Customer Reviews

Microsoft Flight Simulator 2004: A Century of Flight

5 star:		(49)
4 star:		(32)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(10)
1 star:		(9)

 

 

I've owned every version of MS Flight Simulator, since years before Microsoft bought Sublogic's Flight Simulator and made it the basis for Microsoft Flight Simulator.

I've spend many entertaining hours playing Microsoft Flight Simulator, and for the most part, they've added new and very, appealing and worth-while features in each new release. This is also the case in Flight Simulator 2004. I upgraded the day FS 2004 was released, and I've never looked back.

Microsoft Flight Simulator 2004 is a highly entertaining, very realistic looking, and quite realistic acting flight simulator. Overall, I consider it the best Flight Simulator out there. Some people will argue that X-Plane has more realistic flight models and they're probably right. MS FS however, is a close second, and when it comes to the overall gaming experience and look and feel of everything - the MS FS is a clear winner!

IF YOU'RE UPGRADING FROM FS 2002:
* Greatly improved dynamic weather system - You can now have the system automatically update itself in the background with real weather conditions as often as every 15 minutes. The clouds look a lot more realistic than in FS 2002.
* New weather themes - Gives you both static and dynamic weather themes such as a brewing thunderstorm etc.
* Enhanced ATC (Air Traffic Control) - Altitude changes in flight, ATC at all airports, request new flight plan en-route (especially useful if your current one gets cancelled).
* Better 3D virtual cockpits
* Some scenery enhancements, such as signs on taxiways. Most scenery changes are quite subtle.
* Old GPS system has finally been scrapped, and instead replaced by two real life looking Garmin GPS's (slightly stripped down versions, but quite impressive still - Color and all).
* The rain has been improved - Looks more realistic.
* New planes of course - all of them are historic aircraft such as Douglas DC-3, the "Kitty Hawk", the "Spirit of St. Louis", Piper Cub etc.

IF YOU'RE NEW TO MICROSOFT FLIGHT SIMULATOR, OR YOU HAVEN'T UPGRADED IN A WHILE:
* Real-World weather - with dynamic updates and dynamic weather changes. Multiple cloud layers. Plain and simple, the clouds look fantastic!!! The rain and snow need some improvement, but is still very good.
* Worldwide scenery with accurate 3D terrain.
* Scenery Auto-Generation - Buildings are generated on the fly based on what type of area you're flying over.
* More than 24000 worldwide airports - a lot of them very realistic looking.

* 2D and 3D cockpits.
* Various types of planes - Boeing 737, 747, 777, Learjet, Cessna 172 and 182, Extra 300, a couple of more propeller planes, a sailplane, a helicopter, and of course all the historic planes that are new to this version.
* Jeppeson NavData database - ILS, VORs, NDB data etc.
* Landmarks all over the world - Eiffel tower, Statue of Liberty, Alcatraz, Empire State Building, USS Nimitz, the Red Square/Kremlin in Moscow etc.
* Multiplayer capability - Can play over network or internet (MSN Zone).

I still miss the World Trade Center Towers, and the Concorde, but realistically enough, they're both gone from this version. *sniff*

Conclusion: I highly recommend this game, both as an upgrade or if you're buying MS FS for the first time... FIVE STARS!!!

I am in love with avaiation, and therefore FS has become a part of my computing experience. I purchased FS 1998, and though it was a tolerable product, I in no way felt that it was a great simulation of flight. It just didn't have the look and feel of flight. However, I was blown away by the progress made in FS 2002. Though the clouds were not always realistic (modeling gave them a two-dimension look that was disconcerting to say the least), I thought that the overall experience was pretty good.

I saw FS 2004, and I thought it was probably mot much of an improvement based on reviews I had read. Let me just say that the first reviews I read were wrong. FS 2004 is a major improvement over FS 2002, and it stands as a all-time gret product for aviation buffs like me.

