Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 PSVR2 review – the world in a headset

The PS5 version of Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 does something the Xbox edition never could, by adding full VR support for every mode.

A sign of the continued underinvestment in VR (or in Meta’s case, squandering billions on a pointless Metaverse nobody wanted), is that most of its best games were primarily designed for flat screen play. While VR natives Half Life: Alyx and Batman: Arkham Shadow are both classics, neither has anything like the longevity or depth of Gran Turismo 7, Hitman VR, or No Man’s Sky, let alone the technically wobbly but still peerless Skyrim VR.

As it stands, the budget to make games on that sort of scale only exists for larger audiences than VR can currently supply, which makes it a reason to celebrate when one of video gaming’s big beasts gets VR support. This month, that’s Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024, a game so fastidiously complicated and detailed that it’s impressive Asobo Studio managed to port it to consoles at all. Retooling all that for PlayStation VR2 is an astounding achievement.

Nevertheless, that’s exactly what they’ve managed to do, because this is no fleeting VR experience or solitary play mode, it’s the entirety of Flight Simulator 2024. That means you can use the headset to play through the whole of Career mode, training to fly its legion of airborne machinery, from tiny Cessnas to airliners to helicopters and blimps, via hot air balloons and manned electric drones.

There’s also World Photographer mode, which takes you on a tour of globally recognisable landmarks, each session crafted with the perfect weather conditions and lighting to bring out its beauty. You’ll need to download a texture pack to make that work, but the experience is well worth the extra gigabytes on your PlayStation 5’s hard drive.

Challenge League’s online leaderboards feature competitive activities including Redbull Air Races, low altitude rallies, and risky precision landings. It’s an unusually gamified offering, compared with the usual austerity offered by simulators, but given how hard it is to learn the aircrafts’ flight dynamics and control methods, it’s also a reward for the long term grind it takes to get comfortable with all those different systems.

Sitting in a cockpit and looking out at the landscape passing majestically underneath and around you is quite an experience, the visceral sense of immersion adding considerably to the process of pretend piloting. However, first impressions are that while the interiors of planes are sharp and detailed, exterior views are noticeably blurrier, an issue that becomes more apparent the lower you fly.

Some cities are better than others, the photogrammetry – the technology that grafts real world textures onto 3D polygonal models of buildings and landmarks – working more or less convincingly depending on where you’re exploring. Still, from higher altitudes it’s practically seamless, a feeling enhanced by the ability to take off, fly, and land absolutely anywhere you like in the world.

That’s partially governed by how much you’re willing to spend, the more premium versions of the game coming with many more airports and aeroplanes to play with. But even the standard release comes with a complete digital twin of the Earth, letting you fly over any part of its landmass. You don’t have to stop there though. If you’ve got the skills to do so, you can land absolutely anywhere, get out of your plane or helicopter, and walk around.

Naturally, things look less impressive on foot, the slight melted quality of some of the scenery becoming more obvious from extremely close up, but what impresses is the almost unbelievable completeness. Choose a day and a date, and wherever you fly in the world the historically accurate weather conditions and air traffic will be present and fully modelled.

You can witness solar eclipses or the aurora borealis from exactly the times and parts of Earth’s surface where they would have been visible. You can visit Paris in the spring or Tokyo in winter, the snowy cap of Mount Fuji resplendent in the background. And you can do it from the flight deck of a 747 or the cramped cockpit of an F/A-18E Super Hornet, the radio chatter recreated for every transponder you connect to on your travels.

The only obvious omission in VR is ground traffic, with no cars visible anywhere. You will still be able to see some of the world’s fauna though, the game including an African savannah safari activity that has you attempting aerial wildlife photography while also remaining in control of your aircraft.

Like the base game, VR supports the Thrustmaster T.Flight HOTAS 4, whose plastic flight stick and throttle control work across all its planes. You’ll need to know your way around it though, remembering exactly which function’s mapped to each button. We found it impossible to use without also keeping hold of the Sense controllers to activate buttons and switches around the cockpit, a set-up that despite being mildly ungainly, does work.

Bringing all this to PlayStation VR2 is an incredible technical feat, something underlined by the fact that this is a game complex enough to come with that most Windows of features, a safe mode. It’s hopefully not something you’ll ever need, but the fact that it’s there speaks to the extraordinary number of moving parts that go into recreating the flights, from the physics simulation to the scenery.

Given the limitations of PlayStation 5’s default SSD, Flight Simulator’s landscapes are streamed live, a technique that relies on a brisk broadband connection. Without that things can get stuttery and pixellated in a hurry, although issues seem to resolve themselves reasonably quickly. Along with the slight haziness, it’s a price you pay for the amazing breadth of flyable global landmass.

You do get used to the blur. Like movie subtitles, its continued presence eventually becomes invisible and is then only noticeable when you think about it or happen to glance from the more pristine rendering of your plane’s dashboard to the fuzzier landscape below. The immersion, sensation of motion, and slight stomach lurch during aerobatic manoeuvres make it all worth it though. This is the most complete and realistic flight experience currently available on consoles.

Formats: PlayStation VR 2
Price: £69.99 – PSVR2 upgrade is free
Publisher: Microsoft
Developer: Asobo Studio
Release Date: 1st May 2026
Age Rating: 3

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