It seems with each new release of MS Flight Sim the graphics get increasingly more detailed and Flight Sim is no different. I also went out and got an additional MB of RAM for my system and noticed with the graphics turned up I did see an increase in my performance. With the graphics settings on high, the ground looked photo-realistic and lots of new little buildings, such as houses or small office buildings, appear when you get close enough to the ground to see them this is a new feature called Auto Generated Scenery.
I also flew very close to Mt. Rainier and it looked incredible. Note: The version I reviewed is labeled "Marketing Copy" with photocopied documentation, so the actual docs in the package may be different. Once again, Microsoft has built upon the previous version of the game to make everything look and feel even more real than before. The addition of several features and planes, such as Multiplayer, ATC, Auto Generated Scenery, and the Cessna Caravan Amphibian certainly make the game much more interesting than previous versions.
And speaking of settings, the game has so many that it can be played by almost anyone at any skill level. Browse games Game Portals. Microsoft Flight Simulator The facility data for gate correction is contained. By Kazuhiro Miyazaki. Scenery incl. AI Traffic Mover V1. For use with TTools. By Thomas Molitor. This is a very high quality sound group for A A A A The wind effect will Includes panel and sounds.
This data is included in the Vinka package with kind permission of RealAir. FS Photoreal Moon Texture. Your email address will not be published. Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment. This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed. Download NOW. On the whole the ATC is reasonably realistic, but it has its limitations - you are stuck with the flight level you filed in your flight plan and neither can you ask for an alternative runway - so we can look forward to it being improved by third party add-ons.
My favorite feature is "progessive taxi" which you can request after pushback; a pink line appears and all you have to do is follow it to get to your runway. Sure, it isn't the way things work in real life, but when you bear in mind that some international airports will turn taxiway lights on and off to guide you, it isn't totally unrealistic, either. Both versions of FS offer the opportunity to experience failed instruments and mechanical systems, which will be useful to many student pilots simulating emergencies, and fun for simmers who just want to try something different.
In addition there is a flight analysis system, which can be used to show deviations from a flight plan and in the Pro version an "instructor" can monitor your progress - and perform limited skills tests - via an internet link.
I haven't had time to test this section of FS yet, but I can see that it is likely to be popular with the VAs. One of the biggest changes in FS is the least obvious. The adventure programming language APL is on it's way out of favor and is only minimally supported in the new version of the sim. This will be of immediate interest to many Virtual Airlines, some of which use adventures extensively.
All is not lost, however, because a new adventure interpreter called "ABL" was used to write all of the FS lessons - ABL should be documented in one of the SDK releases sometime between now and the end of The FS engine is capable of putting out some outstanding graphics and I am sure that many people have already wondered if it is possible to dump the boring old AI planes and replace them with more eye-catching liveries.
The anwer is yes, it can be done, but there is a catch. Even in its default state, FS puts a mind-blowing number of polygons on screen - far more than even CFS2 - and part of the reason why the frame rates are so good is that Microsoft have put some serious thought into texture management.
Autogen for example, uses only two by compressed textures for everything you see on screen and the aircraft texture size is limited to a single by compressed texture, a decision which has already led to criticism of the default planes; but there is a reason for it. Although some users have 64 Mb video cards and Mb cards will appear before long, many people don't even have 32 Mb graphics and run their systems on 16Mb cards or less.
FS98 was quick in 8 Mb, but with all the sliders maxed, but a complex FS airport environment with AI aircraft flying can happily use 64 Mb and more to show the terrain, virtual cockpits, scenery objects and aircraft.
This has implications for how detailed AI planes can be without killing frame rates. In addition to photorealistic airports, the quest for ultimate realism in FS has led to the development of some extraordinarily detailed visual models, using in some cases as many as 30 different x textures. One of the most highly praised visual models uses nearly 14 Mb of compressed textures to paint the plane at dusk and 7 Mb by day. While planes like this are fabulous if you have a system that can handle them, I get numerous emails from people complaining that once loaded, add-on planes won't "skin" properly - the reason is that their CPUs and graphics cards are still thinking about how to get all those textures up on screen at once.
