THE BEST PLANE SIMULATOR GAMES FOR EVERY SKILL LEVEL

I spent four hours last week trying to start the APU in a DCS World F-16. Not fly it. Not fight in it. Just get the engine running. I followed a 23-step checklist, flipped switches in the correct sequence, waited for the right RPM readings, and got it wrong twice before the turbine finally spooled up. When it worked, I pumped my fist like I'd won something. My friend watched the whole thing and said "that looked miserable." He went back to Ace Combat 7 and shot down fifteen jets in the same amount of time.

Neither of us was wrong. Plane simulator games cover an absurdly wide spectrum, from games where you press one button to take off to games where you need a three-ring binder to taxi. The best game for you depends entirely on what you actually want out of the experience. So here's the full range, organized roughly from most accessible to most demanding, with honest opinions about each one.

The arcade end

Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown is the one I recommend first to anyone who says they want to fly planes in a game. The planes are real. The physics are not. It's the gold standard for arcade flight games and it shows the second you take off. You bank, boost, fire missiles, dodge through canyons, and dogfight against increasingly ridiculous enemies while an anime story about drone warfare plays out in the background. It takes about two minutes to learn the controls and the rest of the game is pure spectacle. The mission variety keeps it from getting stale. One mission you're in a canyon dodging radar. The next you're fighting a superweapon in a thunderstorm. Ace Combat understands that flying is inherently dramatic and leans into that harder than anything else in the genre.

War Thunder sits in a strange and interesting spot. It's technically a free-to-play multiplayer combat game, but it has a flight model spectrum that ranges from arcade to realistic to full simulator. In arcade mode, planes practically fly themselves and you just point and shoot. In realistic mode, energy management matters, stalls are real, and positioning decides fights before bullets do. In simulator mode, you're in the cockpit with no HUD markers and full engine management. The grind is brutal and the monetization is aggressive, which are real problems. But the sheer breadth of aircraft, from WWI biplanes to modern jets, across all three difficulty modes makes it uniquely flexible. You can spend years in War Thunder and still have entire tech trees you haven't touched.

War Thunder's biggest strength is also its weakness. Because it tries to serve every audience, no single mode is as polished as a dedicated game. The arcade mode isn't as fun as Ace Combat. The sim mode isn't as deep as DCS. But nothing else lets you fly a Spitfire on Monday, a MiG-21 on Tuesday, and a P-51 Mustang on Wednesday, all in the same game.

Project Wingman deserves a mention here too. It's an indie Ace Combat-style game made by a tiny team, and it's shockingly good. The final mission is one of the most intense sequences I've played in any flight game. If you liked Ace Combat 7 and want more of that exact energy, Project Wingman delivers.

The middle ground

Tiny Combat Arena occupies the space that I think more games should aim for. It has enough simulation to feel grounded, takeoffs and landings matter, weapons have real procedures, and the planes handle differently from each other. But it doesn't require you to memorize a manual before you can have fun. The missions are combat-focused and the pacing is good. Think of it as the flight game for people who outgrew arcade games but don't want to commit to a study sim.

VTOL VR is technically a VR game, so it requires a headset, but I'm including it because it's one of the best plane simulators at any complexity level. You physically reach for the throttle. You flip switches with your hands. You look over your shoulder to check your six. The flight model is detailed enough to reward learning but forgiving enough that you won't spend your first hour staring at a dead cockpit wondering which switch turns the battery on. Three aircraft cover fighter, attack, and multirole, and the campaign and mission editor give it real longevity. If you have a VR headset and any interest in flight, VTOL VR is a must-play.

SimplePlanes is a wildcard. You build your own aircraft from parts, then fly them. The simulation comes from the engineering. Did you put the center of gravity in the right place? Are your control surfaces large enough? Is the engine powerful enough for the airframe? Every flight is a test of your design, and landing something you built yourself that probably shouldn't fly is deeply satisfying. The Steam Workshop is full of insane creations, from working helicopters to flying aircraft carriers, and trying to fly other people's questionable designs is its own category of entertainment.

The study sims

This is where plane simulation stops being a game and starts being a hobby. The time investment is significant. The learning curve is steep. And the payoff is unlike anything else in gaming.

Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 is the most visually impressive flight sim ever made. The entire planet, rendered from satellite imagery, Bing Maps data, and photogrammetry. Real weather pulled from live services. Real air traffic. You can fly from any airport on Earth to any other airport on Earth and the world outside the window looks correct. I flew over my hometown and recognized individual buildings. That moment alone justified the purchase.

