Instead it downloads the game client – which is about 1GB of data. When you first download Flight Sim, whether it’s from Steam, the Microsoft Store, or Xbox Game Pass, it doesn’t download the actual game. No, it’s how it approaches downloading and installing this massive amount of data that makes the experience so frustrating. Flight Sim does simulate the entire world, after all, so it’s understandable that it requires downloading a decent chunk of gigs. Inconvenient though this is, the file and subsequent download size isn’t the core of the problem. That still makes it one of the largest game downloads around – bigger than Red Dead Redemption 2’s 112 GB, although not quite as much of a drive hog as Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, which ate up a whopping 200-ish gigs of my SSD before I deleted it to make room for Flight Simulator. The official download size is a whopping 150GB, although according to my hard-dive the final file size is “only” 115GB. Part of the problem is it’s simply a very beefy game. This is because it has the worst installation process since I had to install Steam for the first time in 2004. Fascinating as the game itself is, however, Flight Sim and I didn’t get off to the best start. The ability to fly literally anywhere is quite remarkable, the ultimate expression of open-world gaming. I’m still in the process of reviewing Microsoft Flight Simulator, although I’m fairly confident in saying that it’s a technological marvel and a decent game to boot.

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