Thank you IPACS for sending us the Deluxe version of this simulator to review!

Last year, I got to review my very first flight simulator, X-Plane 12.  I learned a lot doing that review, and so I was excited to give another flight simulator a shot. Aerofly FS 4 Flight Simulator is made by a younger team, and in some ways it's not as advanced as X-Plane 12. But in other ways, it's far superior. Seeing this different set of compromises has been an interesting journey in exploring Aerofly FS 4.

For those who have played (flown? used?) a flight simulator before, Aerofly FS 4 should be largely similar. You select a plane to fly, and an airport to take off from, after which you are placed there in the cockpit, ready to take off. The viewpoint is in first-person 3D, where you are a pilot sitting in the pilot's chair. You can look around in the interior, and you can pull levers, flip switches, and more as you interact with the plane and its systems. Lights glow, engines fire (or spin), and so on in response to your actions. Being a simulator, many pilot hopefuls start their journey learning how to fly a real-life plane with simulators, as they are far less expensive to learn on. I can't imagine how it would feel to destroy a private plane worth hundreds of thousands of dollars (or millions!) if you didn't have the basics down first before flying. Thankfully, simulators like this one are so accurate to the real thing that you really can learn a lot before sitting in that pilot's seat for the first time.

One of the things that struck me when I first launched the simulator is how the menu interface looks like a mobile game. Each of the menu item selections are large, easy to touch rectangular boxes that look mobile friendly. Of course it turns out that Aerofly FS 4 has a mobile version, so this actually makes sense, but I didn't expect that at first. Thankfully, the in-flight interface looks fine on PC in use. When navigating the menus, it is kind of funny how large the items are on my 43" 4K monitor, but it's otherwise no big deal, as they are reasonably intuitive to navigate.

Unfortunately, you will need to spend some time in the menu, as most of the control defaults are unassigned on many joysticks, as well as on keyboard. What I mean is that flying controls are quite complex, and there are dozens of possible options for flying planes, helicopters, and so on. Everything assigns in an extremely simple and intuitive manner, as you just select what you want to assign and press the button you want mapped to it, but I was shocked how sparse the defaults are. If you want to control those planes and helicopters, be sure to visit the control settings first if you plan to use mouse and keyboard, or a controller without a default profile. If you use an Xbox gamepad, that is supported out of the box with excellent defaults.

Thankfully, my Turtle Beach VelocityOne Flightstick worked perfectly, and I was able to assign axes to throttle, flight controls, and more in just a few minutes. Aerofly also has simple controls for flying by default, so you don't have to worry about pressing and releasing the brake if you don't want to, along with some other things like landing lights. Overall, despite the oversight of default keyboard controls, Aerofly FS 4 is fairly accessible for something as complex as a flight simulator once you set it up with your preferred control method.

Just like the other simulator I mentioned, there appears to be a combination of hand-crafted and auto-generated world maps and textures, leading to an interesting situation: some parts of the world look incredible, and others look... not great. For example, when taking off from Boston or O'Hare, there are buildings everywhere, and lots to look at, despite the way water is presented being a major weakness in Aerofly FS overall. (Water is a texture, and does not move in any way, nor is it translucent.) However, when checking out smaller airports, there is far less stuff to look at. Even flying outside of the major cities, it doesn't take long before you get generic textures, or if you download the rather gigantic high resolution scenery and enable Global Textures, you do get improvements, as the textures come from satellite imagery. Even still, some areas don't look great.

Other than the water, another area of weakness in the graphics is how it deals with roads and highways. They just... aren't there. They appear to be there from up high, but as you get lower there is no geometry, just lines in the ground texture. In comparison to X Plane 12, where there are rendered roads with little cars traveling on them, it's certainly a downgrade there. However, clouds, the planes themselves, some of the buildings, and the ground textures from high above all do look great. Water like rivers looks okay from a distance, but lakes and oceans don't look great from any height.

You might think that the ground being less exciting at times would lead me to disliking Aerofly FS 4, and that's not the case. While I am certainly a bit of a graphics snob, there is one thing I haven't pointed out yet: the performance of this simulator on a wide range of gaming hardware is stellar.

