You must have seen it at one time or another, whether it's the trailers or the mass of screenshots that escaped from the game's alpha: Microsoft Flight Simulator is a graphic slap like no other. hadn't had for a very long time. Now that you think about it, it's probably the game that has impressed us the most visually since the release of Crysis 3 in 2013. The title will actually offer several levels of detail, depending on the graphics settings, the power of our machine, but also and above all depending on our internet connection, and the place we are flying over. During a classic low-altitude flight over a place that is not very special, the scenery will be automatically generated thanks to an AI provided by the company Blackshark.ia, from photos taken from the Bing databases. In this case, the result will not necessarily be conclusive, and we should not expect to have a result that gives us the impression of being in Google StreetView. It is easy to recognize the places flown over, but there is little chance that your house will be modeled identically. Similarly, the texture of the roads will not necessarily be present, and we will sometimes see vehicles circulating at one meter above the ground. Worse, some points of interest that have not been retouched by hand by the developers can be a little disappointing. This is for example the case of the Palace of Versailles, which remains far from being as classy as in real life, while some land is missing, including the military base of Villacoublay which has no practicable track. This adjustment made, we still want to say again that the game is visually incredible, and that it is light years away from what Flight Simulator X offered (even full of mods), while being very largely at the above what the competition can offer.
FIGHTER JET
To get a retinal fracture, you will have to go to emblematic places, and even more particularly above the famous high-fidelity airports which have been retouched by the developers in order to stick to reality. Among these destinations, we will mention Roissy-CDG (LFPG for short) whose rendering will hallucinate all those who have ever been able to survey its runways and taxiways. All the terminals are meticulously reproduced, but also the roads that come and go there, as well as the aircraft parking areas, or the storage areas for baggage containers. In the case of these retouched airports, we border on the level of detail that a turn on Google Streetview could get us, and we are left speechless. Inevitably, with such a level of detail, you will need a powerful bike, or plan to lower the graphics options. These are very varied, and allow you to play on a wide range of machines. In our case, we had our big test PC with an i7-8700K, 32 GB of RAM and an Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080 Ti, and we flew the majority of our flight hours in 4K, all options fully. In this context, you should know that the framerate oscillated between 45 FPS at best, while we could see quite impressive drops, under 10 FPS in certain particular cases, when we tried to put the title in default (in low, at 120 knots, above one of the most detailed airports in the game which is part of the famous list of "handmade airports"). Still, once in flight at a reasonable altitude, the game is impressively fluid. In good weather, the viewing distance is simply stunning, and without being low-level, the level of detail deceives our eye like an impressionist canvas. Better still, when the weather gets bad, the title from Asobo studios offers us the spectacle of nature unleashing itself, with cloud formations more real than nature (hot, cumulonimbus crossings), impressive lightning, and deluges of rain or snow. It really feels like a robbery.
This impression is reinforced by the sickly care taken in the modeling of the planes. Each cuckoo clock is a carbon copy of the original, and anyone who's picked up the handle of one of the in-game models should feel right at home. Moreover, the game offers an intelligent zoom system so that we can manage each screen and each button with the mouse, without ever taking the lead. The developers even thought of allowing us to temporarily disable the display of the joystick, so that the latter does not obstruct our field of vision. The impeccable modeling of the cockpits is also a huge advantage when evolving in PSV (Piloting Without Visibility) because we can consult the information given by our dashboard, without having to open new windows as in FSX. Pros of complicated ILS approaches should enjoy. We also have a pop-up menu that appears when we pass our mouse over the top of the screen and which allows easy access to a large number of menus, the display of the ATC panel (air traffic control), to the checklist of the device, through the map, the game options, and even the tasks that we wish to delegate to our AI co-pilot. Players who want to simplify their lives can thus entrust the latter with the task of managing radio communications, or even pass the handle to him so that he can continue the flight when we need a few moments for ourselves. Far from being a simple autopilot, our co-pilot is able to fly the plane in a logical and reasoned way, even when we give him the controls having placed the plane in a bad position (losing speed, too much low altitude, and right in an approach circuit). Note in passing that if you are not a veteran of the license, it is always possible to have fun on Flight Simulator, via the myriad of piloting aids that are available.
TO MAKE THE SKY THE MOST BEAUTIFUL PLACE ON EARTH
We can thus deactivate the torque effect on takeoff for example (the propeller of your plane which will attract the latter in its direction of rotation), make the physics more permissive (to draw a resource at 12 G in a Piper Cub, or fly a 747 on its back for ages) or even automate many functions of our aircraft. But it is obviously by pushing realism to its climax that Flight Simulator shows us its full potential, and that we finally become aware of the titanic work carried out by Asobo Studio. The behavior of the devices is amazingly realistic, and all the aerodynamics are scrupulously respected. We feel perfectly when our wings are covered with frost, while the game also allows us to try the difficult art of landing in strong crosswinds. With a small light device, and by adjusting the weather to have a crazy wind, you can also succeed in flying in reverse. Finally, we also perfectly feel the ground effect which plays full when we land. If you are ever a fan of bush flying, know that you can also put a Piper Cub on its front wheels, just taking advantage of the wind generated by the propeller. Of course, the effects of altitude are also present, with piston engines having their power divided, while trying to find the leanest carburettor setting possible. Inevitably, with so many commands, the best solution is to have dedicated peripherals. We were able to try the title with a Logitech G Flight Yoke and a spreader bar from Trustmaster. Nevertheless, even with specific equipment, it will always be necessary to have a keyboard at hand, the number of commands being too high. Be aware, however, that it is absolutely possible to be satisfied with a simple classic controller, as long as the latter is supported by a keyboard / mouse duo. We still wonder how Asobo will succeed in making the game affordable for console players who only have a pad.
Content-wise, it's hard to criticize a game that features the entire planet Earth in open-world, plus a few hand-reworked locations (including between 30 and 40 airports depending on the version of the game ). Nevertheless, we will be a little more measured with the 20 or 30 devices provided (always depending on the version of the game), which is not huge. Of course, each zinc requires an insane amount of work given the level of detail, but we would have preferred a little more variety in the choice. All of the devices available are modern, or ultra-modernized versions of older devices (for the Piper Cubs). We would have loved to be able to take advantage of a few old cuckoo clocks as was the case in Flight Simulator X which offered us a DC-3 or the superb Grumann Goose G-21A. These planes with reduced equipment would have contributed to offering greater diversity, and we admit that we miss the sound of a large radial engine a little. Similarly, if FSX offered us several scripted missions, nothing of this type is present here. But these few flights were punctuated with lots of events, and all had a bit of narration that allowed to give a more “video game” veneer to what remains a pure and hard flight simulation. Here, Asobo offers us many landing challenges (a fixed list, and events that will change periodically), but that's about all. Fortunately, the latter have a scoring system that will revive our gamer instincts, with a world leaderboard, in order to be able to prove that we are the pilot capable of landing a Cessna 208B the most gently on the treacherous track of Lukla in Nepal. . But what if you know absolutely nothing about piloting? Asobo has thought about it, and there is a whole program to pass your pilot's license during several initiation flights. All the main aspects are reviewed, and after investing a few hours in it, navigation, trim, IFR and VFR will no longer hold any secrets for you.
