Four days after saying it would arrive “very soon”, Flight Replicas has delivered. The Spitfire Mk.XVI we wrote about on Monday is now on sale through the official marketplaces for both Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 and Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024, priced at $12.49, or €13.99 in Europe.
The Spitfire aisle in MSFS has been an expensive one. FlyingIron’s Mk.IXc arrived at $35.00 and remains the reference point for systems depth and audio work in this corner of the sim. Flight Replicas is asking roughly a third of that for a package that covers four distinct airframe outlines, and it undercuts even their own back catalogue, since the Mk.1a and Mk.IIa bundle launched at $19.49 in 2023. It also comes in as a single purchase rather than the split approach used for the Mk.V, where the Standard and Tropical versions were sold separately.
What you get for the money
The package contains clipped-wing and full-wing versions, plus high-backed fuselage versions representing the early production aircraft alongside the cut-down, teardrop canopy versions that entered production from February 1945. Two gunsight types are included, gyro and standard, depending on which version you fly.
Historically, the Mk.XVI straddles a real change in the aircraft. Early examples were visually indistinguishable from a contemporary Mk.IX, while later ones carried the all-round vision canopy that became the standard Spitfire look for the rest of the type’s production life. Both are in the box, so you can fly the autumn 1944 fighter-bomber and the 1945 aircraft from the same purchase.
The Mk.XVI itself was a Mk.IX fitted with the Packard-built Merlin 266, the American licence version of the Merlin 66. Because that engine performed best down low, almost every one left the factory as an LF, which is also why clipped wingtips were so common on the type. Just over a thousand were built before production ended in August 1945.
Native to MSFS 2020, compatible with MSFS 2024
The compatibility position is the same one Flight Replicas has held with every MSFS release: this is a 2020 project that the developer says works in 2024, and it is listed on both marketplaces accordingly. That is not the same thing as a native 2024 build, of course, but for the price of admission it may be excused.
The Spitfire Mk.XVI is available now from the in-sim Marketplace for MSFS 2020 and MSFS 2024.