Improvements:

1. Weather: for the first time, flying on FS2004 simulates almost perfectly the experience of actually flying. Clouds have the mist look when you fly through them. The weather systems seem to generate randomly, just as in the non-virtual world. Also, I like the weather themes that can generate snow conditions, thunderstorms, and fair weather with high altitude stratocumulus clouds. In short, the weather is a fantastic approximation of reality. FS 2004 truly represents a quantum leap in simulations. (although IL-2 still has the best clouds).

2. ATC: FS2002 had the feel of real ATC but with some stupid problems. For example, if you fly using IFR (insturment flight rules), and you failed to reach your assigned altitude, the ATC would terminate their services (what the heck is that about?). If you wanted to fly at a different altitude you couldn't. Also, you couldn't change you IFR route, or change from VFR (visual) to IFR in flight. FS2004 makes those changes. For the first time you can change your altitude, you can change your route, and you can switch between IFR and VFR. Yea!.
Another big improvement is the ATC feel itself. For the first time, I actually feel as though I am flying in a populated world. Lots of traffic at big airports, just like in reality. Fly into San Francisco International, and you may just see airplanes lined up to land. This is a big improvement.

3. GPS: In FS2002, the GPS was very basic and frustratingly difficult to use. It was based on a second generation handheld, and consequently, there were few features. The GPS in FS2004 ahs lots of features, is far easier to use because of a new interface window that you can access in flight (see above), and you can switch to terrain features and in-flight messages. It is a more realistic approximation of a GPS device you would use in flight.

4. The World: FS2004 adds signs at airport runways so you can see where your going! It lso adds more features to the world around you, such as construction cranes, and different buildings not seen in previous models of FS. Although I have noticed a new "Chick-fil-a" looking restaurant, I can state definitively that no such place exists in San Diego, CA next to the Lindbergh field runway. However, the scenery looks a lot better than FS2002. Little details really add up and make flying in FS2004 much better. The airports really look great. Denver Int'l looks very realistic now, as does Seattle-Tacoma. ( I would rate more but I just havent had the chance to fly all over to world yet!)

5. Computer: For some reason, FS2004 sees to run better on my machine than did FS2002. No "slide shows" (bad framerate) that I have found yet, and the computer seems to run better with FS2002. I like this very much. I haven't added to many third-party add-ons with FS2004 yet, but it just seems to function better than does FS2002, so perhaps FS2002 had some unresolved framerate problems.

6. Open architecture: In general, MSFS has open architecture which allows aviation geeks like me to ad-on scenery, and hundreds of planes, general, military and specific airlines as well. Most of the products and downloads I have found are excellent and work well with FS2004.

Complaints:
Given how I feel about this product, I have very few complaints.
I wish the ground textures were better. However, you can either download or purchase products that have photo-realistic scenery, so you can really fly though England of Souhern California and really recognize the ground.
Also, I wish the aiports had more realistic aircraft in them. Sometimes flying through LAX, I realize that Cessna would probably not be at that airport.
However, these are minor probelems, and overall Microsoft FS2004 is an excellent product and is well worth a purchase.

I am a private pilot and granted no simulator (under a million dollars) will truly simulate flying, Microsoft at least gives good practice on various skills on REAL WORLD airports. I truly enjoy what Microsoft has done with their Flight Simulator series.

I am impressed on the details at even the smallest airports, generally speaking, even the hangars are in close proximity to where they truly are. Rivers are in the right place, and most highways are running the right way as well! The scenery is close enough that I can manage to use pilotage and dead reckoning to find places and airports without the use of a map or GPS. In my mind that is impressive for software that costs under $50!!!

Although nothing can replace the experience you get in a real aircraft, flying on MSFS can certainly help you with familiarizing with various approaches. With weather settings you can easily bring visibility down to 0 until 10 feet off the runway! I prefer the true to life clouds as opposed to just a white or gray screen that some professional simulators use.

