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The very best in Flight Simulation

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 20 / 22
Date: February 15, 2001
Author: Amazon User

This is an excellent reflection of real flight.It is as realistic a flight simulation as you can get.Belive me,you will absolutely be hooked on to this game.Anybody who is associated with or interested in flight or has always wondered what it is like to fly a high quality aircraft,this game is without a doubt for you.All 10 brilliant aircraft featured in this simulation are based on real life aircraft and give the same feedback and operate in the exact same way as the real flight machines.Take the Fokker Tri plane which gives you the feel of flying in the midst of World War 2 with its simple 3 instrument cockpit.Or how about the Mooney TLS Bravo aircraft which is really an aircraft version of an American Sports car and what a powerful engine it has.The twin engined Windhawk is absolutely brilliant for landings and smooth flight.Or try the 2 seaplanes which really creates an excellent splash,what about the Mustang,a war plane which can really perform some brilliant acrobatics.Along the way you can soar like a bird with the Stemme S10-v Motorglider and practice your flying skills on the Piper Arrow and the Trainer.However all these wonderful aircraft cannot compare to the excellent Raytheon Beechjet 400A Aircraft,probably the best jet aircraft in all Flight Simulation Games.With an advanced,futuristic and easy to operate cockpit with 2 glass screens containing a wealth of flight information along with good avionics,feedback,control,performance and operation,this is without a doubt the most excellent, smooth flying aircraft.It is quick,powerful and is brilliant to handle,with a very reliable auto-pilot.It is the best. Apart from these wonderful aircraft in your fleet,the choice of location for this game is brilliant.You get to fly along the entire West Coast of the U.S.A.,from San Diego all the way to Seattle.There are 60 real life beautifully constructed airports with exactly the same airport features and buildings.Imagine planning a flight from Sacramento and then flying on a heading of 340 degrees and some 2 hours and roughly 500nm later you land at the wonderful Sea-Tac Int'l airport.It is like being a real commercial pilot.And some of these airports brilliantly allow you to interact with an air traffic control tower,a ground control tower and even listen to an ATIS weather information system,as well as getting to choose your pilot's voice from a list of names with some charming and some really amusing voices.What is even better,is that you get to create your own weather and you really can create and experience real life thunderstorms,downdrafts,turbulence etc.Or fly for thousands of miles of terrain and get to see some wonderful real life features such as the Grand Canyon,Las Vegas at night,The Golden Gate Bridge or even Bill Gates House.Fly to airports such as Boeing Field,Mchord Air Force Base,Portland Int'l,Arcata with its beautiful Pacific Ocean scenery or even take off from Olympia Harbour with your seaplane and observe some wonderful boats there.Apart from that try the Challenges which really tests your pilot skills,for example you can be a 40 minute corporate shuttle pilot flying your customers from airport to airport and obtaining a rating for each flight,or you get to rescue hikers trapped on the beautiful Mount Rainier,or be an eye in the sky.Then for those of you who do not know how to fly,there is even a flight training section for you where a qualified pilot comprehensively teaches you how to land,take-off and even teaches you advanced flight skills such as navigating with your VOR and NDB instruments or flying in dangerous weather or how to fly certain aircraft such as your brand new Raytheon Beechjet 400A or how to glide with your Stemme S10-v Motorglider.Then there is the "quick flight" option where you get to fly wherever you want,whenever you want to.And you also get to create your own cities airports and record your significant flights as well having your personal logbook containing all your information relating to flight.In this game there is loads of vital easy to understand information about the aircraft specifications,airport information,radio and navigation frequencies as well as an informative map providing you information about each airports VOR information,as well as airspace information,as well as a Global Positioning Satellite System which can be very useful for flight navigation and informing you about points of interests,airport co-ordinates and the altitudes of the land features. This is without a doubt,in my opinion the best ever game relating to flight,at times it is like having a flying school or an airport or an entire portion of a country just for flight and exploration of a beautiful part of the world right within your own home.It is trully fascinating and realistic,you have got to have it.The best virtual way to earn your wings.

flight unlimited 3 , Raphs review

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 15 / 17
Date: June 15, 2000
Author: Amazon User

Where do you go after creating some of the most detailed and lush scenery ever for a flight simulator? How about a few hundred miles up the coast?

