Microsoft Flight Simulator

Raised as a usability problem by 19 people on Hacker News over 7 years (2019–2025), in 15 threads.

People raised many different problems with Microsoft Flight Simulator, but no single problem has yet been raised by 3 people in 3 different months and threads.

Unreviewed issues were grouped by machine: Claude Haiku labelled each comment as a usability complaint, named what it's about and summed up the problem in a line, and a small model grouped similar problems. Nobody has checked them by hand. Expect mistakes.

The newest 21 complaints

Visual assists lead to the wrong runway and ATC gives conflicting landing instructions2025-07-30
Trim feels wrong and can't be used the way real pilots do2023-12-24
Menus are very laggy to interact with2023-11-05
Updates inside the program take hours and hours to complete2023-06-12
Takes two to three minutes to load on a fast machine2022-03-07
Couldn't figure out how to select a departure airport; UI non-intuitive2022-03-07
Updates handled poorly and lack of deep add-on support frustrate users until they give up2022-03-04
Software fails to render correctly or fly properly near the poles2022-02-05
Installing needs ten DVDs, DVD 1 kept inserted, and store activation often fails2021-11-18
Installing a large update takes hours, far longer than the connection should need2021-11-10
Downloads cap at 40 Mbps and fetch files one at a time, pausing to decrypt each2021-10-04
Launcher has enough issues that getting the game running is badly designed2020-08-24
Hard to figure out how to use the radio, and the transmit button and radio panel are not obvious2020-08-24
No progress bar or splash screen while the game loads, so the user gets no feedback2020-08-23
Pressing controller buttons while playing another game triggers hidden download-screen help links2020-08-23
Framerate drops when loading scenery, and it is random and buggy2020-08-22
No visual feedback for 30+ seconds after launching, so users can't tell it's loading2020-08-22
Downloader is slow, restarts often, and stalls for many users during install2020-08-22
Map loads slowly, and fuel drains while the game is paused to load2020-05-11
Hunting for the right switches and buttons to click disrupted the flying experience2020-01-10
Cockpit knobs are hard to operate with an Xbox controller2019-06-25