You see, once in game, I was surprised at how smooth the frame rate was. While I do have a high-end PC, you can still tell when things run well. I suspected that it was running better than other simulators, and I was able to prove this by playing in the incredible Virtual Reality (VR) mode. In X Plane 12, I had to drastically drop the details in order to have an acceptable experience where I wasn't getting nauseous. In Aerofly FS 4, the performance is nothing short of fantastic, even in VR. It also runs really well with modern integrated graphics, and even Steam Deck is supported. On my GPD Win Max 2 with a Ryzen 6800U, I had to upgrade to the latest AMD video driver and set 'Memory Optimizer' to 'Gaming'; once I did that, Aerofly ran great. (This setting reserves memory for the GPU, which this simulator needs.) Before that, it would crash to desktop when trying to start a simulation.

As for VR mode, not only does it perform really well, but it works well, too. With your 'hands', or VR motion controls, you can flip any switch, move any flight yoke, or slide any throttle right in the simulation. You can also use the sticks and buttons on the controllers to do things also, which is sometimes easier. Regardless, if you have a VR headset, and have an interest in flight simulators, Aerofly FS 4 is a must-have simply because of how well it runs compared to at least X Plane 12; sadly I haven't tried other flight simulators so I can't compare it further.

Aerofly also offers a Mission mode, which is a great way to get you flying, and it also gives you a mission, which some of us really appreciate. In Mission mode, you are assigned a vehicle and a location, with a suggested task. For example, in one of the missions I did, you can fly through a portion of the Grand Canyon with a classic WWII fighter plane. I really enjoyed checking this out, and you can be sure that you will see some of the best scenery as well, since it's certain to be well modeled and rendered.

One thing I found unique is that Aerofly can fill the sky with commercial flights. I found this really neat, as when you take off at a commercial airway, you can then see other planes in the sky just as you might see them in real life. This is a nice touch that I really appreciate. On the flip side, not every smaller airport is available to fly. For example, at least in my area of the country, there are tiny airports that locals can use, or you can use to learn how to fly. There is one about ten minutes from my house, and I love taking off from there in X Plane 12. Sadly, this small local airport does not exist in Aerofly FS 4. This is a huge bummer for me.

Aerofly FS 4 doesn't appear to have advanced weather simulation. This is one area where X Plane 12 is well in the lead. There are clouds, and they look great, but I don't think it can simulate a thunderstorm or anything like that.

The sound effects are more or less what you expect, with nice engine rumbling and noise. As mentioned already, graphically it looks nice where there is hand-crafted detail, but where there is not it doesn't look all that great. Buildings look reasonably nice, and planes and helicopters look fantastic. I really like how the fighter jets look, since I grew up admiring the F-15 and F-18 as offered in this simulator.

Aerofly FS 4 Flight Simulator is a pretty neat flight sim that is constantly being updated and worked on, but feels still in progress in places. Since the Aerofly name has only been around since 2011 or so, it lacks some of the breadth of more established teams and projects. In exchange, you get an incredibly well-polished game engine that runs fantastically on any reasonable hardware - including a mobile version (which I haven't tried). I believe this focus on optimization is why the VR mode is so excellent. If you are interested in the most deep and realistic flight simulator in existence, you may want to look at the wider field of simulators before deciding. But if you have a modest gaming PC, want to run it on a Steam Deck or some other lower-powered hardware, definitely look at Aerofly FS 4. If you want to fly in VR, this one performs so well, and is absolutely worth a buy for that feature alone if you have VR gear.

As for value, I would say that the Deluxe edition is probably worth the extra money if you want lots of aircraft, as it's less expensive to buy the bundle rather than buying the aircraft addon later. Regardless, with over twenty aircraft out of the box and another ten in the DLC, there is a good amount of variety. The flight physics feel pretty good to this novice, and I certainly enjoyed my time with Aerofly FS 4. If you are looking for a flight simulator, this definitely deserves a closer look!