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128 of 134 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
From a pilot, October 31, 2006
Fun:5.0 out of 5 stars
I am a general aviation pilot, flying single engine fixed wing Cessna type aircraft (4 seater). Flight Simulator X gives the feeling of actually piloting a plane. The plane responds to the controls much like "the real thing".
Like other reviewers, I must agree that you must have a great computer. I have a dual processor Pentium D 940 running 3.2 Ghz, 4 gb RAM, 512 mb NVIDIA graphic card. On my system, with maxed out graphics and scenery, it runs very well, with only an occasional slight bump in frame-rates. I am somewhat disappointed with the scenery, which is good in major cities, but still basic in the country-side. The terrain is good everywhere, but the structures lack detail in other than the cities. The detail on airport runways and taxiways is terrific! Aircraft list is extensive. I recommend it.
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63 of 66 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Most fun I've had on my PC in as long as I can remember, November 8, 2006
Fun:5.0 out of 5 stars
I got my copy of this edition a week ago. The last copy of FS I owned was the 2000 version so I was about ready for an upgrade! I dropped the first DVD in and installed it; it took a good half an hour to get through all three DVD's. Then I fired it up. I was immediately prompted for what kind of user was I - novice, experienced FS user or an actual Pilot. I picked novice as I'd not played a game like this one in at least four years and needed all the help I could get. It then talked me though some basics and let me control a plane already in the air at one point and that was cool - very easy intro; I was looking at the plane from behind so no confusing instruments or what-have-you. Felt like an accomplishment!
After this it suggested I go through the tutorials, and told me where to find them, and even though I was itching to just take off from a small airport very close to my home in a Cessna or something and just get flying, maybe try to find my house - I resisted the urge and dutifully found the first mission.
It was in a microlite, which is nice and easy to see out of, which was already flying in the air when the mission started. I just had to navigate it though some huge green squares hanging improbably in mid-air, which I just about managed after the second go. I then wandered about, and found it very cool to see a small boat whizzing along a coast I seemed to be over; I worked out how to get down close to it and was racing along just above it! Well, briefly - I got too low and fell in the drink :-p
I only have a keyboard and mouse and found it devilishly difficult to control the thing with the keyboard; it was a little easier with the mouse. I then undertook several other missions, where I learnt to take off, and land, and navigate around the ground in an airport. The computer talked me through the whole thing; it was fairly straightforward and tremendous fun.
I found after a couple of hours of periodically losing control of my various aircraft that I really needed a joystick. I rushed out to my local electrical retailer and bought the Saitek X52 flight System, which costs a third less here on Amazon btw, and I can't recommend it highly enough. I didn't even need to restart the game; I just plugged it in and the whole thing worked immediately. It is so much easier to control the aircraft with this set-up; made a massive difference.
The most fun I've had so far was the mission that introduces you to Jet's. I found myself in the seat of a medium-sized passenger jet, on a slip-road by a runway. In front of me, through the windshield, I could see another passenger jet, ahead of me in the line for the runway. The computer started explaining to me some of the gauges in front of me, about how it was a glass cockpit and so on. I looked around using the "Virtual Cockpit" view, which is ever so lifelike. I found myself pushing the buttons on the display (prompted by the computer) and it was just so cool. All this while "we" (the computer, playing the co-pilot, and the plane in front) waited for a 747 to come in to land, which it duly did. Then the plane in front moved in to position to take off. The tower came over the speakers, and the computer answered it for me, and told me that we should move forward. I can't describe how real it felt to move the thrust forward a little, wheel the plan around and get in position behind the plane in front; I was as nervous in that simulation as I was on my first ever driving lesson. I was worried I was holding people up in the line behind me! That the tower might get impatient! Anyway the first plane took off, and after more instruction I got myself on to the runway as the computer, still playing my copilot, jabbered away about heights, angles, vectors and some similar stuff I was too nervous to take in. Then we had clearance from the tower to take off and I was time to crank the engines and get off the ground! I managed it just fine, mostly by luck rather than taking in the computers' tuition, and followed the computers directions and managed to navigate to a nearby airport and *nearly* landed (I clipped the trees at the front of the airport <sigh>). I did it the second time perfectly; the feeling of achievement was just exhilarating!
