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Flight Sim 2004


NightCrawler

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I'm thinking about it... but CFS3 doesn't want to run on my machine and from what I understand FS2004 uses the same kinda of graphics engine... so I leary about spending my money on it to have it sit on a shelf.

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The CFS and FS series was identical engine wise, with just a few changes here and there, up until CFS3. CFS3 introduced its own highly modded engine, and while it may be based off the FS one, they've done a lot of work to it that appears to be far from stable/effecient. People who've used both FS2002 and FS2004 seem to have much better luck and fewer problems.

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Yes, CFS3 gave me a lot of problems and it's now sitting on my shelf collecting dust.

FS2002 and 2004 never gave me a problem. I just got my copy of 2004 and it runs very smoothly.

Useless to say I think that MS Flight Simulator is ESSENTIAL to learning how to fly an airplane. I use MS FS to practice my real-life lessons on the Cessna 172 in the game before I go up and after I come back from the lesson.

I have to say that the realism of the game is astounding. It's not 100% close to the real thing. There are a few things missing but other than that the game is exceptionally good for practice of real-life aviation.

Some of the things that are off:

1 - the nose of the Cessna is missing. Sounds like nothing huh? it isn't. In real life the nose of the Cessna is VERY MUCH THERE. It's a big factor in how much you can see in front of you and while the cessna is nowhere near as bad as a BF109, when you climb or you are flaring over the runway it will hide the runway completely and your only view of the runway will be from the side windows.

2 - I get the feeling that the flight model is a little bit off: when I pull the power in the real Cessna that thing almost stops in its tracks, like I used an areo-brake (I guess the prop works that way). The MS FS one takes a while to slow down instead. Not by much, mind you. The difference can be felt in the pattern around an airport. If you try to slow down with the real thing all you gotta do is pull the power, in MS FS it's seems too hard to slow down.

3 - final on landing. For some reason this is the only part of flight that feels completely off. The sight in a real cessna is different. The angle and field of vision and the sensation of sinking and overall sense of movement that a real plane gives you during landing are completely different and a lot more informative than what you get from the simulated Cessna. Big surprise you might say ... but this shortcoming is not very apparent except during landing. That's where you feel the lack off the sensory overload you get in the real thing.

Other than these things I think that MS FS is a great tool to get familiar with the workings of a real plane.

For IFR training and VOR Navigation I think that MS FS is AS GOOD AS the real thing though. Instrument flying and VOR are very well modeled and they work just as much as in real life. When I will get ot VOR and IFR training I will make use of MS FS as my primary training tool for when I am not flying.

Crimson, I have to warn you that discussion or mention of hacks, cracks or illegal software, is not allowed here. Please be careful what you say.

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