If you fly for realism, the plane matters more than the scenery. This catalog scores every in-scope aircraft for Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 on the things that make sim time transfer: how the flight model is built, what survives between sessions, whether anything can fail, how deep the systems go, and, last and weighted least, how it looks and sounds.
Open the interactive catalog - sortable, filterable, with a research card behind every row.
Download the spreadsheet - the same scores and evidence in one editable sheet, with the weights in cells you can change.
What is in it
- 364 aircraft from 93 developers: the default fleet across every edition, payware from the study-level developers (A2A, Black Square, PMDG, Fenix, iniBuilds, FlyByWire, Just Flight, COWS, Flysimware, Blackbird, SimWorks Studios and more), and the independent realism mods such as the Bonanza G36 Improvement Project.
- Piston singles and twins, turboprops, business jets and airliners. No helicopters, warbirds or gliders.
- Five scores, 0 to 5, each backed by a cited source: flight model, persistence, failures, systems depth, looks and sound. A blank score means nothing published supports one, and the card says so rather than guessing.
- A composite that weights the flight model at 30 percent, persistence, failures and systems at 20 percent each, and looks at 10 percent.
- Best in class for each category, chosen only among fully scored aircraft.
How to read it
Every score is read from developer manuals, product pages and published reviews, not from flying the aircraft. The research card on each row names the developer's approach, the evidence behind each score and where the product falls short. MSFS 2024 status is the developer's own statement where one exists.
Two things about the base sim shape every default aircraft's score: wear and damage persistence exists only in Career mode, and the 2020-era default packages had their wear disabled. That is why the defaults sit at 2 on persistence and failures however good their flight models are.
Keeping it current
The catalog is built from a research pipeline that can be run again to pick up new releases and changed products. The date on the page is the date the sources were read.