The variety of aircraft is impressive, from GA aircraft all the way up to Airliners and everything in-between, whatever your pleasure is, you can be quite sure that you'll find it. I also have been able to download many of the aircraft I have flown as a pilot. Although they do handle differently on a simulator (as should be expected) I still enjoy the detail that has been put into each and every one of them to make me feel as if I am right in the cockpit, without paying the fuel prices!!!

A while back I gave Microsoft's Flight Simulator 2004 one star (see review from 23 November) where in I took issue with MS's listed minimal system requirements ...Windows 98/2000/XP/Me, 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... I ran it at those specs (on a Windows 98 machine) and as I noted in my review... "I couldn't leave the ground at more than 4-8 frames per second (fps) or cruise at more than 11 or 12 fps with settings a rock bottom! The world outside my cockpit was jagged and twisted as my 777 chugged painfully through the not so friendly skies like a wounded wildebeest trying in vain to outrun a charging cheetah!"... well although I still stand by my disgust for misleading minimum requirements stickered to the side of software boxes (Microsoft not being the only offender) something wonderful happened on the way to my virtual airport the other day, I slapped down the cash for a new system...
Presario 8000T, Pentium 4 - 3.20E GHz processor, XP Home Edition, 256MB DDR ATI Radeon 9600 (Direct X 9) video card, 1 GB DDR / PC3200 Ram, 160GB 7200 rpm Hard Drive... and what a wondrous world I discovered at ground level and 35,000 feet! With all settings to high including "Building Storms" selected in weather and AI aircraft set to 100 percent my performance has jumped to the stunningly beautiful and silky smooth new heights of 25 to 35 fps on the ground at large busy airports (Chicago O'Hare or Miami International) and 40+ at smaller strips like say Rapid City, SD or Madison, WI! "Volumetric" clouds build in the distance, spraying twisted flashes of lightning across the sky as you would see in real life and as I climb through these true to life cotton balls, I'm seemingly enveloped by a fine mist, breaking in and out of the dense cover and able to spy specks of light from towns and highways far below. Gone are the 2D "sprite" clouds from previous incarnations of MSFS, this truly is as real as it gets! And did I mention my frame rates remain at a rock solid 24-30+ fps as I slice through the weather just beyond the safety of my cockpit?! (Note: the images you see on your NTSC TV only run at 30 fps with PAL and film running at 24 fps) ...to top it off my frame rates frequently soar to 45-50+ fps and beyond when the atmosphere opens up! On a personal note may I recommend flying at dusk? Brilliant! The terrain fading smoothly into a hazy horizon and the setting sun, wow! MSFS 2004 is truly a world to behold with too many extra's technically and visually to list here, just know however that there's a realism and flight model setting for every level of experience (or lack there of) and the graphics (if you can take advantage of them) are nothing short of stunning! You can ran run it on a lesser machine to be sure but for best results a P4 2ghz + machine with a bare minimum of 512 DDR ram and a 128 Mb (Direct X 9 compatible) video card is recommended. And oh yes don't forget (at the very least) a good joy stick, say a Logitech Extreme 3D Pro (5 stars) with twist handle (for rudder) to make your day of flying complete.

