Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 review: a wonky career mode gives meaning to the formless flight sim

Crazy taxi

Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Xbox Game Studios

• Developer: Asobo Studio
• Publisher: Xbox Game Studios
• Release: Out now
• On: Windows
• From: Steam , Game Pass
• Price: £70/€80/$80
• Reviewed on: Intel Core i5-1340F, 16GB RAM, Nvidia GTX 3060, Windows 11

London Gatwick Airport is a rare shade of brown, known to neither science nor art. A brown that doesn’t appear on the light spectrum. No easel contains it. It is a dusty brown, a damp brown, a hot and earthy brown that hums with the stinging malodour of disturbed ancient moss where once old forests stood. Descending into Gatwick’s cloying brown from 33,000 feet is like flying under and up Gandalf’s wretched cloak and landing in one of the several horrible little magic pouches he keeps by his balls.

Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 captures Gatwick’s brown perfectly. Next to the stupefying natural beauty of Yosemite, the imposing imperial skyscrapers of the Manhattan skyline and the surging majesty of the Alpine peaks, this local rot-tinged patch of West Sussex is the most impressively realistic depiction of a place I have seen in a game.

If you’re aware of the previous edition of Microsoft Flight Simulator , you’ll already know how Asobo achieves its endlessly impressive, one-to-one recreation of every square inch of the planet. Using cloud streaming magic, the flight simulator continuously blasts several petabytes of Bing Maps data at your unsuspecting internet connection, collapsing the illegal football streams of everyone around you but delivering an uncannily accurate chunk of world to fly around pointing at.

Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Xbox Game Studios

At ground level, and where actual 3D data doesn’t exist, small details like houses and trees and hedgerows are guessed at using aerial photography and dynamically filled in by the constantly churning game engine, so that whatever backwater village pub you were conceived in looks (from a distance at least) as real and as significant as Rome, Tokyo and Paris. Popular landmarks meanwhile, ones that can’t be fudged by procedural generation like the Golden Gate Bridge or the big glass egg where the Mayor of London lives, have been lovingly handmade by the few remaining human visual artists employed by the industry.

This fantastic bit of technical trickery was the foundational feature of Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 , but it’s worth reiterating what a singular spectacle Asobo has created. Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 improves on the sightseeing simulation with way more detail, better performance and improved flying physics, and where the previous edition offered nothing much to actually do in the world besides gawp, the updated release features plenty to keep you busy. There are more challenges, more activities, a full suite of photography missions, and a career mode that’s somehow jankier than the ones I’ve seen in Stone Quarry Simulator, Garbage Truck Simulator, and The Guy Whose Job It Is To Separate Non-Recyclable Materials On The Conveyor Belt At The Recycling Centre Simulator.

Career mode has you working your way up from a wet-eared rookie pilot at an achingly realistic pace. Your first dozen jobs come from other pilots who’ve flown their plane somewhere and left it behind – whether for maintenance or because they partied too hard at one of those infamous pilot galas and had to get the train home – before you eventually graduate to skydiving missions and short passenger runs. Scrape together enough currency and you can take a stab at getting certification for more powerful and more interesting planes and helicopters, which unlock more specialisations and new mission types.

Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Xbox Game Studios

Focus your training on the helicopter skill tree and you’ll become certified in search and rescue operations and hoisting, the biggest and most dramatic departure from the classic flight simulator fare. These missions have you roving remote areas of the wilderness in search of injured hikers, or holding a steady hovering position 30ft above a sinking boat in stormy conditions as you pluck desperate sailors from the surging waves. Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 now simulates rolling 3D waves rather than the flat surfaces of the previous edition, giving these ocean missions a nauseatingly realistic edge.

The actual hoisting is triggered by giving a command to your co-pilot with a button press, but the lowering of the rope and the added weight of your injured cargo dangling beneath your chopper all happens in real time and under flight physics, challenging you to keep your whirlybird steady for as long as it takes to pluck someone from the sea. Career missions like these tend to be tests of your foundational flying skills: steady hovering for helicopters, or flat and low-speed flight for dropping skydivers, or smooth and consistent turns near an Arc de Triomphe for sightseers. An extensive series of flight school training sessions equips you with the skills required for each mission type.