Now imagine the situation with a dozen detailed AI aircraft like my favorite add-on Feel Real Virgin up there, as well as a detailed Boeing in spot plane view. In day time you could be looking at Mb of texture memory just to display the planes, never mind the terrain, buildings, clouds, panels and all the other stuff we can't get along without - not a recipe for good frame rates.
Since frame rate problems were the curse of FS, developers are going to have to learn to make some compromises along the way if we don't want to see a repeat of the problems associated with the packages like Airport Volume 3 release - a fantastic add-on which unfortunately would only run at its best on the very highest spec machines, leaving many buyers disappointed at their inability to run it properly.
I often get asked which are my favorite utilities and I guess this is as good an opportunity to say it as I will get in a while. If any add-on ever deserved the crown of "most useful utility" this would be it, and if it was payware, I would be first in the queue to pay my money. If you enjoy flying with real weather in Flight Simulator, then you should consider buying a copy of FSMeteo and the weather display gauge that has been developed to go with it.
The benefit of this is that if you undertake a long flight, the weather will change with time, an option you do not have in a default installation of FS I have used this excellent little utility for several years and have been consistently impressed with it - and users who can't read the METARs which are used to generate weather by FSMeteo will be delighted to hear that there is now an option to decode the local weather report.
If you use FSMeteo with FS, you should be aware that it takes some time to download upper wind data, so be patient when it starts. The other problem is that a slight technical hiccup means that running FSMeteo will cause ATIS report IDs to be updated far too often in FS, but this is a minor issue that presumably will get fixed in a patch. The new FSMeteo Weather Display allows you to display the weather conditions your plane's current position and at a selected destination throughout a flight via a user installable gauge.
Anyone who enjoys flying big jets will immediately understand the attractions of knowing what the weather is like at the destination, and I can see the weather display becoming extremely popular. FSNavigator is my final choice. The screen shot shows it running in FS, but at the time of writing it runs perfectly well in FS, as long as you ignore various warning messages on loading.
A fix is on the way that will allow it to be fully compatible. FSNavigator is a fantastic piece of payware and every Flight Simulator user should at least take a look at it. The package runs as a module and provides a navigational map with a sophisticated flight planner. Newbies will love FSNav, because if you get lost, all you have to do is hit the F9 key and FSNav will pop up, showing you where all the nearest airports are. Put the mouse pointer over an airport and FSNav will tell you how far away it is and what course you have to fly to get there.
But this is only scratching the surface of the utility. The best news of all is that the first twenty session of use are for free, so there is plenty of time to decide if you like it before you have to buy. This might be a good time to put in a plea for developers. Microsoft's single-mindedness means that they can be a tough company to love and while the new version is fantastic, it suffers from a fatal flaw that has dogged Flight Simulator over the years.
While it is abundantly clear that the FS team are personally inclined to go out of their way to help third-party developers, somewhere between the programmers and the upper echelons of Microsoft's management, something has gone horribly wrong, as it always does.
A large part of the reason why Flight Simulator is such a great package is that there are so many add-ons for it - this is why I and many others have never put much time into rival products. If you buy FS you buy with it an enormous pool of third party programming experience; look at Quito in the screen shot below - there is a fabulous FS scenery for it, just imagine what it will look like in FS!
But, and this is a vast, corpulent, bloated but, every time a new version of Flight Simulator is released, Microsoft implement new routines and variables and don't tell the developers about them. Wait for the SDK! But when the Software Development Kits come out, unless FS is completely untypical, they come late and poorly documented, leaving developers struggling trying to find out how vital pieces of Flight Simulator work and, in the end, delivering worse products than they might to end users like you and I.
If it isn't an actual Microsoft policy to do this, it seems to reflect what appears to be a philosophy in the company that FS add-on development shouldn't be made too easy. Not only is this short-sighted, but it has actually driven developers away from Flight Simulator in desperation. Microsoft cannot rely on churning developers like this and FS offers a great opportunity to break with the tradition and set off in a new partnership.
Designers are getting tired of the endless cycle of having to develop solutions to problems that wouldn't exist if Microsoft went the extra mile and made the code that little bit more accessible. If the same thing happens with , I can see that users will really begin to lose out, as some of the more experienced third party programmers give up and try their hand at something else more rewarding, like the solution to Fermat's Last Theorem.
By now some of you will be wondering if I am talking about the same sim that I previewed a little while back.
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