BUYER BEWARE: Although it has always confounded me why some software developers insist on
setting system requirement so low when in fact you need a much larger to machine to just get a
title up and running (smoothly)... it's not lost on most people why they do it, simply put they need
to get gamers into the seats. So what if they have to stretch the truth a bit to sell units, after all, if
the program will at least load at the stated system requirements who's hurt right? To be honest
the developer, publisher and consumer. Now there's no question our friends at Microsoft
develope the best flight sim programs in the world (I gave Flight Sim 2002 5 stars) but stand by
for the dirty little truth about Flight Sim 2004, at the bare minimum system requirements of...
Windows 98/2000/XP/Me, 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,
(as stated on the pretty tin box) it's questionable if you could run it at all. I tested it on a PII 450,
256 MB Ram, Win 98 machine with a 32 MB ATI video card with current drivers and found that
I couldn't leave the ground at more than 4-8 frames per second (fps) or cruise at more than 11 or
12 fps with settings a rock bottom! The world outside my cockpit was jagged and twisted as my
777 chugged painfully through the not so friendly skies like a wounded wildebeest trying in vain
to outrun a charging cheetah! Now if you've got the flight sim bug and are ready to plunk down a
heap of cash on the latest greatest that Microsoft has to offer in flight simming but you don't have
a high end machine (say a P4, 2.2 GHZ, XP machine with at least 256 MB of ram and a huge,
very fast hard drive) to launch your pretty aluminum cylinder into the stratosphere take a deep
breath and spend less on more... Flight Sim 2002, which on the test machine I mentioned above
runs fairly smoothly (16fps-40fps +) with options set nominally, it may not be quite as gorgeous
as you'd like but at the very least it will run and will no doubt allow you to get your feet wet until
Christmas when you get that mother of all gaming machines you've been hinting at all year long.
P.S. Dear Microsoft, how about listing the your recommended system requirements? After all, not everybody's as well off as Billy Gates. :-)

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.

When I first sat down to write this, I planned to be ecstatic. After all, the weather is more "dynamic" as some have said. When I'm flying, the plan even jerks around a little, like it would in wind, for example.

Then there's the new planes. The DC3 is my favorite. But the Ford Trimotor is a trip, as well as the Piper Cub. And the Wright Bros. plane--flown first 100 years ago today--is a challenge, very interesting.

And, while the program may be large, I don't have some of the problems I do with Combat Flight Simulator 3, e.g., the program running too slowly, and the plane stopping here and there in the middle of a dogfight. (!)

But I must agree with another reviewer that it should have been an addition or supplement to 2002. It's still pretty much the same program with a few additions.

Mind you, I'm enthused about the flight simulators, have gotten each one. They fulfill my desire to fly, which I cannot afford to learn to do. So I'm inherently enthused about the simulators. But, again, this may have been better a little cheaper as a supplement to the earlier simulator.

If you have or get it, though, enjoy it. Note that I'm comparing it to perfection, not saying it's a bad program.

FS2004 is really FS2002 SP1. The scenery is all the same, but the environmental engine is completely changed.

The new cloud generator is awesome, clouds will actually build up, and frontal systems will look like frontal systems. ATC will now let your select alternate airports, and change altitude enroute.

Major improvements:
Frame Rates
Cloud generator
ATC

Bottom line, is this release really fixes stuff that should've been in FS 2002, but it's still a must buy if you're serious about flight sim.

I have owned a flight simulation game before but found it to be too advanced for a beginner like me. When I read the description of FS 2004 that offered a Piper Cub as one of the aircraft I was intrigued enough to want to buy the game. After the easy installation and simple start-up, I immediately went for the Piper Cub flight and now I'm hooked. I can easily see how this sim will allow me to progress easily to more advanced planes. In the meantime I am really excited about the outstanding graphics and the sophistication of this sim. Just for fun try flying a helicopter around Paris or Rome to view the beautiful cities. Or try flying a Piper Cub over Los Vegas at night. Be careful though because you will find yourself not paying attention to your flying.

This game is absolutely terrific as are the sights, sounds and realism. If you have not bought this flight sim game yet, shame on you.

I basically bought a new computer and joystick for this game! I fly for real, and this is the closest it comes to doing the real thing. The visuals just keep getting better, although you gotta get a good graphics card to handle them now. The weather improvements are dramatic, although they still have some problems. Compared to the last version though, they're awesome. The only downside is that the new planes aren't that cool - I flew all of them once, and then returned to the old ones I flew in the last version. Of course you can always download others off the web (the fighter jets are fun for a while) but the flight rules for those planes are not at all accurate.

If you just want an action shoot them up game, don't get this. This is for people that want to feel like they're flying a real plane. I play this game almost everyday - even if it's a short hop from Midway to Ohare.