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The new state-of-the-art flight sim for PC

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 257 / 265
Date: March 30, 2005
Author: Amazon User

My qualifications: More than 3000 hrs of real world flight time, Commercial, Instrument, Multi-Engine and Flight Instructor certificates, and an incalculable amount of my life spent "flying" every major flight sim ever made for the PC, starting with the original MS Flight Simulator on an Apple IIe in 1983. For whatever it's worth, folks, I'm an expert on this subject.

FS-2004 Century of Flight is the new state of the art, the new gold standard. By itself, this software is worth going out and buying a new, hot PC just so you can fly it.

If this is your first flight sim experience, you'll have fun just doing loops and looking at the pretty scenery.

But here's the truth: the more aviation experience you have, the more you will appreciate this sim. Quite frankly, I can't think of a single significant element of the real-world flying experience that isn't precisely modeled and simulated in FS-2004.

Want to climb in the 172 and practice NDB approaches down to minimums in rain and a stiff crosswind? No problem, you can do that here. Want to captain the 747 from San Francisco to Honolulu by moonlight? Consider it done. Want to fly neck-straining aerobatics "in the box" over the runway at Oshkosh in Patty Wagstaff's Extra 300? Start the engine and go. Want to load up the DC-3 and fly "The Hump" to gain an appreciation of true aviation heroism? Yep, you can do that too. With or without the snowstorms and turbulence.

Quite frankly, if you can come up with a non-combat flying scenario of any kind, you can almost certainly experience something very close to it in FS-2004. This sim isn't just fun, or accurate - it's realistic training and practice for the IFR pilot.

Words simply can't express the depth, thoroughness, accuracy and variety to be found in this sim. Everything happens in real time and it's so accurate on my PC that I can get out my E6-B whizwheel and do time, fuel and distance calculations while I'm "flying" and have them work out almost exactly.

The more of a pilot you are, the more this sim will give you. And no matter how many hours you have, there is no pilot alive who won't benefit from the incredibly realistic practice and training that this sim provides. If you rent a 172 now and then, you'll be so much sharper in the real cockpit because of this sim. And if you own your own airplane, you can practice things like non-precision approaches, holding pattern entries, missed approach procedures and engine failures to landing, all without burning a drop of gas or putting your own airplane in jeopardy.

Here's what it boils down to: In general aviation today, you either train and practice with this sim, or you're behind the times and selling yourself short. Get it.

Good Sim, But Remember the "Sim" Part!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 31 / 34
Date: December 15, 2004
Author: Amazon User

I have been using flight simulators since MS Flight Simulator 4.0, and have more diverse experience than only Microsoft's offering to call upon. While any simulator can be made quite realistic with the latest hardware and enough money, it is important to note that Microsoft's offering is no different - you cannot, as they say, make a silk purse out of a pig's ear. This means that if you're running an underpowered system, you will not be able to run the simulation optimally.

Published system requirements:
* Pentium 450 or greater processor
* 64 MB RAM for 98/Me, 128 MB RAM for 2000/XP
* 8 MB/3-D with DirectX 7.0 or later videocard
* 1.8 GB hard drive space

My recommendation:
* P4 2.x GHz processor; the faster, the better
* 512MB RAM, with ideally 1GB under the hood
* 128MB / 256MB AGP video card that pushes TONS of pixels - the more, the better
* At least 5GB free hard drive space - You'll want to do a full install, and that comes in just under 3GB (2.88GB, I think)

I run on:
* P4 3.0GHz processor
* 1GB RAM
* Windows XP PRO (SP1)
* 256MB 8xAGP GeForce 5700 series NVidia video card
* Sidewinder joystick (soon to go, thanks to some pedals and a yoke I ordered!)
* On-board surround sound processor

The software itself is practically infinitely extendable, with software and hardware add-ons supported. A quick look around in the flightsim community will support my assertion that the software is CHEAP compared to what can be done to augment it. Add-on packages are available to augment FS2004's admitidedly weak "ground mesh" mapping - flying through Norway's waterways and coasts with the default scenery is nothing next to the real thing, and pales in comparison to some of the add-on packages (both for photo-texturing and mesh-building) out there. But of course, these things cost money (sometimes), as does building and maintaining a system that can fully take advantage of the software.

This is a SIMULATOR, remember - a dozen years ago something like this with a set of pedals and yoke would have been a BIG deal and far out of the reach of the home consumer. Now, as the bar of admission lowers, it is important to realize just how MANY numbers are being crunched every second (most of those in graphics routines), and spec a system appropriately. It might not be a multi-million dollar prospect to own any longer, but to adaquately run the simulator and get something "real" out of it, it is certainly not unheard of to run multi-head (throwing many monitors onto a machine) for a partial panoramic view - but, of course, realism comes at its price.