Flight Unlimited III continues the tradition of Flight II with a little bit more of everything. It's not a huge leap beyond the previous installment, but since Flight II was pretty far ahead of the technology curve, this works out just fine. The menus, graphics engine, and features are fairly similar, with just enough added to make it feel like more than a big scenery pack.

Flight III shifts the scene to the Pacific Northwest, which has been rendered in as much lavish detail as the Bay Area was in Flight II. The scenery is simply breathtaking, with nary a seam to be seen. Textures look as good at 100 feet as they do at 1,000 and buildings look like they're part of the scenery rather than simply sitting on top of it. Most impressive of all is the way rolling terrain is handled. Elevation models take you from the peak of Mount Rainier to the valleys of Olympic National Park. Unlike Terminal Reality's Fly and Microsoft Flight Simulator, which handle elevations abruptly and whose landscapes are often flat, the elevations in Flight Unlimited III are smooth and state of the art.

Matching the quality of this visual cornucopia are the object models themselves, ranging from the ten flyable planes to the buildings and moving objects. Weather and lighting are remarkably effective; rain beads on the window and lightning flashes in the distance. But most astonishing of all is the inclusion of FLED, the Flight Unlimited world-editing tool. This powerful, easy-to-use utility lets you choose any object in the game from a list and place it anywhere in the gameworld. It's simple drag-and-drop, and the items appear in the world when you next fly. These files are small enough to be traded, so you can share modified landscapes with friends. You can also place and define moving objects, such as other aircraft, and create whole airports (complete with beacons and landing lights) from scratch. It is so easy to use and so powerful that it may become one of the major selling points for this game. You can even load the landscape from Flight II into III and fly continuously from San Francisco to Seattle.

But no matter how pretty the scenery may be, the deciding factor in a flight sim is always the performance of the aircraft themselves. In this regard, Looking Glass stands at the top of the field. The ten flyable aircraft each have unique handling characteristics and cockpits. These planes encompass the entire range of the civil-aviation experience: the Stemme S10-VT Motorglider, Beechjet 400A, Mooney TLS Bravo, Lake Renegade 270 Seaplane, Cessna 172, Piper Arrow, Muskrat Seaplane, Windhawk Twin, and Fokker triplane. What other sim offers fighters, Sunday fliers, jets, seaplanes, and a vintage prop plane? Each craft handles accurately, with the right feel in the stick and proper envelopes for stall speeds, turning radii, and other important flight-model features.

Equally impressive is the way these planes behave in the environment. Flight Unlimited III offers a complex weather generator that lets you create any weather situation to any degree and then fly in it. No other sim does weather this well. It really conveys the impression of heavy-weather flight in wind, rain, and snow. You see it through the cockpit and feel it in the force-feedback effects. Complex modeling captures the effects of temperature changes, turbulence, wake, pressure fronts, and altitude. Systems failures and icing are added so you never know just what the environment may throw your way.

The simple menus make it easy to fly any plane anywhere at any time and in any conditions. Quick flights and specific point-to-point junkets can be created instantly. By simply choosing an airport or point on the map, a situation (on the ground or at various altitudes), and a weather state, you can be flying or preparing to take off in about thirty seconds. Enough area landmarks are included on the map to provide interesting tours: Downtown Seattle, the Space Needle, Microsoft, and the home of William Gates are all in here. Canned scenarios, complete with mission goals and narration, offer specific challenges, like Bigfoot hunting and crime interdiction. Finally, a thorough tutorial explains every element of flight in detail and then provides both a narrated training fly-through and a chance to practice the lesson itself. It's a very effective introduction to flight.

Enough has been improved upon and added to make Flight Unlimited III a worthy successor to a classic series. Sure, Fly has better cockpits and Microsoft has more airports, but neither has this level of environmental and modeling detail, and neither offers the amount of pure flying fun found here.

I can fly! I can fly!

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 11 / 12
Date: February 03, 2001
Author: Amazon User

This is leagues above the original Flight Unlimited. It's amazing how well most of the aspects of civialian flying are captured in FU3. The graphics and sound are top notch.

Like many here, I was initially disappointed in the graphics. However, after twicking around a bit I found myself quite impressed. I need to upgrade my K6-2 350 real soon. Smoothness is very important to flight sims. If you find yourself disappointed in the graphics then downgrade the settings until you reach the balance of smoothness and graphic detail. Then just leave it at that! You'll enjoy it much better. I have a Voodoo2 and an ATI Rage128. Both handled FU3 fairly well.

