Ever since I was a kid, I’ve always been a massive fan of flight simulators. What’s more awesome than strapping yourself into a giant commercial airliner and taking it to the skies and trying to fly it with all its difficulties and intricacies? Or maybe getting into a fighter jet and taking off almost at the speed of sound, fighting against other jets in complex combat while you try not to crash and burn?
Of course, even though flight simulators haven’t been on the forefront as other simulators, such as racing ones, they’ve had years of development, time, and effort poured into them. As such, they tend to come in a variety of shapes and sizes, whether you want combat in World War II, or commercial flying for a modern-day airline, and all with varying degrees of difficulty and realism.
So, if you’re just jumping into the flight simulator world, hold on tight and be fairly warned; this can become a pretty expensive hobby. ✈️ ☁️
#1 IL-2 Sturmovik: 1946
So here’s the thing, when I say ‘IL-2 Sturmovik: 1946’ I’m talking about the whole franchise. You see, 1946 is a compilation of a series of previous expansions in the franchise, and there’s actually been a series of expansions since, there’s even a new one coming out soon: “IL-2 Sturmovik: Battle of Bodenplatte”, although that’s a ‘newer’ version of Il-2 Sturmovik running on another engine. So as you can see, it’s a little bit complicated.
With that sort of out the way, let’s talk about the actual game, a really intense, fun, and pretty realistic flight simulator that covers large sections of World War II, it’s even one of our best simulator games. IL-2 Sturmovik: 1946 itself has 229 nine planes and variations to fly, plus over 200 unique and planned out missions to play, so even the base compilation has an absolute ton to do.
The missions themselves are also pretty varied, from dog fights to bombing runs and everything in between, so you there’s quite a bit to experience. There are also a few pretty cool campaign missions where you create a character and take part in the war as one of the sides. The campaigns themselves start historically, but they run parallel to it, so that there’s actually some dynamic effect on the world as you play, and you aren’t just replaying history.
Funnily enough, some missions in the campaigns can be pretty boring, such as being sent out on patrol and not running into anybody, or ‘suddenly’ being sent out because a fleet of planes is headed your way. Of course, we can’t forget about the actual planes themselves, which are painstakingly and lovingly recreated here, with a lot of details you don’t always see.
They also handle pretty realistically, with each plane having its flight characteristics and feel. On top of that, planes take realistic damage with realistic damage models, and attacking other planes means you have to pick the right ammo. As for the expansions, there are lots of them, but the developers merged with another company built a new engine, and have created a new version of the game called IL-2 Sturmovik: Battle of Stalingrad.
Obviously, that game is just as great as this one, although it only has two expansions. That being said, it’s certainly worth checking out if you like IL-2 Sturmovik: 1946. If you’re looking for a flight simulator with some of the most realistic combat and fleshed out campaigns, this is the franchise to look into and purchase.
#2 Microsoft Flight Simulator X Steam Edition
It’s pretty much impossible to talk about flight sims without mentioning one of the most popular and famous of them out there: Flight Simulator X Steam Edition (or FSX for short). Originally, FSX started its life in 2006 and quickly became the go-to flight sim of its time, with a pretty high level of flight accuracy.
Unfortunately, the graphics weren’t great, and the game wasn’t really updated over time to reflect the real world we live in, such as having incorrect country names and things of that nature. In 2014 though, Dovetail Games, the makers of Train Simulator, signed a deal with Microsoft to develop the game further, and that’s where the ‘steam edition’ part comes in.
Released on December 2014, the Steam edition pumped up the graphics and reworked a ton of the game to make it more true to life. This included things like jetway servicing and animations, DirectX 10 support, and even the option to play as an Air Traffic Control (ATC). Dovetails even reworked the multiplayer to function through Steam’s servers, as the previous ones through GameSpy had gone done when the company went kaput.
Over so many years of development, the game has been refined pretty well. Flight models are incredibly accurate, with the cockpit being almost true to life, although you couldn’t always flip all the switches and press all the buttons. Similarly, the Flight Management System wasn’t always functional on all planes, making FSX a bit more arcadey than simmy.
That being said, FSX is well known for the absolutely massive amounts of mods, addons, and DLCs, almost rivaling those of Skyrim, which is saying something. Unfortunately, the majority of the bust stuff is paid, and if you have any experience with Train Simulator, then you know Dovetails’ propensity to release tons of DLC, with FSX having over 200 add-ons you can buy, some cheap, some super expensive.
The upshot of this, though, is that there’s an incredible amount of variety in airplanes, and if there’s a specific aircraft you’re looking to fly, you’re almost certainly going to find it.
