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Microsoft Flight Simulator X Deluxe DVD Review (continued)
More User Submitted Microsoft Flight Simulator X Deluxe DVD Reviews
Date: 2008-05-08
Great flight sim
Initially I had trouble installing until I found that my DVD drive was failing. Once installed and patched with the latest update, it is working great. It has some great improvements over FS 2004. I have only crashed once while trying to make my landing on the bridge going out between Coronado Island from San Diego. lol
Great fun and learning sim. The Deluxe version costs a little more but has much more content.
Date: 2008-05-02
Awesome!
I wasn't sure what to expect when I first got this program, but was pleasantly surprised by the detail in the soft ware. I'm not a pilot and enjoy the tutorials with interactive information. I still can't fly a helicopter! The minuses are types of aircraft available and texture of landscape, but these are easily remedied by free updates from their website and links to after market add-ons.
Warning!!! This program requires a lot of space and you may find yourself wanting to go and try the real thing!
I now have a greater appreciation for what aircrews go through to fly aircraft.
Have fun flying!
Date: 2008-04-28
Unprofessional
The graphics are average. The actual flying in unrealistic. No airplane that I have found in this program will capture the localizer or glideslope on an ILS flight. The switching back and forth between approach and center then back to approach and so on and so on is not how it happens in real life. Although this version boasts some new airplanes it took away a few of the good ones like the Cessna 182. This program needs some work from a real pilot and air traffic controller if it is ever to be realistic.
Date: 2008-04-17
Takes some tweaking but worth it
If you simply stick the DVDs in and go "click-click-click" you are going to hate this game. I have a very high-end machine and was getting frame rates as low as 1-2 fps! I was shocked!
My system:
Geforce 8800 GTS 640MB graphics card
E6600 cpu, 4GB mem
Win XP Pro SP2
However, if you scour the web for "FSX tweaks" and spend the time to carefully adjust the sliders and plow through the fsx.cfg file, you will end up with the greatest flight simulator there is! This is a game that needs lots and lots of help to draw out its greatness. Whenever I think about all the work I've had to do to get it to this point, I get really angry at MS for not doing a better job of customizing the software to your hardware (which they could easily do) automatically during installation instead of leaving all that up to us as the sim community. Still, when you finally get it right, the game is soooo sweet that it's pretty easy to get past the hassle.
I've had all the MSFS versions since 98 and this is the first one that I haven't felt the need to go out and download all sorts of third party stuff for. There is enough in the standard package (although I have bought Acceleration) to keep me enthused. The only exception to this is FSUIPC. As far as I'm concerned, FSUIPC4, by Pete Dowson, is a must. I have always complained that the FS flight models just do not feel right. There is a sluggishness to the controls and the planes just do not fly stable somehow (at least that's been my experience). FSUIPC really improves the flight characteristics of the airplane. I finally decided to spring for purchasing FSUIPC4 and set up all my controls to work through it rather than the game itself. In fact, I just went to the game settings panel and disabled all joystick input! The results are wonderful! I can now trim my aircraft precisely and the flight is rock solid.
With the release of SP2 (you get SP2 if you install Acceleration), frame rates got better and the game behaves better in general. SP2 is also a must.
Here is what I like about FSX:
The graphics are fantastic. The terrain looks almost photographic and the cockpit and general aircraft graphics are just wonderful.
The virtual (3-D) cockpit has arrived. I never used it in FS9 but now I very rarely pop up the 2-D pit as I can see so clearly and have no problems clicking the hotspots on the VC.
ATC is greatly improved over FS9. ATC would get so annoying in FS9 that I got to where I didn't even want to fool with it. No so in FSX. You no longer get stupid commands from controllers and things are much more realistic in that regard.
I absolutely love the missions. Now, you can fly through hoops, do rescue missions where stuff is blowing up all around you, interact with your "co-pilot" and change the object of the mission in mid flight, etc. I'm still having a ball going through the missions and purchasing the Acceleration pack was largely so I could get some more missions.
The selection of aircraft is very adequate in FSX. The helicopters are actually flyable (for the first time) in FSX. I have really gotten hooked on the missions where you fly one of the choppers. I suppose FSUIPC has a lot to do with how much more reasonable it is to fly these things now.
The viewing system has been improved and is quite reasonable. If you use TrackIR, you will be very pleased with how natural it feels with this game.
Weather, much better autogen objects, more accurate airports, etc. are all huge improvements over what's come before. This is really a great simulation.
Here's what I don't like about FSX:
I've already griped about FSX's inability to sense your hardware and set reasonable defaults. That's just pathetic in my view.
It is inexcusable that FSUIPC has to exist. No offense to Pete Dowson and his really great product. It's just that MS should provide this as part of the game. I would be embarrassed to know that there was a guy making a living "fixing" the basic flight characteristics of my flight simulator! This is fundamental. It is a FLIGHT simulator after all.
I'm not a big fan of Rod Machado and all his silliness. Ok, that's a personal thing I know but I just can't deal with trying to go through these otherwise useful training missions because of all his ridiculous comments. Enough on that. Hopefully you will like Rod and appreciate his "humor" more than I do. In fairness, I have gone through all the training missions and they are actually quite good.
So, in summary, this is really a great flight simulator but requires extensive research and configuration to get it to where it's playable. If not for that, this would be a five star product.
Date: 2008-04-08
Initial thoughts and system comments - good
It's been years since I've messed with flight simulators and I recently built a new fast system and was in search of a game to 'show off' my new hardware. A guy at work mentioned FSX and said it would probably run well on my machine which has an Intel Dual Core E8400 (3GHz), 4GB DDR2 RAM and a 4 disk 0+1 RAID system.
I installed the DVD tonight and played for about 20 minutes. The installation took about 15 minutes. During gameplay, one core was pegged and the other wasn't doing much. Details looked really good.
I then downloaded SP1 and installed it. CPU usage went down (it seems) so I decided to move ALL the detail sliders to the right (thinking this would really bog down my system). They managed to use multiple cores and my system was now using nearly 100% CPU and the details were incredible! I was highly impressed!! I've been playing for a couple hours now, and it's time to get to sleep so I can go to work tomorrow, but this flight sim is awesome!! I'm buying the acceleration pack...(hope it goes as well as this did)
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