User Reviews (1 - 11 of 66)

Show these reviews first:

Highest Rated
Lowest Rated Newest
Oldest Most Helpful
Least Helpful

A Very Average Flight Simulation

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 13 / 15
Date: May 31, 2003
Author: Amazon User

This game can be fun to play. Making movies is fun, and trying the various adventures can be amusing as well. However, there really aren't enough adventures to keep you interested if you aren't interested in taking a three hour-flight from New York to Paris (in a Concorde, of course). Personally, I grew tired of the game after I ran out of the adventures. I tried the lessons, and it's fun to try to land at an airport in a storm, at night...but after you beat those things, there's really no reason to try to do them again.

You can also try to earn the various liscences that real-world pilots can. For instance, you can try to earn an ATP (Airline Transport Pilot) Certificate by flying a 737 around, performing various maneuvers. It is fairly fun, and will keep your interest for a while. Once you get the hang of flying the planes though, the tests become easy, and present little challenge. Until you master them, however, they will keep you busy.

The game also gives you the GPS coordinates for most of the famous landmarks, so you don't have to fly around looking for them yourself. I used that tactic on several occasions, just jumping to the area I wanted.

As with any flying game, landing is a real challenge. In general, it will take you a little while to master the art of landing, but that's only day time approaches. Night time landings are a whole different story. Just finding the runway is often a challenge, although radar helps a lot. Still, until you learn to use radar to the best of your ability, you'll pretty much rely on your sight to tell you where things are.

I think that what I was expecting from this game was something akin to a storytelling game, in which you took the role of a young pilot's live, and completed various tests until you finally get the "Ok" to fly, then flying to various places (as a real-world pilot would) for money, until you retired, and bought more airplanes. Of course, that isn't the way the game is, and it is one of the reasons why, after you master the game, you have no reason to re-play it. You can pretty much fly anywhere you want at the beginning of the game, and so there's no reason to even attempt some of the various license tests, unless you're really desperate for something new to try.

Therefore, the gameplay is very average. I think that if this game had more "adventures", and/or had more things to do in multi-player, it would have recieved a five in this area. As it stands, however, it needs a lot more re-play value before it is considered an "excellent" flight sim.

Microsoft Flight Simulator 2000 Pro is a very average game. It's controls are very good, it's graphics are awesome (but the price you pay for that is a lot of slowdown), and the re-play value is minimal. You can also play it on Microsoft's Zone .... but I didn't even try that, simply because of the fact that, if I'm having this much slowdown in the single player game, the multi-player game will probably not even work for me. Not only that, I really don't see how flying commercial aircraft would be really fun with other people. What would you do, race someone from New York to Paris? I think that the real hard-core flight simmers might like the the idea of racing your buddy like that, but for me, it really doesn't have that much potential. However, the game, played in single player, is fairly fun. I enjoyed flying around New York City, seeing the Statue of Liberty, and the various other sites. As far as I know, Microsoft hasn't released a patch to delete the World Trade Towers from the game, so they're still there.

The manual is very well designed, and will tell you how to fly your plane with little fuss. Lessons are included in the game as well. However, I found it hard to find some of them...as in, you have to navigate through several of the in-game menus before you actually find anything. However, you really need to read the manual before you go flying, unless you turn the realism settings on low.

There are also several of what this game calls "adventures". Basically, what they are, are pre-developed flights with a certian objective. For instance, in one "adventure" your prop plane runs out of fuel out in the middle of the ocean. You get permission to land on an air-craft carrier that just happens to be patrolling the area. You then have to land your plane, with no engine power, on the deck. Very innovative. In another "adventure" you have to fly under the Russians radar in Red Square to try to land your plane. Supposedly, if you don't fly under the radar, they will target you, and shoot you down. However, I have never had that happen to me, no matter where I flew my plane.

You can also create your own movies. However, I found this fairly confusing, and really didn't get into it much. It has potential though. Imagine flying over Paris at night in a Concorde...then watching what your plane did. Since you have a cockpit view, you really can't see the outside of your plane...so with a movie, you would get to do that. Movies also have the potential to be cool if you are interested in airplane aerobatics.

