Montana. Iconic sites in Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020

To the left: Montana in Far Cry 5. To the right, the same place in Microsoft Flight Simulator.

Another impressive open world from Ubisoft that we visited in Far Cry 5. The creators, of course, compressed the state to suit their needs, but many of the smaller locations were actually based on real ones. The great statue of Joseph Seed, for example. In Montana, there is indeed a similar, 27-foot-tall white statue of St. Mary, locally named Our Lady of the Rockies. Montana in Flight Simulator, however, is pretty much wilderness, and even the dominant mountains don't have super-quality textures.

Area 51 – Groom Lake

To the left: Area 51 in DCS World. To the right, the same place in Microsoft Flight Simulator.

Officially, this place is called the Homey Airport. Groom Lake is another name derived from the dried-up salt lake adjacent to the site. However, everyone prefers the name shrouded in legend and secrecy – Area 51. The layout and location of the facility is no secret. The most interesting things probably lie inside, but we can only count on procedurally generated buildings. Too bad! In DCS World, one of the hangars of this base houses Star Trek spaceships, for example.

Washington D.C.

It would seem that Microsoft would treat the capital, Washington D.C., as a special place. But it actually looks quote terrible in Flight Simulator 2020. With low-resolution textures and procedural generation, it looks just poorly compared to places like Los Angeles, San Francisco, or Barcelona. We only have handmade Pentagon and the Lincoln Memorial to wipe our tears with. I wonder if Bing that's a little off, or whether the U.S. government prefers its crucial location to remain more obscure.