Yes—you can fly anywhere in Microsoft Flight Simulator. Learn how global coverage works, where you can start and land, and why scenery quality varies.
Yes. Microsoft Flight Simulator lets you fly across a digital recreation of the entire Earth, including remote land, oceans and thousands of airports. You can start from an airport or select a point on the World Map. Coverage quality varies, however, and not every airport, building or terrain feature is represented accurately.
What does flying anywhere mean in MSFS?
In Free Flight, anywhere means the whole globe rather than a collection of separate regional maps. You can cross countries and oceans, visit polar regions, follow coastlines or fly over a location that has no nearby airport.
Both Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 and Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 provide worldwide coverage. MSFS 2024 relies more heavily on streamed world data, while MSFS 2020 can fall back to installed offline scenery; without online data, its terrain and ground textures are generally less detailed.
| Location | Can you fly there? | Main limitation |
|---|---|---|
| Included airport | Yes | Detail ranges from handcrafted to generic |
| Any map position | Yes | A custom departure may start you airborne |
| Remote terrain | Yes | Safe landing depends on the surface and aircraft |
| Ocean or lake | Yes | Landing requires a suitable floatplane or amphibian |
| Career or activity destination | Sometimes | The mode may limit aircraft, missions or available locations |
How do you fly to any location?
Use Free Flight or the World Map to choose an airport, landmark or custom map position.
- Open the world planning screen. Depending on the version, this is presented as Free Flight or the World Map.
- Find the location. Search for an airport name, ICAO code or recognised point of interest, or zoom in and select a position manually. Coordinate search support and formatting can differ between versions.
- Choose the departure type. Select a parking stand for a cold-and-dark start, a runway for immediate departure, or a custom point for an airborne start near the location.
- Add a destination if required. For a complete route rather than free roaming, follow our route-planning steps for VFR and IFR flights.
- Match the aircraft to the destination. Use a bush aircraft for short rough strips, a helicopter for confined areas, or a float-equipped aircraft for water operations.
A common mistake is expecting every landmark to be searchable by name. If it is not listed, find a nearby airport and select the location directly on the map.
Can you take off and land anywhere?
You can fly over any map location, but you cannot reliably operate from every patch of ground or water. Slopes, trees, buildings, uneven terrain and collision boundaries can make an apparently clear area unusable.
For a dependable ground start, choose a recognised runway, helipad or parking position. Custom map positions often produce an airborne start rather than placing the aircraft safely on the surface. Roads and beaches may be landable with the right aircraft, but they are not guaranteed to have accurate gradients, traffic clearance or collision behaviour.
Why does scenery quality vary by location?
Scenery quality varies because worldwide coverage combines aerial imagery, elevation data, generated buildings, vegetation and specially modelled locations. Our explanation of how MSFS builds its worldwide scenery covers the underlying system in more detail.
- Major cities and featured regions may use detailed photogrammetry or custom assets.
- Less well-covered areas may have older or lower-resolution imagery, generic buildings and simplified terrain.
- Offline or interrupted streaming can produce blurry textures and generic fallback scenery. Check that online world data is enabled and that the connection is stable.
- Missing airports may be absent from the simulator database, hidden by map filters or dependent on installed content. Use these checks when an airport does not appear.
No graphics setting can restore detail that is absent from the source data. For a particular destination, compatible MSFS scenery and airport add-ons can replace or enhance the default representation.
Are any countries or regions blocked?
Free Flight does not normally place invisible national borders around parts of the globe. You can overfly countries and remote areas even where the underlying scenery is generic or incomplete.
Career modes, structured activities and multiplayer networks can impose their own operational limits. Real-world restricted airspace is also not the same as a blocked map area: the simulator may depict or reference it, but Free Flight generally does not prevent you from crossing it.