In case it needs to be said, I would HIGHLY recommend playing this game with a joystick. I can't remember if it actually says that a joystick is required on the back of the game's box, but regardless, If you want this game, you really should buy a joystick. I can't imagine playing this game with a key-board and mouse.

Overall, I would recommend this game to hard-core flight simmers who want to absolute most realistic thing they can get their hands on, and don't mind some slowdown. To people that want to fly, but want something to do while they're up there, I would steer them away from this game, and insted direct them toward a combat flight simulation.

FS2000 Professional Edition

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 5 / 8
Date: February 06, 2003
Author: Amazon User

Suitable for PC with slower CPU like PII. It doesn't require a very good video card, 4MB RAM can run very smooth, of course more RAM means better, suggest 8-32MB.

Awesome... AND, on a PII 300mHz machine!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 5 / 5
Date: February 28, 2002
Author: Amazon User

Everyone knows the vast improvement of FS2000 Pro over 98, so by all means get it.

NOW, you CAN get good results with a slower machine! I have a P2 300mHz on a 66mHz buss (That's IT!), and it cruises. Here's how: 32mb AGP NVidia card (not even running at 2x or 4x!) with the latest driviers from NVidia.com. You need to get a minimum of 32mb, or forget it. The card was less than 50 bucks! THEN, go to Options --> Display, and click on Enable Hardware Acceleration. THIS IS ESSENTIAL. I run Win2K Pro (runs faster than 98 in my world), DirectX 8.1, and 192mb Ram. I do have the Scenery Complexity cranked all the way up. BUT, TURN OFF the ground shadows, and you'll have a great flight. If you have a faster processor or buss (or both), it'll all be that much better. But the graphics card is the big one. They're cheap right now, so get 32mb minimum. I have a VAIO I use with a 600mHz P3 but only 8mb video ram, and FS2000 runs on that like a truck with square wheels, so don't bank on the processor speed.

Happy Flying!

You need a good graphics accelerator.

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 11 / 13
Date: July 24, 2001
Author: Amazon User

I keep reading about people with fairly fast systems (800 mhz) and up running this game and hating the frame rates. I'm also reading that these same people are using 8MB or 16MB graphics accelerators... The truth is, if you have a such a system, flight simulator WILL work reasonably well, IF you get rid of the slow graphics accelerator. This is because 8 MB graphics cards are a joke to this game, and they make the main processor work much harder, slowing things down. An 8MB card is like running a race car on snow tires; the two don't work well together to produce speed. So don't get a new computer, get a 32MB or better yet, a 64MB graphics accelerator for your system. (And if you can afford it, I'd also suggest you get some RAM.) You'll see that you DON'T need a brand new Pentium IV 1.7 GHz or anything that fast that to effectively run the game. One last thing: I suggest running the display at 1024 X 768 at 16 bit. Fiddle around with the display and scenery settings until you get a "decent" frame rate. Good luck!

PIII 1000& still a slide show!!!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 2 / 6
Date: July 05, 2001
Author: Amazon User

I have a PIII 1000 MHz cpu,512 MB SDRAM,GeForce 1 32 MB Graphics card & Still this sim is a slide show.Which machine do I have to buy because this sim can run perfectly(average 30 FPS)?!!!. Cenk

Hard to fly.. yeah right!!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: June 29, 2001
Author: Amazon User

This is the best Flight sim game I have had. I can fly about anywhere on it. If you want to be a pilot, this game is for you!!

It's a good game with a few problems...

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 6 / 7
Date: June 10, 2001
Author: Amazon User

Everybody complains about the frame rate (speed) of this game, saying that it's just too slow for their system. But how many people have configured their system correctly? No matter what the speed of your computer, graphics card, etc.,.. to run this game better you need to optimize your system and free up RAM (yes, your system is using up RAM even if you don't have programs actively running, so you have to free up your system resources - the items on your taskbar are using up RAM, turn them off!) This will speed up the game.

About the game itself, here's my opinion:

GOOD: GPS is awesome - you can fly from city to city with ease, flight realism is good, has all types of planes including big commercial jets, has a decent manual(unlike FLY! II), Rod Machado teaches you how to fly, easily supports multiple monitors, real-time weather works great (if it's raining outside, it's raining in the game...cool!) accepts and lets you program any joystick or other hardware add-ons, there are a zillion *free* add-ons such as planes and scenery all over the web, and it is a very complete package overall.