It’s slow-going and grindy, but for all its faults Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024’s career mode gives shape to the freeform blob of an otherwise aimless simulation. The game plants you in the cockpit of your starter plane, a Cessna 172, for so long that by the time you’re finally licensed to fly anything else – a field-hopping taildragger, or a plane big enough to mulch an entire flock of geese – you appreciate the differences in how they handle. Whereas previously I would bounce glibly between passenger jets and gliders like an indecisive Richard Branson, never sticking with any one plane long enough to get familiar with it, I’m now forced over dozens of flight hours to reckon with the quirks and foibles of each one.

The result is a simulation that feels immensely richer and more rewarding, at least for casual pilots like me, and all of it somehow in spite of incredible wonkiness. Launch issues plagued Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024, with players facing endless loading screens, mid-flight disconnections and overheating Microsoft Azure servers reducing detailed vistas to muddy JPEG blobs.

Those bandwidth-related problems have largely sorted themselves out, but there are still plenty of more basic problems to contend with. My admittedly remote home airfield is home to an abstract mess of horrifying green obelisks jutting out of the earth like radioactive teeth, making take-off and landing impossible, while even more well-trodden spaces such as Manhattan are often spoiled by rivers melting into nearby structures and smearing ground textures up the sides of buildings.

Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Xbox Game Studios

Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Xbox Game Studios

Passenger dialogue is read aloud by what seems to be text-to-speech software from 1998, giving the constant chatter on missions a hauntingly flat and robotic tone. Sightseers will remark on the awe-inspiring majesty of flying over Knutsford with all the enthusiasm of a Roomba telling you it’s just finished cleaning the bathroom. On one flight, two passengers spoke of a birthday party they had been to at their grandmother’s house far below, their bleak delivery suggesting something truly unspeakable had happened there. Any concerns you might have about AI stealing our jobs will be edged out by unwelcome mental imagery of what grandma potentially did with a cake.

Then there are the even less entertaining bugs. Career mode and certain other activities let you skip time to the next interesting part of the flight, reducing eight hour long hauls to 20 minute jobs, but the transition will sometimes send your plane lurching into a stall or plant it deep underground. Helicopters are essentially off limits if you’re playing on an Xbox controller, the complexities of mapping everything to a couple of analogue sticks and buttons proving too much for even Asobo, who’ve otherwise done a remarkable job of cramming various control surfaces onto the pad’s limited inputs. And passengers will sometimes slide out of their seats and get wedged in the fuselage, which is bad news for them but somehow harmless to your reputation as a pilot.

But these issues are just uncommon enough that Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 manages to weather them over and over again, and it’s never too long before the simulation begs your forgiveness with a relentless series of the most astonishing postcard views you’ve ever pointed your eyes at. Whether you’re breaking cloud cover over Mount Rainier, flying low over the gin-clear seas of Saint Lucia, or making your final descent into the greasy miasma of Gatwick, Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 is an endless parade of giddy spectacle.

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Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024

PS5 , Xbox Series X/S , PC

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All 75 Arc Raiders Blueprints and where to get them

These areas have the highest chance of giving you Blueprints

Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Embark Studios

Looking for more Arc Raiders Blueprints? It’s a special day when you find a Blueprint, as they’re among the most valuable items in Arc Raiders. If you find a Blueprint that you haven’t already found, then you must make sure you hold onto it at all costs, because Blueprints are the key to one of the most important and powerful systems of meta-progression in the game.

This guide aims to be the very best guide on Blueprints you can find, starting with a primer on what exactly they are and how they work in Arc Raiders, before delving into exactly where to get Blueprints and the very best farming spots for you to take in your search.

We’ll also go over how to get Blueprints from other unlikely activities, such as destroying Surveyors and completing specific quests. And you’ll also find the full list of all 75 Blueprints in Arc Raiders on this page (including the newest Blueprints added with the Cold Snap update , such as the Deadline Blueprint and Firework Box Blueprint), giving you all the information you need to expand your own crafting repertoire.

In this guide:

• What are Blueprints in Arc Raiders?
• Full Blueprint list: All crafting recipes
• Where to find Blueprints in Arc Raiders Blueprints obtained from quests Blueprints obtained from Trials Best Blueprint farming locations

What are Blueprints in Arc Raiders?

Blueprints in Arc Raiders are special items which, if you manage to extract with them, you can expend to permanently unlock a new crafting recipe in your Workshop. If you manage to extract from a raid with an Anvil Blueprint, for example, you can unlock the ability to craft your very own Anvil Pistol, as many times as you like (as long as you have the crafting materials).

