Editor's note: Take a breath. We're almost there. 2020's been quite the year, and it's very nearly over. Across the festive break, members of the Eurogamer team and our contributors will be running down their personal top five games of 2020, before we announce our game of the year - and before, of course, we hand over to you for the annual Reader's Top 50. Thanks for being with us this year, and see you on the other side.

I never used to be particularly outdoorsy, but the passing of years seems to have graced me with an irrepressible itch for a sweeping vista and a curiosity for distant climes. No surprise then that Flight Simulator has been my safety valve in 2020, offering a welcome escape from the waning thrills and increasingly claustrophobic over-familiarity of my immediate locale.

The joy and genius of Flight Simulator 2020 is in its wonderful accessibility, meaning it's not just a game for aviation lovers, it's a game for those that love travel and discovery too. And its breathtaking digital Earth hasn't just sated my niggling wanderlust this year, it's stirred my curiosity, encouraging hours of blissful revery among the clouds, seeking out fresh geographical wonders, and giving me a whole new appreciation for the majesty of our world.

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It wouldn't be Christmas without a bit of bickering between us all, and in time-honoured fashion we're letting you have it out as put together your top 50 games of the year.

We'll be compiling the results and your comments for publication over the Christmas break, with submissions open until 5pm GMT on Wednesday 16th December. Have fun with it, and thanks for being with us throughout the year!

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It's already been entertaining us for nearly half a year on PC, but we now finally have a release window for Microsoft Flight Simulator on Xbox, as the game is due to arrive on Xbox Series X/S in summer 2021. And it's going to be available on Xbox Game Pass on launch day, of course.

Announced at the Game Awards, a brief video was shown displaying the game running on Xbox Series X. It's a demanding game to run even on PC, but the Xbox Series X trailer sure makes it look stunning.

"Simmers on Xbox Series X/S can expect the same level of depth as the PC version, allowing you to experience the most authentic and realistic flight simulator we have ever created," said head of Microsoft Flight Simulator Jorg Neumann in a blog post. I guess we'll have to wait to find out what that actually means in tech terms.

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That big ol' 'simulator' in Flight Simulator's name certainly suggests a grasp for authenticity, but just how accurate is it really? That's what one enterprising soul attempted to discover by playing the game while on a passenger plane, and piloting the exact same route they were travelling in real-life. Turns out it's pretty damn accurate indeed.

The (admittedly wholly unscientific) experiment was conducted by Rami Ismail - formerly one half of celebrated indie studio Vlambeer - on a recent journey from Montreal, Canada, to Amsterdam, with Ismail documenting Flight Simulator's progress versus the real thing over on Twitter as the journey continued.

Following a minor directional mishap on the runway during a drizzly evening takeoff, Ismail excitedly reported in to confirm that cloud entry had been mere seconds apart between the game and real-life once airborne, with a slighter larger window of difference, of approximately 30 seconds, when leaving the clouds.

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Flight Simulator has only just released its latest World Update, this one giving the USA's most iconic landscapes some much-needed attention, but already developer Asobo is talking about its next round of planetary enhancements, confirming it'll be upgrading the UK in January.

In a similar fashion to earlier geographical spruce-ups for the USA and Japan, Asobo's third World Update will aim to create a more accurate rendition of the UK using "awesome" new data and aerial images for England, Scotland and Wales, and with a host of new landmarks.

In total, as revealed in Asobo's latest livestream, the studio is aiming to introduce 50-60 new points of interest, new procedural buildings (including churches), and improvements for a range of existing airports, such as Land's End, Liverpool EGGP, and Manchester Barton. Additionally, players can expect to see new landing challenges and a new flight.

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Developer Asobo's Flight Simulator is, as even the swiftest glance in its direction will confirm, a staggeringly beautiful game, but it's not always the best at capturing the finer details; that's where its semi-regular World Updates come in, and its latest, available now, gives the vast sprawl of the United States a much-need upgrade.

Fly over Manhattan or Disney World and it might feel like Flight Simulator's rendition of the US is plenty detailed enough already; head out to admire the country's countless geological wonders, though, from the staggering depths of the Grand Canyon to the iconic majesty of Monument Valley, and the illusion can start to fall apart rather dramatically thanks to the somewhat woolly satellite and elevation data used to generate the Earth in the launch game.

