Imagine a Crimson Skies or Ace Combat game with this graphical fidelity, it would be amazing I reckon.

Yeah they could surely add dogfights or intercept jets or escort missions like airforce one or something like that or maybe even Newyork helicopter tours where you get stars for how good the tour was?

I'd love to see an official flight combat game come from this. MSFS has always excelled at accuracy in flying.

OTOH, I also question if I'd find a highly accurate flight combat game appealing, as even the advanced controls within more arcady type games such as Ace Combat kind of annoy me at times. Steering with the pedals and dealing with thrust and yaw and all that is a lot of work. Makes me impressed just how much fighter pilots have to know to actually fly like they do, especially when coupled with G-Forces and constantly changing perspectives and being able to keep a plane in the air when moving based on relative position.

But, if anyone could make a highly accurate model for such a thing, at least the flying part, it would be those that make this series. MSFS has always excelled at it's flight simulations relative to what was available in technology in it's time. All the way back to it's vector graphics on the 386....where I absolutely hated the game, as there was no easing in to learn the controls, and you either knew how to get a plane off the ground, or you crashed....if you could even learn to get the plane moving on the runway at all.

As far as flight combat, I'd expect mods to offer this before MS does. But MS has a real oppurtunity to make it happen.

I feel they may have to offer controls that would appeal to the more casual gamer though. Not make it mandatory of course, but a flight combat sim of this magnitude, would work great in a GaaS model that they want to chase. Offer true flight sim, and more casual arcade styles while keeping the physics alive, and keep pumping out missions, or make dogfighting, or aerial battles for MP, and you have a good solid and under-represented genre to draw people in.

If MS is listening to anything this gen, I hope more people ask for such a thing, and MS sees the potential there.

At the very least, they can license out their game tech and code for someone else to make it into something, or offer a modding tool to make it so others can do this easier.