start the process from scratch. I was not happy, especially as it happened on 5 or 6 occasions. I kept on getting a CRC error, which is a Cyclic Redundancy Check error, which points to one of three possible faults.
1) A dirty laser/LED on the DVD drive, so I cleaned it; made no difference.
2) Dirty mark on the disk, so I cleaned it; made no difference, and
3) A bad sector or corrupt data on the disk. I had no way of checking this, but as all the other disks had installed without any problems, and disk 9 kept on failing at the same point, I assumed this was the problem.
Amazon were fantastic, 5 stars for them. They accepted my return and sent a new flight sim out to me which arrived the following day. This time, the installation went smoothly without any problems; the time it took was still an eternity.
Once the last disk had been installed, I was eager to try it out, however, every time you start the flight sim, it looks for updates. You have to put disk 1 into the DVD drive, and n the first time you try to use the sim, the update is huge, mine was 126GBs, which again, took ages, even with a very fast Internet connection (360Mbps).
Once the updates have been downloaded and installed, you can get on with the flying, probably the day after you started all of this. It soon becomes apparent, why this flight sim comes on ten disks, because the scenery if outstanding. The aircraft, the instruments, the weather, in fact everything about it is so clear and detailed. I was using an old Microsoft Force Feedback joystick on my old flight sims, but it’s not very good with this one, so I invested in a much better one (Saitek/Logitech X52 Rhino) which has made a whole world of difference. I would recommend upgrading the joystick if you are thinking of buying this flight sim, if like me, you have an older model.
I would definitely recommend this flight simulator, but just be prepared for a long wait for the installation and updates to complete.
Finally, a special thank you to Amazon for replacing the defective flight sim so quickly.
Opps, made a mistake. After waiting hours for it to load, I went for download version instead. Live and learn.
The graphics and playing experience are awesome sadly in order to really enjoy this you need a lot of room on your hard drive 105gb for the discs and there was a 76gb update once I’d got it loaded. The program is really resource hungry which means you need at least 16gb of ram and a decent sized hdd, I bought a new i7 8gb with a 1tb ssd drive, I was due a new computer, and it runs ok but not ultra, but believe me the maps are all in the right place so you wil probably be able to fly over your house, though it may not quite look like your house due to the restrictions of the program, but still over all its Awesome
Easy installation takes awhile to load up but once done great flights
Wonderful graphics Very complicated to to set up up&up stop
FYI you don’t need the cd in the drive after installation, nor do you need to create an iso. It just links the key in the box with your MS account. Not sure if this is a recent change from MS as I’ve read that others were required to have ‘disc one’ in at all times. This was not the case for me.
The graphics, control and features are impressive but the game needs some skill to configure and install. I managed to install everything on a second SSD which required some skill. Initially the game kept crashing even with 16 GB memory. This was solved by setting a fixed size paging file on a SSD. I used 32G paging file but a smaller file may work. Loading the game takes about 3 minutes even with a SSD. The experience will be painful if you only have a hard dive.
I have a fairly good gaming PC with a GTX 1080 GPU and Intel i7 CPU with all GPU and Windows 10 updates carried out and no matter what I do this simulator just keeps on crashing. It gives no indication to the cause of the program crashing and just shuts itself down which is just beyond annoying. I was really excited about MSFS 2020 release but now I just feel totally let down. I have spend many hours on YouTube seeking other user advice for the constant crashing but nothing has worked so looking like a huge waste of my money and time. I have reverted back to Aerofly FS2 which in comparison is far less complex but atleast it works and you can get to fly a plane rather than waiting ages for MSFS2020 to load and then crash. Sure it could work if you have a super computer supplied by GCHQ but for normal PC’s it is useless
Beautiful graphics scenary realistic noises and accurate liverys.
Just took quite a long time to download.
Graphics and reality is superb however I built a new pc based in the recommended spec. This is nowhere near good enough to wind thing up to max. The disc version takes ages to load and has to be monitored and then the extra download is enormous.
absolutely fantastic product amazing details and so much has gone into programming the software a must for beginners and experienced players, truly outstanding & updates the program periodically which is another amazing thing. MICROSOFT WELL DONE!
Incredible, and amazing value but not a gaming experience if that’s what you’re looking for.
Very good flight Simulator but needs tweaking. Very disappointed that it has no replay feature. A very important part of a flight Simulator.
Had to upgrade my processor and video card which I expected as they are both 5 years old. Also need at least a Hotas joystick to fly comfortably. Pleased with the sim and of course flew over my house.