To use a Blueprint, simply open your Inventory while in the lobby, then right-click on the Blueprint and click “Learn And Consume” . This will permanently unlock the recipe for that item in your Workshop. As of the Stella Montis update, there are allegedly 75 different Blueprints to unlock - although only 68 are confirmed to be in the game so far. You can see all the Blueprints you’ve found and unlocked by going to the Workshop menu, and hitting “R” to bring up the Blueprint screen.

It’s possible to find duplicates of past Blueprints you’ve already unlocked. If you find these, then you can either sell them, or - if you like to play with friends - you can take it into a match and gift it to your friend so they can unlock that recipe for themselves. Another option is to keep hold of them until the time comes to donate them to the Expedition.

Full Blueprint list: All crafting recipes

Below is the full list of all the Blueprints that are currently available to find in Arc Raiders, and the crafting recipe required for each item:

Note: The missing Blueprints in this list likely have not actually been added to the game at the time of writing, because none of the playerbase has managed to find any of them. As they are added to the game, I will update this page with the most relevant information so you know exactly how to get all 75 Arc Raiders Blueprints.

Where to find Blueprints in Arc Raiders

Below is a list of all containers, modifiers, and events which maximise your chances of finding Blueprints:

• Certain quests reward you with specific Blueprints .
• Completing Trials has a high chance of offering Blueprints as rewards.
• Surveyors have a decent chance of dropping Blueprints on death.
• High loot value areas tend to have a greater chance of spawning Blueprints.
• Night Raids and Storms may increase rare Blueprint spawn chances in containers.
• Containers with higher numbers of items may have a higher tendency to spawn Blueprints. As a result, Blue Gate (which has many “large” containers containing multiple items) may give you a higher chance of spawning Blueprints.
• Raider containers (Raider Caches, Weapon Boxes, Medical Bags, Grenade Tubes) have increased Blueprint drop rates. As a result, the Uncovered Caches event gives you a high chance of finding Blueprints.
• Security Lockers have a higher than average chance of containing Blueprints.
• Certain Blueprints only seem to spawn under specific circumstances: Tempest Blueprint only spawns during Night Raid events. Vulcano Blueprint only spawns during Hidden Bunker events. Jupiter and Equaliser Blueprints only spawn during Harvester events.

Raider Caches, Weapon Boxes, and other raider-oriented container types have a good chance of offering Blueprints. |Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Embark Studios

Blueprints have a very low chance of spawning in any container in Arc Raiders, around 1-2% on average. However, there is a higher chance of finding Blueprints in particular container types. Specifically, you can find more Blueprints in Raider containers and security lockers.

Beyond this, if you’re looking for Blueprints you should focus on regions of the map which are marked as having particularly high-value loot. Areas such as the Control Tower in Dam Battlegrounds, the Arrival and Departure Buildings in Spaceport, and Pilgrim’s Peak in Blue Gate all have a better-than-average chance of spawning Blueprints somewhere amongst all their containers. Night Raids and Electromagnetic Storm events also increase the drop chances of certain Blueprints .

In addition to these containers, you can often loot Blueprints from destroyed Surveyors - the largest of the rolling ball ARC. Surveyors are more commonly found on the later maps - Spaceport and Blue Gate - and if one spawns in your match, you’ll likely see it by the blue laser beam that it casts into the sky while “surveying”.

Surveyors are quite well-armoured and will very speedily run away from you once it notices you, but if you can take one down then make sure you loot all its parts for a chance of obtaining certain unusual Blueprints.

Blueprints obtained from quests

One way in which you can get Blueprints is by completing certain quests for the vendors in Speranza. Some quests will reward you with a specific item Blueprint upon completion, so as long as you work through all the quests in Arc Raiders, you are guaranteed those Blueprints.

Here is the full list of all Blueprints you can get from quest rewards:

• Trigger Nade Blueprint: Rewarded after completing “Sparks Fly”.
• Lure Grenade Blueprint: Rewarded after completing “Greasing Her Palms”.
• Burletta Blueprint: Rewarded after completing “Industrial Espionage”.
• Hullcracker Blueprint (and Launcher Ammo Blueprint): Rewarded after completing “The Major’s Footlocker”.

Alas, that’s only 4 Blueprints out of a total of 75 to unlock, so for the vast majority you will need to find them yourself during a raid. If you’re intent on farming Blueprints, then it’s best to equip yourself with cheap gear in case you lose it, but don’t use a free loadout because then you won’t get a safe pocket to stash any new Blueprint you find. No pain in Arc Raiders is sharper than failing to extract with a new Blueprint you’ve been after for a dozen hours already.

