12 Microsoft Flight Simulator tips and tricks

Microsoft Flight Simulator is incredibly dense software. I’m hesitant to even call it a game, as it really requires players to know how to move on a plane. But there are several ways to make the experience easier, especially if you are just starting out.

In this Microsoft Flight simulator guide, we’ve rounded up 12 tips and hidden features that will help you get the most out of your first few hours with the game.

Start in the air

My initial instinct with Flight simulator was to start my first game session already on the track, setting the center line and ready for take off. But flying an airplane can be intimidating, especially if you don’t know how it behaves. So I recommend starting your first flights already in the air.

To start in flight, click anywhere on the world map next to an airport and select click “set as departure”. This will start your trip about 1,500 feet high, already at a safe cruising speed.

Once you’ve mastered the operation of your controls – including pitch, yaw, roll, and throttle – it’s time to dive into the flight training tutorial. Feel free to do the first five modules at your own pace, but stop before lesson six – your first solo flight. It’s a bit hinky and requires more precision than you’re probably capable of right now.

Create a flight plan

A part of Microsoft Flight SimulatorThe best features only work if you’ve created a flight plan first. So, now that you know how to take off and land, it’s time to pick a few airports and start doing some laps.

On the world map, select a departure airport and an arrival airport on the world map and get to work. Just make sure they’re relatively close at the start.

Taxi with Assistance and Air Traffic Control

With a locked flight plan, know that Flight simulator by default, you place on a runway ready to take off. But, to get the full experience, consider starting at a gate or in a parking space. You can access this option through the drop-down menus directly under the departure and arrival airports on the world map.

Starting and ending a trip rolling on and off the track can really add to a pilot’s role-playing immersion, but finding your way around the tarmac can be overwhelming. This is why I rely on the integrated Assistance features to help me. From the welcome screen, click on the Options tab at the top. Then select the Assistance menu, select the drop-down carrot to the left of the navigation aids and turn the knob Taxi tape option enabled. You can also access it from a similar assistance menu on the Pause screen once you have started to fly.

In order for the taxi tape to appear – and actually guide you to your assigned runway – you’ll need to contact Air Traffic Control (ATC). To do this, open the ATC interface (available in the quick access menu at the top of the screen) and ask for pushback, clearance to taxi, clearance to take off “straight ahead”, or whatever. what combination of precedents assigned to a track. Remember to recognize the tower when you finally get clearance.

Use a virtual co-pilot and waypoint assistance

Alternatively, you can ask your virtual co-pilot to turn on the radio while you worry about driving.

In the quick access menu, you will find an icon in the shape of a pilot’s head. Click on it to open a menu. Switch the Manage radio communications option to turn on your co-pilot. Now when you approach your destination they will radio you to give you clearance to land. You can even give them control of the plane if you have to stray for a few minutes.

Once you reach your destination airport, Microsoft Flight Simulator guess you know which track is which. This is particularly difficult in large airports with several intersecting airstrips. If you need help orienting yourself, head over to the pause menu, click on the Support tab, and again play with the settings in the dropdown to the left of the navigation tab to dial things up. your way.

Route and waypoints will give you floating markers in the sky to follow along your flight path. Landing path will even direct you to the correct runway, helping you get on the correct descent path for the final approach.

Condense long trips with Travel To

Another handy feature for longer flights works a bit like time lapse, but it’s actually a lot more elegant. And only works if you have a compound flight plan.

In the quick access menu again, you find an icon that looks like a small, teardrop-shaped map pin. It’s the Travel to tongue. It doesn’t move you so much from place to place as it moves you between the different phases of your flight plan, going from take-off or cruising to approach or final. Using this feature is a great way to condense a cross-country trip into 30 minutes.

Find animals

In the promotional videos of Microsoft Flight Simulator, the developers showed a bush plane flying next to a flock of flamingos. They’re definitely in the game, along with grizzly bears, elephants, and more. But there is very little chance that you will find them on your own.

On the world map, enter “wildlife” in the search bar on the left side, and this will bring up a list of places where you can find animals in. Microsoft Flight Simulator.

When you’re in the air, head back to the pause menu and press the button Assistance tongue. There, in the navigation drop-down menu, activate the option “Wildlife markers. Now your giraffes or seagulls or whatever else you came looking for will be much easier to locate.

Use Active Pause for nice screenshots

Another handy feature in Microsoft Flight Simulator is called Active Pause. With it, you can stop your plane mid-flight and change everything from the time of day to the type of weather you’re flying in. It’s also a great way to get screenshots.

You will find Active Pause under the pause menu, behind the Controls tab and Menu drop-down, where it defaults to the Pause button on a full-size keyboard. You can assign it to any button you want. Be careful when using it at low speed or at low altitude as it tends to send you into an unpleasant stall once you resume flight.

Get TrackIr

Cockpits in Flight simulator can be very claustrophobic, but they’re actually filled with useful dials and working switches. Use the scroll wheel on your mouse to get a wider view, or buy TrackIr… which gives you a neck.

TrackIr uses the same type of infrared technology that has made Wii motion controllers so fun to use. You connect a transmitter to your headphones and a receiver on top of your monitor. Using the calibration software, you can then translate small movements of your actual head into large movements of your pilot’s head in the game.

Display air traffic nameplates and gamertags

Flying in multiplayer is a lot of fun, but tiny planes and huge distances can make it difficult to locate each other in the game. For your convenience, go to the General tab of the Options menu and click the Traffic button. Once there, activate the parameter marked Display traffic nameplates. In large, friendly letters above their in-game aircraft, this will list the gamertag and altitude of the friends you are flying with.

How to land an airliner

Microsoft Flight Simulator only comes with a tutorial that teaches you how to land a single plane – the ubiquitous Cessna 152. But the base game itself comes with dozens of different planes. So how do you learn how to land an airliner without your Google search history putting you on an FBI watch list? With a feature called Landing path. You will find it in the pause menu, under the Assistance tab, in the Navigation menu.

To practice landing a jumbo jet, choose a departure airport and an arrival airport that are about the right size. Chicago’s O’Hare and Midway airports do the trick. Plus, since they’re relatively close to each other, your load times will be a bit faster because you have less environmental data to pull from the cloud when using the Go To feature.

Once in-game, simply reopen the Travel To tab to move to the approach or final phase of your flight plan. As you get closer to the airport, Flight simulator will set up a series of luminous hooks to guide you.

Satellite overlay

The world map in Microsoft Flight Simulator is pretty bland, with a single muted gray color to represent landmasses around the world. You can replace this with a satellite overlay. It’s a low resolution, but it will give you a bit more visual information when trying to land in specific parts of larger areas. Maybe you are just trying to find your home, or maybe you want to see a certain section of the Nile Delta or the Grand Canyon.

To activate it, go to the world map, select Open filters from the bottom of the screen and toggle the background map from IFR to Satellite.

Move menus with multiple monitor support

Finally, once you are comfortable with all of the different game features such as ATC, navigation information, and GPS maps, you will need to open more than one window on your screen at a time. For some, that means scaling the game down to a windowed mode on a larger screen. Additionally, Microsoft Flight Simulator natively supports multi-monitor configurations.

To bring up these pop-up menus, just hit the middle button in the upper right corner of the window – the one with the arrow pointing up and right. Once you’ve done that, you will be able to drag the window anywhere on your desktop.