Beyond that, there are also paid and unpaid mods that change a variety of things beyond just the aircraft. For example, there are some mods that allow you to carry passengers, make money, and run a sort of business, with each flight being rated for quality and the money made based on that. Other mods are graphical, adding new airports, new textures, and just an absolute ton of variety to the world itself.
The most exciting thing about FSX, though, is that there’s a new one coming out in 2020, which is almost certainly going to shake up the flight sim gaming world (and myself included). Almost certainly it’s going to cause the developers of X-Plane a bit of a headache . . . Speaking of which . . .
#3 X-Plane 11
The biggest competitor to FSX and one that some might argue is better, X-Plane 11 is a bit like the corollary to FSX.
What really makes X-Plane stand apart from other simulators, is the way it decides to simulate the flight of airplanes. While most simulations tend to use real-world data and basically port it into the game to recreate an aircraft’s flight characteristics, X-Plane instead uses Blade Element Theory, which essentially simulates the aerodynamic forces on each wing and applies to the aircraft.
If that’s too technical for you, it basically means that X-Plane recreates flight models in the game using in-game wind and physics to make a more realistic simulation. This is why the professional version of this game can be used to log simulator flight-hours that go towards a pilot’s license.
So, as you can imagine, with this level of detail, the aircraft themselves are also pretty detailed. Pretty much every aspect of every cockpit in an aircraft can be interacted with, even things such as individual lights (landing, strobe, taxi, etc.), rather than just a ‘turn on all lights’ button.
Similarly, the autopilot is also pretty realistic in how it controls and handles the airplane, and with your ability to use real-life weather data, you get some very realistic flight, even when you aren’t necessarily controlling the plane.
Of course, it does, unfortunately, suffer from the same problem as FSX does, in that most of the content is locked away behind paid mods and DLC. While these addons are absolutely excellent quality, from 4k textures to fully functioning Flight Management Systems, they can sometimes cost up to the full price of the game.
That being said, the base game comes with a variety of aircraft for you to choose from, so you won’t be chomping at the bit to get more airplanes out of the box.
Thankfully, there’s also a lot of excellent and interesting content that is completely free, such as FSEconomy (Incidentally also supports FSX), which basically allows you to make the game function similar to Uber, where you can rent or buy a plane, and then ferry people back and forth between locations.
Other mods will give you more realistic runways, services, and ATC chatter, including voice packs if that’s your thing. Of course, there’s also the incredible variety of graphical addons, which act in a similar fashion to the ones in FSX.
At the end of the day, though, when you’re comparing FSX and X-Plane 11, it comes down to this: FSX is a bit more arcadey, but generally has more content, paid or unpaid. X-Plane 11, on the other hand, is much more realistic in its a simulation, but it doesn’t have as much paid, or unpaid content as FSX does.
Ultimately, it comes down to what your preferences are and what you’re looking for, although with a new FSX on the horizon, you might want to wait another year before taking the plunge. Either way, if you love non-combat sims, you’re probably going to go for one of these two games.
#4 Rise of Flight United
Another game in the same vein as IL-2 Sturmovik: 1946, but instead of focusing on World War II, it focuses on World War I.
Interestingly, the developers did a pretty good job getting the feel right for those old-school biplanes, even though there’s really not much of a reference for them in the modern-day and age (well, maybe except for some kind of prop plane like a Cessna). The planes feel very rickety and haphazardly put together, which quite honestly, they really were. Whether that’s something you’d like to experience though, is another story altogether.
The aircraft themselves are pretty well modeled too, although not in as much detail as you’d expect for other games, which is OK considering the game came out in 2009. That being said, the gauges can sometimes be a pain to read, so you’ll likely have the on-screen gauges enabled to make life easier for yourself. Overall though, they’re pretty true to form, so it’s definitely a realistic experience.
The game has a single-player campaign mode, which is essentially the same as IL-2 Sturmovik: 1946, so you make a character and join a squadron. Unfortunately, missions in Rise of Flight United are not as well thought and fleshed out, although the random dynamic element remains, so there’s a silver lining there at least. All that being said, I don’t want to make it seem like it’s boring, it’s still great but not as great as the IL-2 Sturmovik: 1946 one.
Where the most fun in the game is in the multiplayer actually, and it’s pretty fun to do some dogfights in old-school bi-planes. There’s also not a lot of help in that regard, such as leading reticles and things of that nature, not to mention the actual flight characteristics for the planes of that era.
Most recently, Rise of Flight United has gone free to play, and it’s a bit of a mixed bag in terms of that. While you still get the single-player campaign and the multiplayer, you only get three aircraft out of the box, with the rest needing a purchase.
