Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 first touched down on PC earlier this year, and we covered it with a full, in-depth breakdown of its massive world, upgraded systems, and ambitious new features. Now, the simulator has officially made its way to the PlayStation 5, giving console players their own chance to climb into the cockpit and explore this incredibly detailed digital recreation of Earth.

While the core experience remains the same (as you can read here), this review focuses especially on how the game performs on the PS5, what works, what doesn’t, and how the DualSense controller and console optimisations change the feel of the simulator.

Gameplay-wise, Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 on the PS5 is incredibly ambitious, offering a massive amount of freedom, activities, aircraft types, and places to explore. Still, it has some frustrating drawbacks. Flying itself feels great once you’re in the air, and the missions and challenges give you plenty to sink your teeth into. However, the long loading times can really slow things down, especially when you’re trying to jump back into a quick flight.

On top of that, the game suffers from random glitches that disrupt gameplay and cause severe lag, breaking the flow and making it frustrating. When everything works, the gameplay is engaging and addictive, but those technical hiccups definitely hold the experience back.

The audio design is genuinely impressive and does a great job grounding you in the experience. The engines roar, wind noise, and the environmental ambience all feel and sound believable, whether you’re cruising above the clouds or skimming low over busy cities.

The one feature I loved and took me a hot minute to get used to was that Air Traffic Control audio plays directly from the DualSense controller’s speaker, cutting through the cockpit noise perfectly. I could hear the callouts nice and clear and didn’t sit there scratching my head thinking what they just said. Everything in the sound design was crisp and detailed. The game shines both visually and in the sound design.

The controls on the PS5 are a real mixed bag. On the one hand, Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 takes full advantage of the DualSense controller, offering some genuinely impressive features. The adaptive triggers tighten and loosen depending on your speed or the surface you’re rolling around, and the gyro controls let you pitch and roll the aircraft surprisingly well. I was really impressed with how the lightbar on the controller acted like a mini annunciator panel: if you were doing something wrong, it would start flashing red as a warning, which might have saved me a couple of times.

I also liked how the developers have made the touchpad customisable, so you can adjust things like speed with just a swipe of your finger. But despite all the great additions to this edition of the game, it’s still super clear that it’s a game designed around the PC.

The menu layouts and overall navigation feel clunky on the controller, and not everything is intuitive as it should be, which makes the experience a little less user-friendly on the PS5.

Visually, Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 on the PS5 is stunning, offering one of the most detailed recreations of Earth that I’ve personally seen in a game. The enhanced digital elevation maps, over 500 TIN (triangular irregular network) cities, and more than 100,000 square kilometres of countryside photogrammetry combine to create a visually stunning masterpiece. The team has not held back on the content, including 150 handcrafted airports, 2,000 glider airports, 10,000 heliports, 2,000 points of interest, and even 900 oil rigs.

There is no shortage of content you can discover. But it was not all perfect; there were times when the interiors of planes and helicopters wouldn’t load properly or were really badly delayed, leaving gaps where instruments should be, sometimes letting you look through to the ground. The free-lock camera was also super clunky and occasionally unresponsive, which breaks the immersion when you’re trying to admire the world or check your cockpit instruments quickly. Despite the occasional hiccup, the experience as a whole was fantastic.

Overall, Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 on the PS5 delivers an impressive and ambitious experience that brings the full scale of the simulator under control in a way that’s both exciting and visually breathtaking. The DualSense features add a surprising amount of immersion, the audio work is spot-on, and the sheer scope of the world is something you can sink hours into exploring. However, the game’s PC-first design shows through, with clunky menus, slow loading times, and random performance hiccups holding the experience back from being as smooth as it could be on console.

Written by: Hayden Nelson