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Has promise, but features are not readily accesible...

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 1 / 4
Date: May 03, 2001
Author: Amazon User

I bought this simulator because of the "Easy to Use" scenery editor touted on the box. However, I was unable to find the scenery editor anywhere in any of the menus, or even on the disk. "Easy to Use" does not mean I should have to be a programmer to even find it! Another problem is shared with the first FLY! release - it is an unfinished product. I hate spending 40 to 50 dollars for a product that might someday be patched into functionality. My 466mhz Celeron, with a GeForce 2 MX card and 256mb's of memory still struggles with stuttering. The framerate indicates in the 60's, but it stutters nonetheless. The documentation is akin to a takeout menu, and promises an extensive manual available for free online. Hate to complain, but "state of the art" flight sims should really come with a fairly hefty manual, not a link to a manual that at this date is not even available on the website! Fly! II also claims an extensive map feature, if you decide the 30 or so map packs (at 50 megs each) are worth the time and the drive space (most of them are only available as downloads). The maps and complete manual should have been in the box, not available in the future for download. Another thing that the box doesn't mention is that you must have a 64mb video card to take advantage of the detailed textured scenery. Most of us simply don't have a 64meg card at this time, so we are stuck with low resolutions, or forced to turn off the very features that are the selling points of the game. In all fairness, this is a potentially great looking sim, with teriffic lighting and great flight models. The cockpits are the best of any of the commercial flight sims, and it is obvious that love and attention were given to FLY!II...but they should have packaged a COMPLETE sim. I gave it a 3 because it does have enormous potential, and comes from a great company. The scenery looks cool, if you have the horsepower, but I didn't recognize many features that would make VFR flying a realistic endeavor. Also, the interface is clumsy and slow, and sometimes just confusing. Hopefully, future patches will address these issues...If I wanted flimsy documentation and buggy software, I would get my games from bargain bins.

bad

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 0 / 6
Date: May 11, 2001
Author: Amazon User

ive seen freeware better than this sim very slow frame rates no manual,if your a sim guy wait for fs2002 this is a total waste of money!

Good game but...where's the manual???

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 12 / 12
Date: May 15, 2001
Author: Amazon User

Before saying anything about FLY! 2, I have to say this: What possessed the makers to put out this game with NO MANUAL??? Maybe they think we're too stupid to read or we won't understand the contents, either way, not including a manual is a lousy way to save money. The makers of FLY! 2 should've known better, it's almost insulting...BAD MOVE. (And I don't care if there will be a manual on the web, who would read dozens or hundreds of pages on a computer screen anyway??)

The game itself, however, is really pretty good. The original FLY! (and FLY! 2K) had great panels and realistic flight modeling. What they lacked was realistic scenery. FLY! 2 makes up for that and more, adding higher resolution, high quality scenery, including free scenery downloads on their website. Sky and clouds are also well done, and some of the sunset scenes are just spectacular. The game also has more realism features, and cool special effects such as the landing gear smoking on touch down and the most realistic night lighting I've ever seen in a flight sim; the landing lights on the planes light up the runway so realistically you'll be impressed. The new Pilatus PC-12, as well as all the other aircraft (which now have bogus names) look very good, each with the near perfect panels FLY! has come to specialize in. Whoever designed this game worked very hard and very long, and did a good job, putting together a solid, state of the art flight simulation package. In a nutshell, here's the break down:

The GOOD: The best panels around, realistic flight, incredible realism settings, beautiful planes, some very spectacular effects for sky, water, scenery and planes, high level of realism, and good customer support. Overall, a high quality package.

The BAD; No MANUAL (ouch!), requires a fast machine and/or a good graphics accelerator to even get the game running, scenery not accurate enough for visual flight, the game still has a few bugs in it, no big commercial planes like some other simualations.

If you like flight simulators, I think you'll enjoy FLY! 2. I'd give it a solid four stars or more, but the lack of a manual takes so much away from the experience (for me anyway)I have to give this game only three stars.

Fly! +2 ? or FLY! -2

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 0 / 5
Date: May 15, 2001
Author: Amazon User

I think that's product name must be FLY ! minus 2. Bad performance flying any aircraft,nice for the new 2 aircraft additions,but in general FLY! 2 is not complete..beware whith your money sim guys.

Requires good graphics card, you'll be flying with no manual

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 5 / 6
Date: May 19, 2001
Author: Amazon User

I won't knock this game down for requiring a fast computer because the minumum is a 333MhZ with a good graphics card, and that's pretty reasonable these days. I suggest an 800 Mhz machine or faster, with a 64 MEG card to take full advantage of this game's qualities (a 32 MG card at least). Those with slower machines, there's a secret to faster frame rates: learn how to turn off all programs running in the background (the icons on your taskbar) to really free up resources and RAM, & use the "Resource Meter" in your operating system to check how much of your computer's resources are free, try to get it up to 100 %. This will have Fly 2 running smoother. I cannot stress enough having a good graphics accelerator to see all the features this game has to offer. It has great support for setting up different joyscticks, flight yokes or pedals. It's a good game and worth getting for flight simulation enthusiasts, with one complaint. The lack of a manual is unfortunate. The company has one on the net, it's not a very good one. Besides, if you bought an airplane would you want to learn all about it - and how to fly it - on the internet, or by reading the manual?

FLY II, released too soon because of MFS2002 !!