Now, they’re reasonably cheap at around $5, and if you were paying full-price of let’s say $50 for a game, that’s extra ten planes, so I’m not too bothered by that. What I am bothered by is that extra gauges and things like that are paid, which I think is a bit too far in terms of nickel and diming players.
At the end of the day, even though Rise of Flight United has some issues in terms of its microtransactions and some aspects of the graphics, it’s an excellent game for World War I flight combat. The planes are really good looking, fly like a bucket, and really give you the perspective of combat aces back in the day. If you want some aircraft combat focused on World War I, this is the game for it.
#5 DCS World
The slightly less known but a bit more in-depth competitor to FSX and X-Plane, DCS World really puts the “hardcore” in “hardcore flight simulator,” and that’s no joke. If you like flight combat sims, but are more interested in the modern age, rather than WW I or II, then you’ll love DCS.
The game is pretty well known for the massive amount of detail and how in-depth each aircraft in the game is, and that goes beyond just general flight characteristics. Pretty much every button, knob, wheel, switch, and pedal can be pressed and has a real effect on the plane and how it flies. In fact, you actually have to go through a full check-list to startup engines on your aircraft, so you better be ready to spend quite a lot of time reading and learning.
That being said, DCS does make it slightly easier for you, with each plane usually having pretty good training on how to actually fly each plane and what all the buttons do. The training also highlights the different areas of aircraft you need to focus on or even specific items you need to interact with. So, even if you’re a novice flyer, you can totally get into the game as long as you have some patience and a will to learn.
As for the gameplay, you have a variety of options, from the multiplayer to the singleplayer missions and campaigns. While I won’t go deep into the campaign (as it’s a bit more straightforward), I do want to mention the missions themselves, and more specifically, the mission editor.
Much like the aircraft, the mission editor is very in-depth, and you actually have a lot of functionality to suss out pretty detailed flight plans and mission parameters/goals, meaning you don’t necessarily have to rely on developers to create a scenario you want to play.
Oh, and the best part is that DCS is actually free to play, so you can download it right now, and you get access to two free aircraft; the Su25T and a mustang variant. The first has armaments, and it’s pretty complex from the get-go, but you can use it for combat. The mustang is more of a free-roam, joyriding aircraft since it doesn’t have any armaments whatsoever.
Of course, much like other flight sim games, if you want additional aircraft, you’re going to have to pony up some money, and it’s a doozy. Aircraft tend to start at around $40 and go up, up and away to sometimes $80, which is quite a lot to spend on a single plane.
That being said, they are incredibly detailed in their recreation, from individual bolts, their flight characteristics, the manuals/training, and pretty much everything to do with the aircraft, almost to the point where each plane can be a fully-fledged game on its own.
You can also similarly spend some cash on campaigns, and these are a bit more palatable to the wallet, at around $8-$10. There’s also a couple of terrain packs, which again are a bit on the pricier side of $50. Finally, you can also fly helicopters, which is really cool, although again, pricing is pretty high at around $50 each. However, they are recreated to the same level of details as the airplanes.
DCS World is what you get when you take the most difficult parts of flying an aircraft and painstakingly recreate them in a video game. The level of details and the graphics themselves are just amazing, and DCS is easily one of the prettiest flight sims out there. Granted, it’s going to cost you quite a bit to get new aircraft, but if you have the disposable income and love flight sims, it’s worth the purchase price.
#6 War Thunder
If you don’t really want or need the more in-depth flight sim aspects and would prefer a more arcadey flight sim where you can just jump in and do combat, then War Thunder should be quite interesting for you. You’ve probably already heard of War Thunder, especially since it’s a free-to-play game; it’s open to pretty much anybody, and there are lots of vids around youtube showing the game off.
Unlike the other games on the list, you don’t actually need to spend several hundreds of dollars unlocking aircraft to play with, but instead, you deal with good ole’ faithful; grinding. That being said, the grind isn’t so bad, and the progression system is quite enjoyable, although if you want to unlock stuff early, you can always purchase them with the premium currency.
As for the flight and combat, it’s a lot of fun. Battles come in the form of both PvP and PvE on the same map, with AI ground units you need to destroy, and human players flying planes that you also need to take down. Each kill removes a ticket from the pool of each team, in your traditional team deathmatch mechanic, when one team loses all their tickets, the game is over.
It’s also not purely fighter vs. fighter gameplay, with bombers actually playing an important role in delivering heavy ordinance and destroying the enemy player’s bases (which act as a sort of spawn point). The multiplayer games come in three modes; arcade battles, realistic battles, and simulator battles, each with its own level of difficulty and handholding.
