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Microsoft Flight Simulator 2004: A Century of Flight Review (continued)
More User Submitted Microsoft Flight Simulator 2004: A Century of Flight Reviews
Date: 2007-11-11
GREAT Simulation!
The last flight simulator that I play was the FS98. I love flying, but this game just wasn't enough for me. I played some time, but didn't like it too much.
A few weeks ago I saw some screenshots of FSX and I decide to give it a try. I read the reviews and notice that you would need a high end machine to play it fine. But the 2004 seems nice to me and I add it to my cart. I must say that was one of the best things I have done in a while. This game is awesome.
This game runs ecellent on my Pc with everything on high (Athlon 64 X2 4200+ EE, 1GB RAM, EVGA 7600GT).
Now I'll tell you some greats things about this game.
Weather, the clouds looks soooo real. And the dynamic weather is a great improvement and it gives the game a lot of realism. The weather themes are very nice, light rain, heavy rain, storms, snows, thunderstorms. The weather took my breath away when I played the game for the first time.
ATC, it's feels like you have real people tracking you. They control your flight if you have a flight plan, if you don't have one, you can ask the ATC to keep track on you. You can hear ATC comunicating with other planes, giving clearances, warnings, etc.
In FS98 you were flying alone in the huge sky, now is more real. In your flight you can see a lot of planes. In the airpots I have to wait my turn for takeoff (because other planes are landing or in takeoff). I have Seen planes near the airports waiting for landing.
The planes are great for me. I love flying the boeing 777 and 747. And I have downloades a lot.
The sceneries are good, but I think they could be better. But that's something you can fix. I have downloaded a lot of sceneries. But when you are at a high altittude, the grafics are awesome. The beautiful blue sky with all these "real" clouds. And I love the scenery at nights. The airports are awesome at nights.
Don't even try to play this game without a joystick (I don't know how some people buy this game without one). I have a logitech extreme 3D. But I'm buying a better system now (because I'm going to play this Simulator a lot!)
If you love flying... I don't have to say anything else. And for the price, it's the best buy ever. You need to have this game. This game is not for everyone, some people may find it boring. But that's not my case.
I will be playing this one for a long while. FSX is not on my mind for now.
Date: 2007-10-17
Good news for simulator buffs
I found Flight Simulator 2004 to be quite good. The price was reasonable, especially at certain places, and the installation was very simple. The only item that I customised was to shorten up the installation directory name; I hate those long names. There is an online upgrade to FS9.1 from Microsoft, but I've not yet had a chance to try it.
I didn't buy FS2004 for itself, but rather for all the add-on packs that are sold by third parties. You can purchase additional planes and high resolution scenery. My machine is a modest 1.6GHz with 512MB of RAM and a 3D graphics card with 64MB of memory on it. I'm running WinXP SP2, and so far have had no issues with either the simulator or the add-ons.
I've always wanted to fly the British WWII Spitfires, but not in any kind of combat game. So now with FS2004 and the add-ons, I can just tool around the English countryside (in hi-res) with the various models.
Date: 2007-09-19
A Really Great Simulator
This is a great FS and a good alternative to FSX, especially to guys like me with a basic home computer running average memory and graphics. I had a little trouble in the beginning using the training portion. The program kept closing, but I reported the error to Microsoft and it hasn't happened since. A word to the wise, buy a quality joystick, not easy to modulate the controls via the keyboard.
Date: 2007-09-18
How can anyone like this atrocious product?
Yes, I installed it and got it to work. I have a decent (although not the fastest) system (would have been state-of-the-art in 2005). The result? Graphics are terrible (annoying pixelation even with antialiasing). Texturing is amateurish (I teach graduate computer graphics and even my students write better renderers). But, what would one expect in exchange for an Andrew Jackson, right? Right, however, the most humiliating, demeaning, and frustrating experience is MS' paranoia and total disdain for its customers: you HAVE TO keep the last CD inserted when you start the program (still better than the new FSX `registration'). The CD's themselves are copy protected (so, if you scratch your copy, be prepared to pay for another one). I could have used simple duplication tools to back my copy up but why? This junk still goes into the trash bin! Check out FlightGear instead: it works better, maybe crashes just as often, lacks a few bells and whistles but it supports most of the same hardware (CH products yoke and pedals, nVidia and ATI cards etc.) runs on ALL major operating systems (including Windows XP), has better graphics, and, best of all, it is free! Between being frustrated with MS greed and arrogance and tweaking my computer, I choose the computer any day.
Date: 2007-09-11
old stuff
Overall I would say it's a good game, but I was disappointed to find out there was FSX which I should have bought instead of this FS 2004. It was presented as the first FS game to me in my search, and I just clicked add to cart in excitement, cos I hadn't played a flight Sim game for over 10yrs. I owned the 1st flight sim donkey years ago, so when I read the review on this one it excited me. I started playing it with excitment and interest till I found out about FSX and read it's reviews. However, FS 2004 impressed me in the almost real details and facts embedded in the training school section especially. I enjoyed it while it lasted (that was before FSX punched a hole and let out all the hot air). I'm restraining myself from spending further on FSX. I only just resumed trying to play games, as I am an extremely busy man. We'll see how it goes.
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