There are several helicopter missions - I couldn't do those. I will go back and try them later but I found that guy, even with my whizzy new joystick setup, *HARD* so for now I'll stick to planes!
Later I tried the online thing; I found a game hosted by somebody who was prepared for newbies like myself and joined it. I neglected to ask for permission to take off but made it without incident (or rebuke from the tower), and then pottered about the airport flying very low and making a complete nuisance of myself. Finally the guy in the Tower asked that I get above 2,000 feet, which I duly did; when I didn't answer he must have realized that I didn't know how the radio worked and he attempted to explain it to me. This was all via verbal communication, btw. He had a Scottish accent and he was very good about it. I shall go back when I have more of a clue.
I finally tried taking off from an airport near my house and following the roads - it worked! I picked the microlite as I had got the hang of that one and it's nice and slow so it's good for low-flying and checking out the view. There is a large road bridge near my house and I found that easily enough; of course the houses and other buildings around the roads are made up but I still felt like it was familiar and that was cool.
In summary, I can't remember the last time I was so immersed in a computer game - I found the learning process just utterly exhilarating. I recommend everybody give it a try :-)
As for performance, I initially had my graphics settings cranked to Ultimate and got about one or two frames a second so wound them back to somewhere in the middle and it's fine. No doubt my next computer will make it look better which is something to look forward to :-) BTW I am running Vista which maybe helped I don't know. The specs of my notebook, for the curious who care are below.
- Toshiba Tecra M4 with 2Gb of RAM and a NVIDEA GeForce Go 6600 TE 128Mb
- I ran the game off of an external Maxtore 7200 RPM drive / 16 Mb Cache
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214 of 238 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Might be worth buying in a year or two..., November 5, 2006
Fun:1.0 out of 5 stars
I should preface this review with a statement:
I've been a fan of the flight sim franchise since I first played Bruce Artwicks' version on Apple II. And no other software title has inspired me to spend as much money over the years to upgrade my pc hardware as much as Flight Simulator. I know this kind of game demands the latest and greatest, and generally, I have no qualms about making this kind of investment when a new FS version comes out. And I really wanted to like this game.
However, I really believe that Microsoft has over-done it this time. What I mean is, I think it will be about a year before the hardware that is required to run this game at acceptable speed and display quality settings will even be available to the average person. Like I said, I expected to need high-end hardware to run FS X, I did not expect that the hardware required would be stuff that isn't even for sale yet. Now, if you're willing (and can afford) to go out today and buy an ultra-super-extreme-high-end gaming rig, with the very fastest core 2 duo cpu available and a water-cooled quad-SLI video subsystem, you can probably get this pig to fly, but if you don't, you won't have much fun with this "game."
Case in point- my machine has an Athlon 64 X2 4800+ cpu, 2Gig of RAM, and an ATI 1900XT video card with 512M RAM. While not quite "bleeding edge," I think by all rational standards this machine is a pretty solid gaming rig. I can play FEAR, QUAKE 4, LOCK-ON, and a half-dozen other graphics-intensive games with all the settings turned up to MAX and I still get very fast frame rates. But when I loaded up this dog, it was like watching a slide show. I am not kidding - 5 or 10fps, tops. Even after turning everything in the graphics and scenery settings way down, turing autogen OFF, it barely got up to 15-20fps. And often it would still dip below 10. This is not a playable frame rate for flight simulation- not even close.
Frankly, I almost think this version is a step backwards- I say this because if you turn down the display settings so that you get flyable frame-rates, the view out the window will look considerably worse than FS2004. By comparision I can fly FS2004, with detail and video settings at or near max, AND MegaScenery installed, and I consistently get 35-45fps. It appears that Microsoft is selling this title primarily based on the improvements in the eye candy, but in order to get that eye candy and have reasonable frame rates, you need to spend at least $3000 to $4000 on a completely new and very, VERY high-end machine. If you're OK with that, knock yourself out. Hell, for that amount of money you could almost get a real pilot's license. But for the vast majority of people out there, I would say, save your money, because FS2004 looks and flies MUCH better on today's hardware.
MAYBE, when the Vista version comes out, AND we give the hardware guys about a year to catch up, then FS X will be a playable game. Because it's sure not right now. =(
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