The sounds are very realistic. I have never owned a flight sim with a radio. I'm amazed. Winds, rain, thunder, other aircraft, etc. All sounded great!

There's so much extra that I haven't yet covered more than 40% of what FU3 has to offer. There's a great series of lessons to get you started in the right direction. This is a sim that gets better and better the more time you spend with it.

I gave the game 4 stars instead of 5 for several reasons. My basis of comparison is Jane's WWII (a 5-star sim! Buy it!). The FU3 virtual cockpit is not very good (WWII's is awesome!). Also, the scenery is limited as compared with other sims (MS Flight Simulator). I don't own FU2 and you can't buy it...so I'm out of luck.

It's fun to explore a game (er, scuse me, SIM!) like this. I've read about some "easter eggs". Bigfoot is spotted all over the place! There is at least one cloud formation that bares a striking resemblance to one of the Looking Glass programmers.

Conclusion, FU3 is my favorite civilian sim right now. I'm planning to buy MS Flight Simulator 2000 as soon as the price drops (10 years from now is my projection). But, until then...FU3 is the ONE!

R.I.P. Looking Glass! You are missed my friends! Thanks for the Underground and for influencing my Thievian whys!

This game is amazing.

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 10 / 11
Date: November 08, 2000
Author: Amazon User

This game is completely awesome...If you own Flight Unlimited II you can use the San Francisco scenery file from that game which is a great bonus. Yeah, it mostly covers only the west and pacific northwest, but the scenery so accurate to reality - everything from city streets to mountains to shorlines and airports - rich vibrant colors, very very cool - I mean, they must have used satellite data - it's that authentic. It has great lessons to help you start out, and a fantastic variety of aircraft (10 in all) so you can get a feel for different types of flying. Each plane is detailed in appearance, specific sound, and includes cool amenities such as landing and taxiing lights. Put it this way - when you land in the water, you see the drops accumulating and moving across your windshield as they are pushed by the wind. I recommend a good graphics card so you can set the game to a high resolution and you will truly feel as though you are up in the sky. If you like flight simulators, and you want more realistic scenery, for the price this game is hard to pass up.

To Be Real

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 8 / 9
Date: June 20, 2000
Author: Amazon User

Excellent ATC interaction, weather generation, and all-around realism. Would hope for more detailed and interactive instrumentation on secondary aircraft in future versions (such as interactive instrumentation available on the Beechjet.) One big problem is that the approach light systems (ALS)are non-existent, a feature that Microsoft has down pretty well.

a COOL GAME

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 6 / 6
Date: December 03, 2000
Author: Amazon User

Flight Unlimited 3 is not your normal everyday ariel hijinks game but it is a very controled game.Even though you can flip the plane over it's not really about that.In the game there are lots of modes.If you're lazy you could just go for a quick flight but if you like flying for long peroids of time and catching the breeze you should do a normal flight.There are also chalenge and practice modes but I don't need to explain that.Some planes you can fly include water planes and jets.Over all this is a very neat game

its alright

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 4 / 6
Date: June 12, 2000
Author: Amazon User

Flight Unlimited 3 is a good flight simulation game. the planes flew better than i thought i even think better than FS2000. There where not that many airports avaliable though, and also not that much scenery. So for people that are really just wanna fly I recommend you buy this product.

Looking Glass did it again

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 3 / 4
Date: June 11, 2000
Author: Amazon User

Looking Glass has to have been the most original and influential games company to have ever graced the Pc. With titles such as System Shock 1&2, thief 1&2, terra nova and the flight unlimited series they redefined quality in genres. Flight unlimited 3 is no exception. Breathtaking graphics, excellent sound, fantastic tutorials make it the most accesible and comprehensive flight simulation available. It's just such a shame Looking glass shut down.

Minor gripe, the cockpits aren't as good as those in Fly!, and the game runs SLOW if you haven't got a nija computer.

Total Loss

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 8 / 21
Date: July 23, 2000
Author: Amazon User

If I could I would give it no stars. The program will not run at all on my system, a BRAND NEW P-III, 700MHz, 128 MB RAM, and 64MB NVIDIA video card. EA Support blames my system, or my drivers, whatever, anything but their product. But after following their suggestions for a solution, the game still locks my computer up as soon as I hit the "fly" button. Forget about it.

A great game

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 4 / 8
Date: April 02, 2001
Author: Amazon User

I'll make this simple, the game was great, great graphics, great gameplay and lots of other stuff to.

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