BAD: The scenery still needs work, and sometimes appears patchy and even "fuzzy..." The cockpits are Ok but do not compare to the FLY! series (the amber night light is annoying), the planes' exterior lights look are not realistic (sometimes looking like ice-cream cones), and yeah, you need a fairly fast computer and good graphics card to get the game working well. [If you want to compare scenery to see what I'm talking about, check out the San Francisco scenery from Flight Unlimited II or Seattle from Flight Unlimited III - no other scenery in any flight sim game has ever compared to the stunning realism of that series...]

However, this is a good game and a must for any flight sim fan. It is currently the leading game in the industry so it has the most available add-ons, and this is good. Microsoft REALLY needs to improve scenery (I can't stress this enough...)and (in some cases) panels, and figure out a way to make the game run smoothly on the average computer. Note that FS 2002 will be coming out this FALL, and should (I hope) address these concerns. If you don't know anything about flying, read and follow the manual and included lessons in the game and you'll be off in no time. Bottom line, I really recommend FS 2000 despite its problems becuase it is the most complete sim out there, and when it comes down to it, it's just a lot of fun.

The best flight simulator

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 4 / 4
Date: May 20, 2001
Author: Amazon User

This game is the best flight simulator in the world. It's graphics are better than whatever game you're thinking about. It's so cool, you can fly different airplanes like the Cessna, the Mooney Bravo,the Learjet, the boeing 737, the boeing 777 and much more. You can even fly with VOR around the whole world! But I suggest you get this game only if you are interested in flying or being a pilot.

I wish I could have gotten more out of this

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 5 / 5
Date: March 23, 2001
Author: Amazon User

>This game, all in all is terrific for anyone who wants to become a serious pilot or have some real fun finding out what it's like. The instrumentation is all correct, the exact method of navigation pilots use is correct as well as landings, weather ETC.

>But the largest problem with the game is that it constantly reminds you that you're not really in to the pilots seat, you're behind your desk looking at a monitor. How does it do this to you? The slow load ups as you switch from view to view and the dispicable frame rates that can occur when viewing certain types of weather. I am on A PII 450 MHZ 128 RAM with an ATI-RAGE PRO 3D with the latest drivers. >Basically, my regular frame rate for this game 15 fps. When i was right up close with dynamic scenery my frame rate dropped to a mere 8-10 fps. And when I was viewing light clouds or transparent clouds, my frame rate dropped to an unplayable 1-6. I was really disappointed to find this because I really wanted to experience this game fully, but constant slow loads and almost unplayable frame rates caused me to turn this game off in frustration many a times. If any microsoft staff are looking at this MAKE NOTE OF IT FOR FS2002!!!

good, but could be better

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 3 / 3
Date: March 11, 2001
Author: Amazon User

I was both happy and disappointed with this version of Microsoft's Flight Simulation. I was happy with the fact that this version of flight simulator has about five times more airports and navaids than Flight Simulator 98 had. Also, the GPS included with the simulator is a great tool for the novice pilot who has no idea how to get from one point to the other. Another feature I liked was the realism of the game. You can adjust the realism settings of your simulator and even download real world weather. The cockpits of the different aircraft are also amazing with realitic panels and close attention to detail. I also think the printed manual that comes with the game is excellent, even if it is a little thick. There are also several things about the game that disappointed me. First is the scenery graphics. I was suprised that this Flight simultor did not use the same scenery graphics as Combat Flight simulator, which were excellent. The scenery graphics in this simulator are not that much improved over those in Microsoft's Flight Simulator 98. Second, I thought the playablity of the simulator lacked something to be desired. Even on fast computers, I experienced hesitations in the game when I was turning and landing the plane. Overall, the playability of the simulation is not as smooth as flight Simulator 98. Finally, I had trouble getting the simulation to work on a couple of computers. On one computer, I had to tweak with the CD-ROM settings before the ROM would recognise the CD. On another computer, I frequently got errors and freeze-ups. Overall, Flight Simulator 2000 is not bad, but I was expecting a much better simulation.

Review Page: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Next 

Actions