Flight Simulator Multiplayer: How To Play Online, Invite Friends, And ...

Flight Simulator multiplayer troubleshooting

Though Flight Simulator multiplayer should be as simple as the above steps, we had some trouble joining another player's session - and going by some early reddit experiences, we weren't alone.

Ultimately, any issues might be down to a busy launch period, with server issues occurring at peak playing periods. Either way, hopefully some of the below might help:

• Though your friends will appear on the World Map if you are friends, it appears you need to be grouped together to appear in each other's games. This might be because of the various multiplayer options available - such as Live Players - which can exclude those not playing in live conditions.
• On that note, if you are the group leader, try creating a Group Only flight, then have your group join you from the World Map, which will isolate who appears in your flight to just them.

• Also, start your multiplayer session on the runway of an airport. Though it's possible to set your departure at another player's position from the World Map to join them mid-flight, which does work in some of our team's experiences, for others it is hit or miss - we spawned in either too far apart, or not at all. By waiting on the runway, it will minimise your chances of players missing one another.

• If you are running on low specs, try toggling the 'Use Generic Plane Models' setting within the Graphics part of the settings. Though it might have been a coincidence, we toggled this and a friend's plane showed up soon afterwards. At the very least, it might help your performance.
• It might also help to add one another as Xbox Live friends on the system level - as well as in-game - if they don't appear in your in-game online list.
• Group invites might take a few minutes to be sent and show up, so be patient and they should arrive eventually.

Thanks to Matt Wales and Martin Robinson for their patience with testing various multiplayer scenarios!

For those investigating their Flight Simulator options, we have a planes list and airport list for each launch edition, a list of Flight Simulator Achievements. Then, when you start playing, we have explainers on weather and liveries, multiplayer, using autopilot and sim rate, and how to use the game's equivalent of photo mode with Active Pause.

How Flight Simulator multiplayer works

As for Live Players and All Players, everyone is essentially playing on the same server, and the game will only pull the data of the closest 50 players within a 200km radius.

This is to save bandwidth - so you're not tracking thousands of players at once, which is likely in popular locations.

There are some additional caveats to how this works in practice:

• If there are less than 50 players within that radius, all players will appear.
• If there are more than 50 players within a 200k radius, only the closest 50 will appear.
• The amount of players actually visible is based on your performance settings. If you are on lower settings, fewer players will physically appear. However, the server will still be tracking them - and will be displayed on your radar for you to see.

These details, as well as more on Flight Simulator's server technology, is explained in the following official video:

Feature Discovery Series Episode 7: Multiplayer Watch on YouTube