Arcade battles are the ‘easiest’ and for me, the most fun of the modes, where you get a whole host of helpful stuff like anti-stall, lead markers, player tags, and things of that nature. Realistic is a little bit more intense, where you need to take off from an airfield, don’t have any lead markers or player tags, have to worry about G-forces, and of course, once your ammo is depleted you need to land to re-arm.
Finally, the simulator battles attempt to recreate real-life battles and have even more restrictions, such as first-person view only, minimal HUD, realistic stalling, and a variety of other things which make this the most challenging mode.
One thing I will touch on quickly is that War Thunder also covers tanks and ships as well, so if you don’t necessarily want to only focus on plane combat, there’s that too. Tanks and navy are equally as complex as airplanes, with their own individual trees and overall progression paths that you can take.
So really, you can spend hundreds of hours playing and unlocking stuff, and quite frankly, the grind isn’t so bad that you’ll constantly want to purchase vehicles or premium time for your account. At the end of the day, War Thunder offers something pretty simple: A great arcade experience with the option to make it as difficult and simmy as you want.
Sure, there’s a bit of a grind involved, but that’s mostly just playing the game, so it’s not as bad as “go here and kill x number of y.” The best part, though, is that it’s free to play, so even if you are thinking about putting money into the game, you can download it and try it before plunging in with your wallet.
#7 Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown
So far, the games we’ve covered are either multiplayer-focused or single-player focus but with a heavy emphasis on the flight sim part without much of a story. Ace Combat 7 steps in to fill that role, continuing the narrative from the previous games. I actually remember playing Ace Combat 2 on my Playstation ages ago, it was a super-fun game at the time, and this new iteration still holds up.
While the hardcore flight sim aspects in Ace Combat 7 are pretty much non-existent, there’s really no cockpit to control or buttons to press, each plane still has it’s own unique flight characteristics. As such, combat is always challenging, and you really need to enter each fight with a plan or a strategy, as I can’t tell you how many times I died by just rushing in headfirst.
This is compounded by the AI fighters, who are actually pretty skilled themselves and later in the game become exceedingly difficult to challenge and win. That being said, missions can sometimes get tedious, as is typical with these games where developers try to interspace the fun bits with slightly more frustrating ones.
For example, one mission requires you to kill a variety of ships, planes, and structures to reach a specific score, and you need to do that before a timer runs out. Well, even with some fancy tricks and a whole wing to support me, I failed quite a few times before I came upon a winning strategy, which was essentially just to do stuff as fast as I could.
Of course, even when the game is punishing, it still looks absolutely gorgeous. Bandai Namco has done an excellent job of keeping the graphics looking top-notch, and the realistic weather also plays a big part, with rain droplets in your vision, and your electronics running into issues because of the cold and lightning. Even shooting down enemy planes looks awesome, and overall the game is very cinematic.
As for the story, it’s just as much out there as it’s always been if I’m completely honest. I won’t go into too much detail so as not to spoil anything, but basically, a bunch of big fictional nations get annoyed at each other over political stuff and start trying to kill each other. Pretty much your standard fare for Ace Combat, so the story is almost always secondary.
Aside from all that, there is one thing I want to touch on, which is the research tree for Ace Combat 7; it’s incredibly massive. As you play and kill things, you get exp which can then be spent to unlock things on the aforementioned tech tree, but you don’t only unlock new aircraft, you also unlock new upgrades for the aircraft as well, including special weapons.
In fact, each plane has its own number of slots where you can add modifications, such as higher speeds, or more armor. It’s actually a pretty fun system to go through, although I’m always left wanting to buy everything.
Ace Combat 7 isn’t going to compete with the heavier flight simulators like FSX or DCS, but it’s still an incredibly fun game if you want a more arcadey feel with a fleshed-out narrative. The best part is that you don’t need to spend a ton of money on extra planes or pay for a premium subscription. Excellent choice overall if you want a more traditional AAA game.
#8 Take on Helicopters
Helicopters have always been a bit of a forgotten child in the simulation genre, whether you’re talking about boats, tanks, or aircraft, so it’s pretty brave of Bohemia Interactive to dedicate their time to a fully-fledged helicopter game. Incidentally, if you’ve heard that name before, it’s because they’re the same developers who made the ARMA franchise, so they certainly know how to make a simulation game.
Take on Helicopters is an interesting game since it tends to sit somewhere between a narrative-driven game like Ace Combat 7, and a more realistic flight simulation, such as FSX. As such, the single-player campaign sees you in a somewhat failing helicopter business that you have to try and build back up. You do so by carrying out a variety of missions, although there are really only ten story-related ones, so it’s a short game if you just rush those.