Let down by the laboured and unreliable installation process which will take hours even if it works first time. Lot’s of annoying little but noticeable bugs. But. This hugely ambitious project is truly a remarkable simulation unequalled by any other. I cannot put it down. Now when the bugs are fixed and the VR is added I really cannot imagine anything ever surpassing it!
My system specs:
Intel i5 6600K @ 4.7Ghz
Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080
32GB 3000Mhz GSkill RAM
500GB m.2 NVME dedicated drive for MSFS 2020
250GB SSD dedicated to rolling and manual cache
As you can see, my PC is a roast potato. The best of all potato’s. Not the best spec in the World, but runs MSFS 2020 at 50fps on medium to high settings just fine. Very smooth, with almost zero stuttering. Even at these settings, the fidelity blows any flight sim out of the air before it. No need to buy any scenery (unless I really want that high fidelity local airport), no need to buy a weather engine, there really isnt any need to buy planes, as the bugs are being fixed in rapid succession. I’ll be buying the a2a 182, and the Majestic Q400 as they are pinnacle of sim aircraft. The rolling cache is genius, and improves performance that allows you to run the sim on a cold boiled potato.
The thing with flight sims is, you have to start with everything going in your favour. A properly formatted hard drive (preferably an SSD or even better an NVME m.2). A fast, stable internet connection (I’ll get to this later), and above all else patients.
I feel for the people that bought this game on a disc. Trying to install 110GB’s of data from a DVD must be soul destroying. Hence why I went for the cheap, easy option, and paid 1.99 for my first month, and downloaded the game from XBox game store. I have Virgin Media 200mb Fibre Broadband, Costs me 30 a month. I had the game downloaded and installed on my hard drive in about an hour and twenty minutes. Unless you live on a mountain in Wales, nearly everyone in the UK has access to these speeds, not that you need 200mbs. A 50mb connection would have the sim downloaded in time for your roast dinner.
The most vocal people in the flight sim community are the ones that are having issues, usually caused by their own lack of patients, and/or ability to install a game or configure their hardware properly. And it annoys me they then come online and 1 star the product. If you want to give the game 4 stars because you are not happy with the bugs every new game of this complexity will no doubt have, then fair enough. But even with the bugs, this is a 5 star piece of software. Revolutionary in every regard. Give the sim 6 months for all the major and minor bugs to be ironed out, and it will be so far ahead in the market share, their competitors will need to seriously think of other strategies to combat MSFS’s dominance. Great for the flight sim community.
I’m really sorry for the people that bought it on disc, but why oh why did you not just have some patients and download it from the windows store, and paid 1.99 for the privilege. In their defence, Microsoft should never have released it on disc.
Amazon won’t like this review as I am telling people not to buy the disc version, but Amazon won’t go skint. We’ll be buying all the flight yokes you can throw at us.
It installed itself, very smooth graphics, good to fly over my house.
Just make sure your PC is beefy enough to run it. It really needs 6 core CPU.
I had to put a 500 graphics card in my PC. Now superb.
Benchmark your PC on the internet before you get the sim, save you wasting money.
PC Game Benchmark wiil check your machine.
Enjoy!
Fantastic game. The real world scenery generation alone makes it a worthy step up from FSX or Xplane. It’s a bit lacking in features (different types of plane / tutorials / missions), but as someone looking to fly VFR it’s great. I’ve spent a lot of time just flying round places I know!
Took all afternoon to install the the discs to a new dedicated SSD.Log into your windows account, download launcher,launch and then download update 16gb at present.
Long load times claimed online are partly untrue.4 mins from launch to fly.
Recommended by me at least Ryzen 3600 or intel equivalent.16gb ram.RX570 8gb or Nvidia equivalent,though better would be wise.The good internet access of above 20mbps is also a must as much data is streamed live whilst playing.You can download individual areas off line but it’s hit and miss at the moment.
Lots of little issues and minor bugs,have not caused any problems running the game.Its been very stable for a new release for me.
One thing I would say is get the top end version because even though it’s expensive its worth it.I got the standard one and regret not paying the extra.
Patches for bug fixes and a few updates will be coming throughout September.
Joystick and rudder pedals should also be factored in to cost also.
Very impressed so far.
Many hours to get airborne but worth it in the end. It seems that the xbox software in microsoft store is the key and it must be installed to get the sim to run.
The game is amazing, great graphics and I even found my house in Staffordshire, even the wind turbine near where i live was there and turning 🙂
The best areas are the handcrafted cities like New York, it’s breathtaking. 10/10