Enter Asobo's second World Update, which follows on from its gorgeous overhaul of Japan back in September, introducing a significant number of welcome improvements to the United States' multitudinous geological and man-made landmarks, turning an already beautiful game into an even more breathtaking one, if at all possible.

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Developer Asobo has now opened sign-ups for its forthcoming Microsoft Flight Simulator VR closed beta, which is expected to begin toward the end of this month or early November, and will initially be open to those with a Windows Mixed Reality headset.

Speaking in Asobo's latest community focussed livestream, head of Microsoft Flight Simulator Jorg Neumann explained the developer has been working on VR support for the game - which he describes as "the single most immersive experience I've ever had" - for over a year now.

It's now at a stage where it's ready for closer scrutiny, and that's where Asobo's upcoming VR closed beta comes in. Players interested in helping the developer test its VR builds can head to the Flight Simulator website and start the sign-up process. They'll need a Windows Mixed Reality headset (such as the upcoming HP Reverb G2), must have a PC that meets the minimum specifications, and must be a registered Microsoft Flight Simulator Insider member.

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Barely a month has passed since Flight Simulator swooped onto PC in a cloud of acclaim, but already developer Asobo is poised to release its first major update; it's coming next Tuesday, 29th September, and will deliver a much-improved (and typically gorgeous) rendition of Japan.

Prior to release, Asobo explained its monthly post-launch update schedule would alternate between core sim improvements and enhancements to the world. Next week's offering, then, is Flight Simulator's first World Update, and aims to give players a much more authentic take on Japan, starting with an upgraded digital elevation map across the entire country.

Additionally, it introduces high-resolution 3D photogrammetry for six Japanese cities - Sendai, Takamatsu, Tokushima, Tokyo, Utsunomiya, and Yokohama - as well as and six handcrafted local airports (Hachijojima, Kerama, Kushiro, Nagasaki, Shimojishima, and Suwanosejima).

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As anyone who watched Twitch Plays Pokémon will know, handing the controller over to Twitch chat can be chaotic at best, platform-breaking at worst. Yet somewhat surprisingly, the hordes managed to fly a plane in Microsoft Flight Sim - even completing some risky manoeuvres and successfully landing the aircraft.

The experiment was hosted by Rami Ismail, co-founder of Vlambeer, who set up the stream allowing Twitch chat members to change the speed, heading and target altitude of a Boeing 787-10 Dreamliner (amongst other functions). Surprisingly, Twitch chat was able to take off from Košice International Airport, fly around for about an hour, perform a barrel roll and then return to the Slovakian airport where the flight began. Not bad considering the plane had dozens of pilots.

As ever with Twitch chat, however, there was a fair amount of squabbling and sabotage - including one mischievous chat member who kept trying to cut the engines on takeoff. Ismail noted there was a rare moment of unity when the clouds opened up, giving everyone the chance to have a look at the scenery.

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When Antoine de Saint-Exupéry was first asked to fly the mail from Alicante to Casablanca, he asked another pilot, Guillaumet, to talk him through the terrain in advance. This was 1926 and aviation was a somewhat magical business. "Guillaumet didn't teach me about Spain," Saint-Exupéry later wrote, "he made Spain my friend. He didn't talk about hydrography, or population figures, or livestock. Instead, when talking about Guadix, he spoke of three orange trees at the edge of a field."

The world looks very different from the air. Different priorities and different readings emerge. Three orange trees can take on supreme importance. "Little by little," Saint-Exupéry concludes, "the Spain on my map became a fairytale landscape."

Saint-Exupéry went on to write an actual fairytale, of course, and The Little Prince is a book in which the thrum of early aviation is always present, a constant warm purring at the threshold of hearing. But in Wind, Sand and Stars, the memoir in which he describes his work on the mail route, he goes on to suggest that, in the decades since those early rattling adventures, something has been lost. Wind, Sand and Stars was written only 13 years after his Spanish gig, and yet: "Today...the pilot, the engineer and the radio operator aren't embarking on an adventure...but shutting themselves in a laboratory. They respond to instrument needles, not the unfolding of a landscape."

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