Does Anyone Use ‘Microsoft Flight Simulator’ for Anything Besides Terrorism?

When I finally finished my $2000 PC build, complete with the RTX 3060 I wrestled out of a screaming child’s hands at my local Micro center, I immediately started to browse the web for games my behemoth of a rig could play.

While the expected graphically demanding AAA titles came up, one game immediately caught my interest — Microsoft Flight Simulator. From the second I saw it, I knew I had to play it.

It’s just so boring. I figured if it required such a beefy graphics card to play, I thought I’d at least be like, a WWII pilot or something, flying around and shooting Nazis, but all I do is just fly boring passenger planes around.

This is where the question comes in — does anybody actually do anything besides just crash into buildings? Every time I load it up, I think I’m going to finally complete a transatlantic journey or at least make it across the United States, but I just end up getting bored and crashing into a building.

It’s like GTA, in a sense, but more grounded. Sure, you can mow down citizens by the truckload, but Los Santos just isn’t grounded enough. Nowadays, video games are all about realism. Call of Duty Vanguard. Call of Duty Modern Warfare. Call of Duty Cold War. All of these games deliver a chilling sense of realism, and that’s the reason I’m a gamer.

When I crash into a building in Microsoft Flight Simulator, I can really feel the impact. It’s a place that exists in the real world with living, breathing, people that I just cruelly annihilated with my Boeing 747. It’s the only time I have a little fun in an otherwise drab and boring game.

So, am I alone? Are there like plane nerds out there that actually want to simulate flying a corporate jet to somewhere or are we all just flying planes into various buildings?

Originally published at http://jacksonhellerwork.wordpress.com on October 22, 2021.