Microsoft Flight Simulator is an expansive game that lets you fly planes and explore the world. The game is extremely intricate and boasts a Flight Training tutorial that takes a little over half an hour to complete.
Even when you’ve got all of the controls down, the game can still be confusing when it comes to things like landing your plane or communicating with Air Traffic Control.
Furthermore, the default text size may not be automatically accessible to you, or you may need to adjust the main color of the game. To make things easier, you’re going to want to explore the Assistance menu in Microsoft Flight Simulator.
How access the Assistance menu in Microsoft Flight Simulator
© Microsoft
In Microsoft Flight Simulator, there’s an Assistance menu that lets you customize various aspects of your game experience. To access the Assistance menu, you’ll need to select “Options” in the main menu. You can also toggle the menu mid-game by pressing ESC.
From the Options menu, select Assistance to view six different categories where you’re able to make adjustments to the game. For example, you can toggle Assisted Landing from Off to On in the Piloting sub-menu if you need a little help landing your plane.
You can even turn on options for Unlimited Fuel, turn off Crash Damage, and more. To add to these options, you can head back to the Options menu, select “General” and then scroll down and select Accessibility.
In the Accessibility menu, you’ll find options to increase the text size, adjust the main color of the game, show tooltips, and more. If you need text-to-speech to play, you’ll find the option to turn this on and adjust how it displays in the General settings menu under the Sound category.
Need help playing the game itself? There’s a separate sub-menu for AI Controls where you can turn on Autopilot, turn on Checklist Assist to have the AI handle your pre-flight checks, and turn on Manage Radio Comms to have the AI handle all the communications with Air Traffic Control.
To save time, you can also press CTRL + ALT + X to toggle Autopilot on or off.
Overall, there are a number of ways to tailor your Microsoft Flight Simulator experience to your needs. Whether you need help landing your plane, or you need to increase the text size to make it easier to read, Microsoft Flight Simulator has you covered.
If you prefer visual directions over written directions, we’ve included a helpful video below from YouTuber Squirrel that’ll show you where different settings can be found in the Microsoft Flight Simulator menu.
Now that you know how to access the Assistance menu in Microsoft Flight Simulator, we have two other game guides we recommend checking out:
- How to fix the loading screen bug in Microsoft Flight Simulator
- A list of the best joysticks and controllers for Microsoft Flight Simulator