(same text as is found in my review on the "tin box" version of FS2004)

best flight sim ever!!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 5 / 10
Date: July 28, 2004
Author: Amazon User

MS Flight Sim 2004 is the best sim...ever made. The graphics are great (on my 2.4 ghz 512mb ram 64 mb geforce 4 mx card i can run it at 800x600 resulution with medium graphics). Its the most realistic sim ever made also. The only bad thing about this game is that it takes around 1 1/2 hours to install, and it takes up around 5 gigs of your hard drive. A joystick is reccomended so you dont have to mess around with the keyboard too much...the planes are almost impossible to fly with just a keyboard. It has over 20 flyable aircraft, including the Wright Brothers first plane. It also has more modern planes like cessnas and the 737,747,and 777. The learjet and 2 helicopters are also included. There are over 20,000 airports to fly to, anywhere in the world.

*WARNING* You should have at least double the minimum requirements to run this game. Just to see how it worked, I tried to run it on a computer that had the minimum requirements. It could load the game, but when i tried to fly i was getting about 3 framespersecond on average....on my machine (specs listed above) i can usally get 25 frames per second on a clear day...about 15 when the weather is cloudy.

This is a great game, and if you like flying, or want to become a pilot, get it!

top of the class

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 21 / 21
Date: August 31, 2006
Author: Amazon User

I have not played the game much as yet,but what I have used so far is tops. I am nearly 64 and suffer PPH and am on O2 24/7 so I need a game that does not require lightning reflexes,which I no longer possess. I had to give up piloting due to health problems years ago. Now I can get my weekly fix from ground level at home and without endangering anyone. Top marks from me.
Rod Leveridge

Know your hardware!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 18 / 19
Date: April 29, 2005
Author: Amazon User

Reviews which say, "This game runs horribly" or "This game crashed my computer," help no one when you don't list you specs.

AMD 2700+ @ 2GHz
512Mb DDR
GeForceFX 5200 w/256Mb DDR
SB Audigy Platinum
7200 RPM 120 Gig HD

I cannot get this game to slow down. I put the settings on ultra-high, trilinear filtering and all that, bump the resolution up to insane levels where I can no longer read the flight lessons because they're too tiny, and I don't even get a stutter. I can freely alt-tab in and out, or play in a window. My specs are very decent, but by no means are they the bleeding edge. I see other reviews here where people seem to hint that they have similar specs and are only getting 10 to 15 Fps. That's ridiculous.

So first, know your hardware. Not all RAM is created equally and not all video cards are either. You may "have the numbers" but if you bought cheap hardware, expect cheap results. Also, SOUND! My guess is that many of the people here who have bad performance with apparently decent specs can trace it to their sound card. It's often overlooked. My sound card isn't great, but it used to be a lot worse. I noticed a marked improvement in many 3d games after I got the audigy--and that's just an audigy, not an audigy2 or anything flashy. Do you people that have performance issues even have a PCI sound card or is it built into your motherboard? If it's onboard, then it's sapping CPU time from you.

Second, know your OS integrity. When's the last time you defragged? When's the last time you scanned for addware and spyware? Are you the kind of person that has bunches of useless stuff running all the time, like screen saver programs? Some one here said that FS2004 caused the loss of all date on her C drive. No, it wasn't FS2004, your computer and OS were unstable to begin with. Don't blame some game because you can't manage your machine.

Now the game. Yeah, I meant those five stars. I love this thing. I know people don't call it a game, but I do. I'm playing "Being a pilot" and loving it. I enjoy many different kinds of computer games, but this one is quite unique in that it calms me down. Straight and level flight can be very Zen.

Learn to fly any class of plane for about $20.00

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 17 / 17
Date: November 01, 2004
Author: Amazon User

But you should spend another $20 on a good joystick also. Microsoft Flight Simulator 2004 will teach you how to fly a number of real planes. Let me put it to you this way - if you are on a plane and the airhostess asks suddenly over the intercom "Can anyone fly a plane?" and if the answer is - "No one here can", then your next best bet is to go with whoever has the most flight time with Microsoft Flight Simulator 2004... and its all thanks to John and Martha King of King's Air school and Rod Machado, your flight instructor who feature in a couple of hours worth of scripted tutorial videos that play in the games menu and describe everything that could ever possibly want to learn about flying a plane. When you are done with that then you can start reading the couple of thousand pages of documentation that range anywhere from using digital GPS tracking systems to flying with damaged equipment. Let us be clear here for a moment - if you get into it, then you are in it for the long term and will almost certainly save yourself tens of thousands of dollars in real flight lessons because when you go up for real you will know nearly all of it except for actually doing it.

