- Primary Subject: Microsoft Flight Simulator X / Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 (Shared Cockpit Feature Analysis)
- Key Update: A detailed retrospective analyzing the history and technical hurdles of the native Shared Cockpit multiplayer feature from Flight Simulator X and its absence in modern flight simulators.
- Status: Confirmed
- Last Verified: August 20, 2026
- Quick Answer: Microsoft Flight Simulator X featured native Shared Cockpit co-op, but modern simulators like Flight Simulator 2024 still rely on community-created modification tools instead.
Microsoft Flight Simulator X shipped in 2006 with a multiplayer mode that nothing since has properly replaced.
Shared Cockpit put two people on two PCs inside the same airplane, with one set of flight controls handed back and forth like a real crew.
Twenty years later, I still can't do that in Microsoft's own simulator without downloading someone's side project first.
Bunk Beds and Thomas Ruth Freeware Jets
I learned the feature on a cheap router in a high school dorm room. My roommate and I ran FSX on two machines over LAN, and we almost always ended up in one of Thomas Ruth's freeware widebodies.
The A300 when we wanted a quiet evening, the DC-10 when we wanted some big iron action.
We took turns on the left seat, alternating between pilot flying and pilot monitoring.
Sometimes, I’d hand-fly a raw ILS, and he ended up as the guy on the overhead panel and the (imaginary, as the in-game AI ATC feature wasn’t in LAN multiplayer) radios.
We navigated VORs and the default GPS because anything resembling a real FMC fell apart between the two machines within ten minutes.
Half our flying ended up VFR for the same reason, flying twin-engined Cessnas and vintage De Havillands.
Around the top of descent one of us would hit Shift+T and say "you have control" out loud, which was ridiculous given that we were four feet apart.
That's what made it stick. Every bad landing had a witness, and every good one had someone who knew exactly how close it had been.
Shift+T Was the Entire Feature
The design was blunt. One user held the yoke, throttle, and rudder. Shift+T passed that authority across, and the other person couldn't take it on their own.
Both pilots could work avionics, gear, and radios whenever they wanted, which is the part that turned it into crew coordination instead of a passenger seat with a nicer view.
Microsoft aimed it at instruction. The Learning Center pitched an instructor demonstrating a maneuver and then handing the airplane over so the student could try it, which is more or less why simmers keep asking for the feature back.
I don't want to oversell how well it worked. Weather rendered on each machine separately, so I could break out into clear air while he was still buried in cloud. Instruments drifted apart on their own schedule.
Anything with a proper FMC was hopeless, because developers had to deliberately pass their custom gauge variables between peers and almost nobody did, which is why payware aircraft mostly weren't an option.
Microsoft's own Service Pack 1 notes admit reverse thrust desynchronization.
Our answer was to stop flying things that needed syncing in the first place. Steam gauges, VORs, the default GPS, and a lot of VFR, where a mismatched cloud layer is a curiosity instead of a safety issue.
Running over LAN covered for the rest. Shared cockpit across the internet was a rougher proposition (we made it work in the pandemic with ZeroTier), though I'd be lying if I pretended my experience was representative of everyone's.
Twenty Years On, Modders Are Doing Microsoft's Homework
Flight Simulator 2020 kept shared cockpit alive as a talking point without ever putting a date on it. It sat on the community feedback wishlist, got deferred, then got pushed onto the next sim entirely.
At the September 2024 developer stream, Asobo confirmed a prototype existed and looked promising, then called it too complex to ship. MSFS 2024 launched that November without it. It's still a prototype.
So the community wrote it. YourControls is the open-source mainstay for MSFS, matching switch states through per-aircraft YAML files and a host-and-client setup.
FS Copilot targets MSFS 2024. JoinFS spans MSFS, FSX, P3D, and X-Plane.
On the X-Plane side, it's SmartCopilot, which is payware, needs a config file dropped inside each aircraft's folder, and now sells trainer licenses so flight schools can hand access to students.
Laminar has never promised a native version.
The Desync Tax
Sky4Crew, who make SmartCopilot, say flatly that they can't produce config files for every add-on and that you shouldn't expect everything to stay in sync when one exists.
YourControls carries a similar warning about SimConnect not exposing every switch. Dig into a config file, and it gets more specific.
The community profile for the Fenix A320 warns that spinning the FCU knobs too quickly desyncs them, that throttles drift apart when two pilots use different hardware, and that auto trim can diverge far enough to snap the pitch when control changes hands.
An AVSIM user testing an unofficial PMDG profile said the core functionality was there, but he doubted it could handle an emergency. He's right, and that verdict covers the entire category.
These tools will get you a stable cruise and a hand-flown approach. Give them a hydraulic failure with two people troubleshooting, and the whole illusion comes apart.
Both machines also need the same sim build, the same aircraft version, the same fuel and payload. One update on one PC can kill a session that worked fine the night before.
IL-2 Crews Its Tanks and Forgets Its Bombers
Tank Crew lets four people fill the driver, gunner, machine gunner, and commander seats of the same vehicle in multiplayer, and it produces some of the sharpest teamplay 1CGS has ever shipped.
In the air, a second human is a gunner and nothing more. The C-47 became flyable in 2022, the Ju 52 has been flyable since 2017, and there's still exactly one pilot in either of them.
Nobody in a tank is fighting over the same lever, so it's an easier engineering problem than sharing a yoke.
It still leaves 1CGS in the odd position of keeping four humans synchronized inside one moving vehicle and drawing the line at the one seat I'd actually want to share.
DCS Got There and Wears the Scars
Eagle Dynamics has been shipping the thing everyone else calls too complex. The UH-1H got multicrew in December 2020 with four crew stations, and the L-39, Mi-8, F-14, Mi-24P, and AH-64D followed.
Two humans genuinely share a working aircraft. They share a permanent bug list too. The changelog announcing Huey multicrew warned about state desync during damage in the same breath.
The forums are full of countermeasure panels drifting out of sync, radar data never reaching the RIO, and airframes warping the moment somebody occupies the back seat.
Asobo's excuse reads better after an hour in those threads.
Give Me Back the Right Seat
VATSIM writes shared cockpit into its Code of Conduct, with the second pilot connecting as an observer under the same callsign.
SmartCopilot is selling licenses to flight schools. Asobo has a prototype sitting in a build somewhere. Everyone involved already agrees this should exist.
What's missing is a first-party version solid enough that a study-level airliner doesn't depend on a volunteer's config file.
FSX shipped a flawed, limited, weather-desyncing version of this on hardware from 2006, and I'd still take it over the current arrangement.
I'd like to fly a DC-10 badly with a friend (maybe even two, for that Flight Engineer station!) again without installing three programs to do it.
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