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 1 / 3
Date: May 25, 2001
Author: Amazon User

I bought this game. I write "game" because this is more a game than a simulator... - I was not able to install the soft from the CD. I had to copy it first to be able to install it from my copy ? - No manual. You need to download it but... because nobody has this manual everybody is downloading at the same time and you can never get a connection... The keyboard command are not included in the box ! - Some crash too often... - No scenery, you need to download 170MB if you want to get San Francisco for example... Or order a burned CD for almost free... You have to pay for shipping...

So, I was believing FLY II better than MFS2000 but I'm very happy to have my old FS2000 ! Even more since I bought "Corporate Pilot" and Phoenix Simlator (nice job guys) add-ons for FS2000.

If you want a good flight simulator buy the old FS2000 Pro (on sale now) and try some very nice free add-on on avsim.com or flightsim.com or wait for MFS2002...

FLY2!

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 2 / 3
Date: June 04, 2001
Author: Amazon User

I had bought this program because I had played the first version (FLY!) , of which I thought had a great start. This FLY2! was a sad dissapointment. For a start, No manual. If they want to save money by not printing it..okay. But to put the manual on a server which is always overloaded (impossible to get D/L)prevents anyone from enjoying the game because without a manual...no game. The controls are flakey and the NY scenery is a joke. Wait for Microsoft FS2002 (or buy the current Microsoft FS2000 Professional)if you want a guaranteed product which is easy to use.

Like Demo-ware

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 1 / 3
Date: June 14, 2001
Author: Amazon User

Lacks maps (charts) from previous versions. Very poor support - download site (File Planet) so overloaded it is impossible to access. Manual must be downloaded. ILS systems flawed. DON'T BUY IT!

Manual Download is ridiculous!

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 5 / 8
Date: June 19, 2001
Author: Amazon User

There is no manual, they want you to download it off the web, and there is ALWAYS a line-up for this (people ahead of you in line) and sometimes the download doesn't even complete! And don't even think about downloading if you don't have a fast modem, the file is 35 MB! If this wasn't bad enough, when you go to download the manual, the site wants your personal information becuase you have to "log in" before you can do anything! Unbelievable....

I've had this game for a while now and I sitll haven't been able to read anything about it because I can't get the download.

I never thought I would say this about FLY! games, but....."the competition" doesn't treat it's buyers this way... so....stick with Microsoft Flight Simulator for a more complete, reliable product!

Fly away from this game...

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 9 / 12
Date: July 04, 2001
Author: Amazon User

...So how is Fly! II inferior than Flight Simulaor 2000? Unfortunately in many ways.

Firstly, the game out of the box that you pay for has precious little when it comes to scenery. There's only one CD and a slim manual. The minimal installation takes up a whopping 1.3 GB. So when you give away so much space of your hard disk for one game, you except something big. You are then sorely disapointed.

The game takes about a minute to get to the first screen. Then after you give all the language and graphics options and click "Start",... well, for those doing this for the first time, this is my advice: have a good nap. The actual game takes a generous 4-5 minutes to load. And this is the next problem: Fly! II is extremely resource consuming. To put this into perspective, the game took a whole 4 minutes to load on my 800 MHz, 128 MB RAM, 4 MB AGP machine.

OK, so it's loaded. Next: a screen asking you to choose between QuickFlight and Adventures. The former for the firsties, so I choose QuickFlight. After 3 minutes I find myself facing a cockpit, on an unknown airport in the middle of nowhere. There are a thousand-and-one buttons apparently for everything. Ok, so I've done this before in Flight Simulator 98. Start the engine. Already started. Look for the throttle. Nowhere to be seen. Ok, check out the manual. Nothing there. Half an hour gone. Explore the menus. Ok, Options>Keys & Buttons. Alright, first step towards the sky. Got all the keys written down. Start the trottle. Started. So why's not it moving? Oh-parking brakes. OK, got those babies removed. Ok, off we go. In the air. So how do I turn? Trim, pitch, elivator? Nothing is working. Disgusted, I quit the game. Another 3 minutes. In fact: huge, huge, huge learning curve.

Now that after weeks of plodding, you've learned the game. And then you find that all those hours spent weren't worth it. There are simply no sceneries worth flying over. TRI, it seems, was in such a hurry to release this game that they chose not to put any cities at all and in a display of supreme cheek, put it in the manual that the cities were available for "free download" at their site. At 100 MB per city, it's going to take a lot of determination to sit through all those hours of Internet watching your cities creep into your system.

And now, after this thorough battering, it's time to give some plus points. There are some. First: the cockpit. The actual functioning of all and I mean all the buttons are enough to make the folks at Microsoft a blushing lot. The attention to detail is evident elsewhere: you can make a full 360 throught the plane and see everything from the floor mattress to the comfortable seats at the back. And the scenery that is there is basically decent. The planes are few, but exciting enough. There is also a chopper.(Which inspite of all appearances, is the most difficult to handle). The third party support to this game is tremendous: there are hordes of communities discussing about how to solve various bugs. GODGames itself has provided quite a few patches on it's site.

The verdict: one star definitely. Beacause today gamers are not really prepared for the Internet-platform Fly! II has accidentally got itself onto. This is a rich game poorly presented. Wait for Fly ! II Gold and hope that it will contain everything Fly! II is lacking now.

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