Microsoft Flight Simulator Beginner’s Guide and Tips

Microsoft Flight Simulator holds great promise, letting you explore almost every square inch of Earth from the sky.

If you are new to the flight simulator genre keen to take off and see the sights, it might not be that easy at first. It pays to master a few basics from the start.

Polygons Microsoft Flight simulator Beginner’s Guide will give you the basics you need to soar. Before you explore the air around all there is to see, check out these essential tips on flying, navigating, and controlling the camera.

First complete the flight training

Microsoft Flight Simulator is, unsurprisingly, a realistic flight simulator. Unlike an arcade flight game, there is a lot you need to know before you can even take off properly. Everything you need to know to take off in the sky, stay up there and land safely is explained in detail in the flight training section.

Image: Asobo Studio / Microsoft Corporation via Polygon

While it’s hardly exciting to recommend everyone to dive into practice mode first, it’s essential. Flight training covers almost all the concepts you need to know and is designed to get you up into the skies as quickly as possible. At the same time, it explains a handful of controls that might not be intuitive, especially if you plan to play this game with a controller. These eight short exercises will familiarize you with basic controls, navigation, and landing.

Flight training takes around 30-40 minutes, and by the time you’re done, you should feel confident enough to fly the world on your own.

What planes to use

In Flight Training, you will exclusively use the Cessna 152, which has a cruising speed of 107 KTAS (true speed in knots). As you have learned in your lessons, this speed range is good enough for cruising in a small area. If you want to cover more ground, you will need a faster plane.

In this section, we will discuss the types of aircraft in Microsoft Flight Simulator, and give you ideas on when and why you might want to use them.

Propeller planes

Image: Asobo Studio / Microsoft Corporation via Polygon

Propeller planes like the Cessna 152 are great for flying low and relatively slowly. If you plan on visiting dense areas like cities or trying to find where you live, choose a propeller plane with a cruising speed of less than 150 KTAS.

Turboprop

Image: Asobo Studio / Microsoft Corporation via Polygon

Turboprop engines are similar to propeller planes, but they are twice as fast and have double the maximum altitude. These are good planes to get around to once you get familiar with propeller planes. They are also suitable when you want something faster, such as when traversing larger areas of land like mountains, large forests, or large lakes.

Airliners and jets

Image: Asobo Studio / Microsoft Corporation via Polygon

To travel longer distances, consider getting on an airliner or jet. Both options have quadrupled the speed of the plane you learned the basics on and can climb to over three times the altitude. The two options have a comparable speed but are handled differently due to their size. Some airliners have much larger fuel reserves, in case you feel like simulating an intercontinental flight from the comfort of your personal computer.

How to fly anywhere

One of the most exciting aspects of Microsoft Flight Simulator is the ability to fly anywhere in the world. Soaring to the skies over some of the world’s most beautiful sights – or even your home – is easy, but there are a few things you should know first.

Most of the major monuments in the world are called Points of interest. If your goal is to discover famous places or natural wonders, all you have to do is search for them in the World map / free flight fashion.

Image: Asobo Studio / Microsoft Corporation via Polygon

If your destination is a famous landmark, you can easily find it using the search function from the map screen in Free Flight mode. Once you find your location, the map will zoom in on it, allowing you to set it as a starting point or an end point. In our guide to finding famous landmarks, we recommend that you set points of interest as your arrival points and locate a suitable departure airport.

To see how your home was modeled, check out our guide to where you live Microsoft Flight Simulator.

How to use Active Pause

Active Pause is a feature you might have seen recommending on a loading screen, but it’s not tied to any key, so you might not know how to use it.

Image: Asobo Studio / Microsoft Corporation via Polygon

Active Pause allows you to stop the movement of your plane and look around. Hit the normal pause menu by pressing the Esc key on your keyboard or a pause on your controller to show your options, hiding everything else. However, if you want to stop the action and take a look, you need to bind your Active Pause feature to a key.

The Control key works well, because the game doesn’t use it, and it’s located at the bottom of your keyboard, making it quick and easy to access.

Image: Asobo Studio / Microsoft Corporation via Polygon

We staged the photo above using Active Pause. With the feature enabled, we oriented the external camera (by pressing the Show button on our Xbox One controller) and set the sun position to the correct height by changing the weather settings in the toolbar.

This feature is also very useful if you are trying to find your home and need to take a moment to look around to locate it.

Have fun with ATC options

Before leaving for your flights, be sure to check the ATC options. Changing these air traffic control settings won’t have a major impact on your flight, but will allow you to have a little fun with the radio messages you hear in flight.

Image: Asobo Studio / Microsoft Corporation via Polygon

Anything you write as your tail number will appear on the back of your plane. You can add some letters or numbers here. It doesn’t make any difference, but it’s nice to see your name or your favorite numbers stuck on the side of your plane.

Your call sign is usually a set of identifying characters that the air traffic control team will use to identify you by radio. All of the letters you use in your call sign will be called out using the phonetic alphabet, but if you write a short word there’s a chance they’ll say it instead. Short names and words work great, although we’ve found that layman language is replaced by a generic call sign.