One of the best ways to get Blueprints is by hitting three stars on all five Trials every week. |Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Embark Studios

Blueprints obtained from Trials

One of the very best ways to get Blueprints is as rewards for completing Trials in Arc Raiders. Trials are unlocked from Level 15 onwards, and allow you to earn rewards by focusing on certain tasks over the course of several raids. For example, one Trial might task you with dealing damage to Hornets, while another might challenge you to loot Supply Drops.

Trials refresh on a weekly basis, with a new week bringing five new Trials. Each Trial can offer up to three rewards after passing certain score milestones, and it’s possible to receive very high level loot from these reward crates - including Blueprints. So if you want to unlock as many Blueprints as possible, you should make a point of completing as many Trials as possible each week.

Best Blueprint farming locations

The very best way to get Blueprints is to frequent specific areas of the maps which combine high-tier loot pools with the right types of containers to search. Here are my recommendations for where to find Blueprints on every map, so you can always keep the search going for new crafting recipes to unlock.

Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Embark Studios

Dam Battlegrounds

The best places to farm Blueprints on Dam Battlegrounds are the Control Tower, Power Generation Complex, Ruby Residence, and Pale Apartments . The first two regions, despite only being marked on the map as mid-tier loot, contain a phenomenal number of containers to loot. The Control Tower can also contain a couple of high-tier Security Lockers - though of course, you’ll need to have unlocked the Security Breach skill at the end of the Survival tree.

There’s also a lot of reporting amongst the playerbase that the Residential areas in the top-left of the map - Pale Apartments and Ruby Residence - give you a comparatively strong chance of finding Blueprints. Considering their size, there’s a high density of containers to loot in both locations, and they also have the benefit of being fairly out of the way. So you’re more likely to have all the containers to yourself.

Buried City

The best Blueprint farming locations on Buried City are the Santa Maria Houses, Grandioso Apartments, Town Hall, and the various buildings of the New District . Grandioso Apartments has a lower number of containers than the rest, but a high chance of spawning weapon cases - which have good Blueprint drop rates. The others are high-tier loot areas, with plenty of lootable containers - including Security Lockers.

Spaceport

The best places to find Blueprints on Spaceport are the Arrival and Departure Buildings, as well as Control Tower A6 and the Launch Towers . All these areas are labelled as high-value loot regions, and many of them are also very handily connected to one another by the Spaceport wall, which you can use to quickly run from one area to the next. At the tops of most of these buildings you’ll find at least one Security Locker, so this is an excellent farming route for players looking to find Blueprints.

The downside to looting Blueprints on Spaceport is that all these areas are hotly contested, particularly in Duos and Squads. You’ll need to be very focused and fast in order to complete the full farming route.

Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Embark Studios

Blue Gate

Blue Gate tends to have a good chance of dropping Blueprints, potentially because it generally has a high number of containers which can hold lots of items; so there’s a higher chance of a Blueprint spawning in each container. In my experience, the best Blueprint farming spots on Blue Gate are Pilgrim’s Peak, Raider’s Refuge, the Ancient Fort, and the Underground Complex beneath the Warehouse .

All of these areas contain a wealth of containers to loot. Raider’s Refuge has less to loot, but the majority of the containers in and around the Refuge are raider containers, which have a high chance of containing Blueprints - particularly during major events.

Stella Montis

On the whole, Stella Montis seems to have a very low drop rate for Blueprints (though a high chance of dropping other high-tier loot). If you do want to try farming Blueprints on this map, the best places to find Blueprints in Stella Montis are Medical Research, Assembly Workshop, and the Business Center . These areas have the highest density of containers to loot on the map.

In addition to this, the Western Tunnel has a few different Security Lockers to loot, so while there’s very little to loot elsewhere in this area of the map, it’s worth hitting those Security Lockers if you spawn there at the start of a match.

That wraps up this primer on how to get all the Blueprints in Arc Raiders as quickly as possible. With the Expedition system constantly resetting a large number of players’ Blueprints, it’s more important than ever to have the most up-to-date information on where to find all these Blueprints.

While you’re here, be sure to check out our Arc Raiders best guns tier list , as well as our primers on the best skills to unlock and all the different Field Depot locations on every map.

ARC Raiders

PS5 , Xbox Series X/S , PC

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