Story-wise it’s nothing special, but it is very different, as you deal with intrigue, interrogation, and other weird things you’d never expect to happen on a helicopter.
The flight characteristics are also pretty good, and you start to realize pretty quickly that helicopters are a tad touchy and unforgiving. Small deviations in the stick mean big changes overall, so you’re going to be spending quite a while trying to figure out how to effectively control your helicopter. It’s certainly not an easy task, and it’s given me a greater appreciation of helicopter pilots.
Of course, even though the game does have a narrative, most of the time, you’re going to be playing the game in free roam, and with the game’s mission editor. The editor itself is quite complex, similar to DCS’, and you get a ton of control to create your own cool stuff. You also get a slightly wider variety of helicopters to play with than the single-player campaign, which is a nice change.
The game itself looks pretty good, even after a few years, and I really enjoy the whole idea of flying between massive skyscrapers rather than just over them with an airplane. The game overall is challenging but fun, with Bohemia Interactive’s tradition of making your own fun and relying on player-created content.
The only downside is that there’s not much extra content or stuff to buy as you have with other flight sims, so there’s a limited amount of gameplay time you’ll get out of it, similar to Ace Combat 7. Nonetheless, if you’re into helicopters in a big way and want a game dedicated to them, Take on Helicopters should certainly scratch that itch!
#9 Kerbal Space Program
I was originally hesitant to add this game to the list because it’s not super-technically a flight simulator. That being said, isn’t space really the final frontier . . . of flight simulation? Alright, while this game looks and acts a bit goofy, the physics simulation inside of it is actually pretty realistic and true to form for the relative sizes of the planets and things in there.
Taking over a newly established space program on Kerbin, your duty and mission is to take kerbals to the stars, one slow, a tiny, infuriating, and difficult step at a time. At least in the career mode, if you go for the sandbox mode, it’s much easier and equally as fun, which is why we put it on a list of the best sandbox games.
That being said, the majority of the fun is in trying to slowly inch your way closer to not only the moon of Kerbal but other bodies orbiting the Kerbin’s star.
When you start off, options are slim, and there’s a lot of barriers. You only start with a couple of boosters, a command module, a variety of scientific instruments, and a limit to how big you can build your rocket ship. As you progress and gain more science, you can start unlocking bigger boosters, powerful engines, fuselages, parachutes, solar panels, batteries, RCS, and just tons and tons of really awesome and cool stuff.
Things even manage to get progressively more difficult as you attempt your first exit from Kerbin, having to worry about aerodynamic effects of wind on your hull and the heating it causes, fuel requirements, and actually hitting orbit. Then, when you start thinking about going to other bodies like the Mun, you have to think about hohmann transfers, apogees, plane angles, and how you’re actually going to land on wherever you want to go.
Thankfully, the game comes with absolute tons of mods and extra content that you can add to your game that can help you along. For example, MechJeb allows you to set things on auto-pilot essentially, so you don’t have to worry about carrying out burns with microsecond accuracy or figuring out angles for transferring from one orbiting body to the next.
What’s really cool is that the game even has a whole mining and fuel system, as well as a food system, so you can absolutely set up bases all over the star system if you’d like. Incidentally, just so you don’t bite my head off, there is actually a more ‘traditional’ flight simulator aspect, as you can build aircraft that function inside the atmosphere, such as jets and whatnot. Ever felt like you needed more spoilers or aleroins?
Well, now you have the option of the fuselage and add as many of them as you want. Granted, flight characteristics on completely new aircraft are not easy to get used to, but if you like the challenge, then it can really be fun to build some truly wacky stuff.
Overall, Kerbal Space Program is a fun game that hides it’s incredibly deep simulation under a goofy exterior. When you dig through, though, you find a pretty complex simulation, where everything from your weight, rocket stages, and even astrophysics play a part in getting things done.
Conclusion
Well, there you have it; an intense and detailed variety of some of the best flight simulator games out there. While that’s a lot of information to digest, and games to check out, you shouldn’t worry about it too much on which one you end up buying. For the most part, flight sim games are broken up into either realistic or arcadey and as long as you find one in the category you like, you’re almost certainly going to enjoy it.
Also, and this is a bit of personal preference/advice, I will say that immersion is pretty important, and if you can grab yourself a really good VR system, it’s going to increase your enjoyment tenfold. Either way, whichever way you choose to fly, I hope you clear skies and tons of fun! But if you’re just not into flight simulators, check out our guide on some of the most amazing single player PC games!