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Ac cording to the banner trailed by a Cessna on one of many loading screens, “the sky is not the limit”. Quite so: after four days of trying and failing to get off the metaphorical runway, it’s apparent that overloaded servers are the problem. What curbs our enthusiasm most isn’t the sky but something homonymous with one of its most magnificent features.

The clouds here are quite glorious to behold, a visual highlight in a game that often looks markedly worse than its predecessor. But the cloud – and a ruinous reliance on machine learning – clips FS24’s wings.

Beyond technology that promises a more convincing simulation while taking up less room on your machine – only one of which proves true – the main addition from 2020’s triumphant reboot is a structured singleplayer career mode. Having given us the world four years ago, Asobo is now effectively making us work for it. It serves up a diverse range of aerial activities, from search-and-rescue missions to the dousing of forest fires, alongside ‘flightseeing’ tours and the like. Per the developer’s insistence, this isn’t a game but a simulation; accordingly, the dry customs of these jobs have not been gussied up, and you can’t rely on many of the assists available elsewhere.