The aircraft range from small Cessnas to widebody airliners, and the simulation depth varies by plane. The default Cessna 172 is a solid trainer. The PMDG 737 is a full systems simulation that replicates the real aircraft down to individual circuit breakers. Learning to fly an ILS approach in bad weather, intercepting the glideslope, managing descent rate, configuring flaps at the right altitudes, breaking through the clouds to see the runway lights, that sequence never gets old. It's the closest you can get to real flying without leaving your desk.

The 2024 edition added career features and challenges that give the sim more structure than previous versions. You can work as a bush pilot, an air ambulance, a cargo hauler. These additions won't matter to hardcore simmers who create their own flights, but they give newer players a reason to keep coming back beyond "I'll fly somewhere today, I guess."

X-Plane 12 does fewer things than MSFS but does one thing better than anything else: the flight model. Instead of using lookup tables for aerodynamic data, X-Plane calculates forces in real time based on the physical geometry of the aircraft. Blade element theory for propellers. Real airfoil simulation for wings. This means unusual aircraft designs, canards, flying wings, experimental configurations, behave realistically without anyone hand-tuning the data. Real pilots use X-Plane for training because the way it models flight is genuinely predictive rather than prescriptive.

The scenery isn't as pretty as MSFS. The default aircraft aren't as detailed. But if what you care about is how the plane feels, how it responds to control inputs, how it behaves in crosswinds and stalls and unusual attitudes, X-Plane is the better sim. I keep both installed. MSFS for sightseeing and immersion, X-Plane for when I want to actually practice flying.

DCS World is the deep end of the pool. Digital Combat Simulator is a military flight simulator where individual aircraft modules cost $40 to $80 each and require dozens of hours to learn. The F-16C module alone has a manual that's over 700 pages. You learn startup procedures, weapons employment, radar modes, countermeasures, formation flying, carrier operations. Each system is modeled to the level that actual military pilots have validated the accuracy.

The free version comes with two aircraft, the Su-25T and the TF-51D, and a map. That's enough to see if the complexity appeals to you before spending money. If it does, the rabbit hole is deep. The F/A-18C Hornet, the AH-64D Apache, the A-10C Warthog, each one is essentially a separate game's worth of learning. The multiplayer community runs organized missions with dozens of players coordinating air-to-air, air-to-ground, SEAD, and logistics simultaneously. It's the closest thing to a military flight experience that exists outside of an actual military.

DCS is not for everyone and it doesn't pretend to be. The learning curve isn't a curve, it's a wall. The performance can be rough. The terrain and weather are years behind MSFS visually. But nothing else gives you that moment where you pickle a laser-guided bomb from 20,000 feet and watch it hit a target you designated yourself through the targeting pod, knowing that every step of that process was something you learned and executed correctly.

The weird and wonderful

I'd be leaving out some of the most interesting plane games if I only talked about the big names. Balsa Model Flight Simulator lets you build and fly radio-controlled model aircraft. The physics are great and the building system is intuitive. It scratches a very specific itch.

Ultrawings and its sequel are VR flight games that lean casual. You fly small aircraft around island archipelagos completing missions. Ring challenges, photography runs, landing on tiny airstrips. The vibe is relaxed and sunny, like a Pilotwings spiritual successor in VR.

And then there's what I'm working on. This Is Your Captain is an arcade-style emergency landing game where every flight is already going wrong. Damaged aircraft, panicking passengers, systems failing. Your job is to get the plane on the ground in one piece, or at least in fewer pieces than the alternative. It's a rage game at heart. The kind of thing where you'll nail a perfect landing after thirty attempts and feel like you just soloed an actual aircraft. It's still in development, but the combination of accessible flight controls, escalating disasters, and the stress of a cabin full of screaming passengers is something I haven't seen in any other flight game.

So which one should you play

If you've never played a plane simulator game and you want to start somewhere, Ace Combat 7 is the answer. It's fun immediately and it makes flying feel incredible. If you finish that and want something with more teeth, Tiny Combat Arena or War Thunder's realistic mode are good next steps. If you want the real thing, MSFS 2024 and X-Plane 12 are both excellent for different reasons, and DCS World is there when you're ready to treat flight simulation as a second job.

The genre is healthier than it's ever been. Ten years ago, your options were basically "arcade" or "hardcore" with nothing in between. Now there are games at every point on that spectrum, and the quality across the board is high. Plane simulators reward patience more than most genres, but even the most accessible ones here give you something that no other type of game does. The feeling of being up there, managing a machine that wants to fall, keeping it in the air by skill and knowledge. Whether you get that from dodging missiles in Ace Combat or hand-flying an ILS in a 737, the fundamental thrill is the same.