It’s time for another screenshot challenge! The idea is to collectively explore different parts of the world together - areas that may be very familiar to you or perhaps a new place you have never flown before. Feel free to find others to fly with to capture the challenge, or go solo!
This upcoming week is the five year anniversary of the PC release of Microsoft Flight Simulator (2020)! To celebrate the occasion, we are currently running a 5x5 event where simmers are encouraged to share their Top 5 favorite things from the past five years of MSFS. For our weekly screenshot competition, choose any of your best five screenshots from the last five years and share them with us!
Rules
Any time of day
Any type of weather
Code of Conduct appropriate liveries
Default aircraft and scenery, or aircraft and scenery from the MSFS Marketplace
Up to 10 entries (screenshots) allowed
Avoid heavy digital editing or use of filters. Minor editing and touch-ups are allowed.
The rest is fair game! Use your creativity! We will pick the top 11 shots. 1 will be featured as the main photo of the next dev update and the other 10 will be featured in the community section.
You may also add a watermark or username to your image if you wish.
How To Submit Your Screenshot
Just post them below here in this thread, or if you’re on Twitter you can tweet your photo with the #MSFSchallenge hashtag!
Note: For the week the challenge is active, this thread is for screenshot submissions and challenge clarification only. Casual conversation about image submissions is allowed after the weekly challenge has ended. Thank you!
Papeete is the capital city of French Polynesia, an overseas collectivity of the French Republic in the Pacific Ocean. The commune of Papeʻetē is located on the island of Tahiti, in the administrative subdivision of the Windward Islands, of which Papeʻetē is the administrative capital. Both the President of French Polynesia and French High Commissioner reside in Papeʻetē.
Cockburn Island is an island and township municipality in the Canadian province of Ontario, located in the Manitoulin District. It is separated from the westernmost point of Manitoulin Island by the Mississagi Strait, and from Michigan’s Drummond Island by the False Detour Channel. The island is incorporated as and coterminous with the municipal Township of Cockburn Island.
The island contains approximately 90 cottages that are owned and occupied by families as vacation properties, and thus has an estimated population of 200 to 300 people in the summer; however, the island’s sole permanent year-round resident is a maintenance employee of the township, and thus its official census population has sometimes been recorded as zero due to Statistics Canada practices of rounding off the populations of communities smaller than 15 people.
Lake Batur (Indonesian: Danau Batur) is a volcanic crater lake in Kintamani, Bali, Bangli Regency of Bali, located about 30 km (19 mi) northeast of Ubud in Bali. The lake is inside of the caldera of an active volcano, Mount Batur, located along the Ring of Fire of volcanic activity.
Mount Rainier, also known as Tahoma, is a large active stratovolcano in the Cascade Range of the Pacific Northwest in the United States. The mountain is located in Mount Rainier National Park about 59 miles (95 km) south-southeast of Seattle. With an officially recognized summit elevation of 14,410 ft (4,392 m) at the Columbia Crest, it is the highest mountain in the U.S. state of Washington, the most topographically prominent mountain in the contiguous United States, and the tallest in the Cascade Volcanic Arc.
The kind of unexpected detail that the MSFS has to offer is unparalleled. I can’t count how many times I have been awed while flying where perhaps no one ever has and finding small detail like this which is there… just waiting to be explored.
The Richat Structure, often called the Eye of Sahara, is a prominent circular geological feature in the Adrar Plateau of the Sahara. It is located near Ouadane in the Adrar Region of Mauritania.
The Great Wall of China (萬里長城) is a series of fortifications in China. They were built across the historical northern borders of ancient Chinese states and Imperial China as protection against various nomadic groups from the Eurasian Steppe. The first walls date to the 7th century BC; these were joined together in the Qin dynasty. Successive dynasties expanded the wall system; the best-known sections were built by the Ming dynasty (1368–1644).
FS2020 came at the perfect time for me, just as I was grounded IRL due to Covid. This gave me the time though to be active here, figuring out the sim’s models and systems, and modifying some aircraft, and exploring a completely new world that we hadn’t really seen before.
From Tech Alpha through to now FS2024, I can see the sim keeps getting stronger every update.
For me FS2020 brought the freedom to explore everywhere! Challenging myself to land in random places that probably shouldn’t be landed at. Some of these places have the benefit of being very photogenic! Just in time for this forum’s screenshot challenges!
I’ve been an avid user of Flight Simulator since FS4, and still have it installed on my PC! That sim is what got me into aviation and using every version since then to help me along my real aviation career. It all started at Meigs Field in Chicago for many of us simmers, so I thought this was a nice tribute to gel two eras together to remind us just how far we’ve come.
Recreating real scenarios, especially for recurrent sim practice has always been very helpful. Whilst we worked with low visibility and cloud layer restrictions, it was possible to get it down to CAT I conditions to make at some interesting pics! I’ve even recreated the FS4 C182RG!
Another standout feature of FS2020 were the landing challenges, and especially the themed challenges! I REALLY wish we had more that came out from time to time with the sim. The Halloween Landing Challenge was definitely a stand out, with very moody weather, failed instruments, and radio static as we manoeuvred to the pumpkin-lit runway.
I fell in love with taking an aircraft and landing off field in fun locations, especially around the French Alps. I watched a guy called SpeedJojo flying his Jodel around this area and decided to make a more powerful and taildragger version of the Robin. Definitely lots of fun for these challenging areas.
