Micrsoft’s free-to-play  flight simulator today (29 February 2012) becomes available as a download. Intended as a separate product to the long standing Microsoft Flight Simulator franchise, Microsoft Flight is a single and multiplayer flight simulator developed by Microsoft Studios.

While the game is free, players will be charged for extra content, including additional aircraft and scenery.

Microsoft Flight system requirements:

Minimum

•    CPU: Dual Core 2.0 GHz
•    GPU: 256 MB card capable of shader 3.0 (DX 9.0c compliant)
•    HD: 10 GB Hard Drive space
•    OS: WinXP SP3
•    RAM: 2 GB

Recommended (high settings)

•    CPU: Intel Core i7 960 @ 3.20 GHz, AMD Phenom II X6 1100T 3.3 GHz or better
•    GPU: ATI Radeon HD 5870, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560 or better
•    HD: 10 GB Hard Drive space
•    OS: Windows 7 64-bit
•    RAM: 6 GB

You will need a Games For Windows Live account to download Microsoft Flight, which is pretty much the only thing we don’t like about it so far. The download weighs in at a totally reasonable 1.4 GBs, and you can grab it here.