PC World - USA (2020-10)

OCTOBER 2020 PCWorld 67

I

t’s 8 a.m. on a clear, sunny day in

Oakland, California. No, it’s a rainy

afternoon in Hong Kong. Or is it

evening in Paris? Microsoft Flight

Simulator doesn’t care.

At a time when gorgeous “open world”

games are the norm, Flight Simulator helps set

the bar even higher. Yes, it offers a stunning

recreation of a virtual world, with weather and

realistic landscapes, real-world traffic and

ocean waves, and even, apparently, animals.

But the virtual world is our world, our planet,

and you can go anywhere in it.

For me, that’s the whole point of Flight

Simulator. Even if we weren’t severely limited

in our movements by the current pandemic,

most of us will never see the entirety of our

planet. Travel to exotic locales also comes

with costs—not just the price of a flight and

hotel and food, but the pollution spewed by

Flight Simulator: Hands on

with Microsoft’s breathtaking

virtual, real world

Downloading, installing, and loading Microsoft Flight Simulator is a slog,

but in the end it’s more than worth it. BY MARK HACHMAN