What can I say? It's the perfect blend of simulator and game, and may contain the most accurate recreation of Planet Earth to date (we'll see what MSFS2024 does). No paid updates, no forced transactions, no railway-style forced gameplay loops beyond flying, and with the right mods you don't even need to do that.

And the graphics. Man, the graphics. I could go on all day. They are... *stunning*. Blow-your-mind breathtaking levels of stunning. It's clear a *lot* of effort was put into the graphical engine of this game, and I'm glad to report that as of October 2024 the simulation side (atmospheric, aircraft and airports) side has largely caught up.

The only major downside of MSFS 2024 is that, being a Microsoft product, it uses Bing Maps satellite imagery rather than Google Maps, and is of a lower quality as a result. It also relies on live streaming of assets and textures (mainly textures and heightmaps), meaning that if you want high-quality ground imagery but have a fairly small cache set up or fly to a variety of locations, you'll need a good-quality and stable internet connection. Further details can be found on the game's website, but I'd recommend at least 100mbps.

As for the recommendation? My hours speak for themselves.