For $20 you are on your way to joining the best and cheapest flight school there is and really the tutorials are the Gem of the box, not to mention the fact that a round the world trip is possible with this simulator, including real-time weather events. I have the latest 256mb Radeon Graphics card and even it has trouble rendering everything on full detail so this game will certainly last a very long time. The 512mb card generation should be able to cope with everything.

As a note there are classic trips you can take like missions - for example the Wright Brothers first flight. There are also plenty of mods and addons for it if you search the internet.

This is a great and educational Simulator. If you like flying then what are you waiting for? It is massive improvement on previous versions of this sim (it has a couple of thousand airports to choose from). There is nothing else even remotely like it.

Awesome Simulator

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 18 / 19
Date: October 24, 2005
Author: Amazon User

One of my dreams is to be a pilot, and unfortunately this may be as close as I'll ever get, but this is an incredible simulator. If you don't watch it, the hours just slip away as you fly across the great spynx, or the niagra falls, or the rocky mountains, or the mississippi river!! And it's soo much fun to take off the runway without radioing for clearance and hearing the control tower yelling at you!! :-) Its awesome!! And I love it!!

Only fun if...

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 13 / 16
Date: November 01, 2005
Author: Amazon User

Okay, I have played this game and I LOVE it! I am in the Civil Air Patrol and this is very realistic... I know piolits that use this game to practice flying. I've read many reviews about bad graphics... Well duh! This game has terrible graphics, IF you have a horrible graphics card! Bottom line - you need a really good computer for this game to be any fun at all. I have a Dell XPS with a ATI Radeon card... But - above all, this game is almost %100 accurate! The instruments and everything from turbulance to airplane stress, this game has it all! If you like airplane simulators, this is the one for you.

The one we have been waiting for

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 13 / 16
Date: August 14, 2004
Author: Amazon User

I got this game a year ago, and last year I hade a very crapy Compaq with integrated graphics and 256Mb RAM. I Ran this game. It was a Huge step from 2002. It was so good, I built a computer with almost the best Hardware in it, including the ATI X800 Pro Which came out not to long ago. When I take screen shots I keep them in the My pictures folder aswell as the real pictures I take with cameras. Sometime I cant tell the difference between what the sim produces and what the Real world produces. The aircraft are the same exact models as they were in Fs2002 with the exception of the vintage ones. That is no worry as you can easily download more aircraft on websites. The weather is great the clouds look real. FYI it will be hard to controll the aircraft with out a joystick or a yoke. Also it will be confusing to the new people at first. There are some good forums out there too. I like um one especially (too bad I can't include URL's). Well that is my breif opinion on the game. It is well worth what ever your paying in fact if it were 100 bucks i would still get it!

FS2004, a new revolution in simulation on a PC.

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 9 / 9
Date: March 07, 2005
Author: Amazon User

Sorry to hear some customers had problems running the program. I would suggest you ask for advice on flightsim website forums which are very helpful and full of helpful fellow simmers and some real pilots who also use the program. Two top sites are: simviation.com and avsim.com

With FS2004, this may just be a new beginning in simulation approaching realism. The day may come when we wear VR goggles and find flight simulation on an everyday PC indistinguishable from the real thing.

However to get the most realistic value out of FS2004 today , addons from third party developers are required. Microsoft simply cannot add and develop all possible features unless FS became a flagship product like Windows. Some of the addon planes simulate systems and avionics up to 95% accurate in terms of completeness. Jetliner addons now have workable and flyable FMC components and flightplans(with data supplied from navdata.at). It's coming to the point where there are much fewer "dummy" cosmetic buttons on the instrument panel except for the emergency circuit breakers. Addon developers also contribute to the programmable scenery system of FS where artists can easily add new airpots , buildings and textures to the land meshes(basically grids of textures). Some of these excellent addon sites are precisionmanuals.com, flight1.com, simmarket.com, fsscene.com ; X-plane may have a more realistic basic flight model, but the massive community and developer following and addon technology(which also allows custom flight modelling development) for FS2004 have all but negated that advantage. It's almost becoming a simming "OS" for flight simulation where the possibilites are seemingly endless. Take the ActiveSky2004 addon for example which does dynamic weather using the cloud generating system of the main FS program.(which can include rain, hail , snow, even thunderstorms and lightning) Cloud layers and type are virtually there. You can see and fly through multiple cloud layers with the realistic effects on visibilty just as if you were flying in real life through the clouds. Fog and mist has never looked better. And that's just one of several fabulous features. To sum up, the value and innovative depth of this version also known as FS9 is just as revolutionary as the old days of FSII on 8-bit PCS.

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