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Still Better than FSX

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 1 / 1
Date: February 02, 2008
Author: Amazon User

Smooth graphics, realistic airplanes, realistic NAVAIDS, flies like the real thing (I am a Private Pilot of 25 years). For a great at-home way to practice VOR holds and other IFR procedures, Flight Simulator (combined with a good quality yoke and pedals) still reigns. I own FSX too, even on my brand new dual processor high end machine, FSX still is a crummy sim compared to it's predecessor.

MircoSoft Flight Sim 2004 A Century Of Flight

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 1 / 1
Date: November 25, 2007
Author: Amazon User

At 57 years old I have been a fan of MS flight sim from the beginning. It's as real as real gets. I just wish I had the money to afford a monster computer machine so I could run the new one Flight Sim X. Although Flight Sim 2004 , A Century Of Flight, has a lot of eye candy it still lacks the scenery that makes Flight Sim X the best. Looking for bang for the buck you can't go wrong with MS FS 2004.

Well Rounded Flight Simulator For Everyone

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 1 / 1
Date: December 31, 2003
Author: Amazon User

If you have even a passing interest in aviation simulation, then the experience provided by MFS2004:ACOF (FS9) is one you don't want to be without.

This incredibly open environment will give you literally limitless experiences. The Microsoft Flight Simulator community is extremely large and there are literally thousands of add-on's (aircraft, panels, textures, sounds) that are public domain freeware. There are also many high-quality commercial add-on's to choose from as well. How well aircraft resemble their real counterparts is dependent on how much data the developer listed in the aircraft configuration file. The simulator uses a physics engine to process the data. This data can be changed by the user by just using a text editor.

The weather engine for FS9 is simply stunning. Real-time, photorealistic, weather generated dynamically from weather stations across the globe.

Through third parties (free and commercial), artificial intelligence with traffic is possible to the extent of real-world commercial flights in the simulator that are based off real-world flight schedules. Have an airline ticket with American Airlines for next week? Well, in the simulator you can go to your airport, today, and set the time and date for that flight. At the departure time, you will see that aircraft with correct details of aircraft type, airline, flight number, pull up to the runway and ask for IFR departure to your intended destination city!

All of this comes at a cost. The cost is hardware resources. You simply can't have enough resources for this extremely large program. This program is more of an environment than an application.

The mininum specifications listed is a joke. With the exception of the CPU, multiply all that by three. Multiply the CPU by FOUR.

You will want to have a video card with at least 128 MB. Even then, you should be looking at 256 MB video cards.

Yes, its that dependent on raw processing power!

This simulator isn't perfect, but it is the most well-rounded flight simulator that everyone can enjoy. If extreme realistic detail with flying a commercial heavy is more important to you than stunning graphics, then there are other simulators that will better serve your needs. Take a look at Aerowinx's "Precision Simulator" for this need, which is the most detailed (procedures and systems) 747 simulator that consumer money ($250+) can buy. "Precision Simulator" is designed for functionality, not pleasant graphics. In fact, it is a DOS application. I would not recommend "Precision Simulator" to anyone unless they knew exactly what they were getting with it. The learning curve is intense and in comparison it makes "Microsoft Flight Simulator" look like an arcade game. If you have just a passing interest in some of the more advanced avionics of a commercial heavy, I would recommend using PMDG's 737NG with FS2004. This third party add-on aircraft is put together very well and even has a partially functional CDU. While it doesn't have the depth of "Precision Simulator", this CDU does allow you to have the majority of the FMC capabilities -- including SID/STAR procedures.

In short, if you have the system resources and want to fly around mainly in general aviation aircraft and view stunning scenery, then FS9 is for you. General windows knowledge (copy/paste files, editing files with text editors, create/delete directories, using archives) is mandatory if you want to get the full potential out of this software.

No regret

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 1 / 1
Date: January 17, 2004
Author: Amazon User

I began with the Flight Simulator 2000 release. Then, FS2002 has been a huge improvement. Reading reviews on FS2004 I waited a few months before deciding to get it; until I found a good deal during Chrismas time. No regret at all. Just for the new lessons, it worthed the money. Also, for the new virtual cockpit, GPS, clouds, etc. I would say that the improvements of this release is as big as when I switched from FS2000 to FS2002. I give a 4 starts because, as always, you need a huge system to take advantage of all the graphics and possibilites of this game.

Great, but maybe not great enough

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 1 / 1
Date: July 03, 2006
Author: Amazon User

After swearing that I'd stick with "Flight Simulator 2002" and forego upgrading it with FS2004, I had a second opportunity to fly this ship. While it's still not quite the wonder sim I thought it would be, FS2004 is a dependable performer. While I was quite happy with 2002, 2004 adds more integrated Air Traffic Control, more realistic looking GPS and pre-flight navigation. In two ways, the new game outshines the ancestors: first is its weather generator - with the most believable clouds of the series - atmospheric effects are much more fluid than on previous incarnations; secondly, the game's engine more appropriately models both the physical and aerodynamic aspects of each plane - rather than just flight performance, we have a better feel for each plane's dimensions, weight and mechanisms, with obvious improvements in the modeling of control surfaces, retracting landing gear, doors and vapor trails. (A great example is the Piper Cub, in which the control cables are a visible part of the flight panel and respond to aileron inputs, but I digress...). Scenery is improved over 2002 - living in the NYC area, I had fun sim-flying along Long Island's south shore.

THERE'S NO SUCH THING AS FREE IN-FLIGHT LUNCH: All that performance comes at a price, and despite a systems requirement for a CPU in the conservative 450mhz range, I experienced only better than marginal performance on a PC with 6 times that horsepower. The likely critical factor is a video card - my Dell system lacks an AGP or PCI-e bus, so I've been slow to get past Intel's ridiculously underpowered and misnamed Extreme graphics chipset. Frame-rate is smooth, but that's with the options turned down. I still get great looking weather, but AI traffic is painfully sparse. Water effects seemed better in FS2002, with dynamic waves and such of that game missing here. Performance on comparable notebook computers will likely suffer even more. You get more aircraft with this game than older versions - but then again, older versions were always able to accept 3rd party aircraft. The physics of hovering aircraft like Harriers or helicopters seems little changed from the days when people were able to add those planes in FS4 (late 80's early 1990's). Being no stranger to Flight Simulator, I found it was slightly trickier to install add-on aircraft to FS2004 than on the older incarnations of the game - installing some aircraft had the result of missing working gauges; some planes wouldn't install at all.

NOTAM: If you've got a better than decent graphics card (a Radeon 9XXX or GeForce FX) and missed the last few editions of MSFS, then FS2004 is great fodder for your inner armchair aviator; If you've spent less on your system's graphics card than on getting every copy of MSFS made since the days of "Flight Simulator for Windows `95", then maybe you should stick with FS2002.

NO WILDLIFE WAS ABUSED IN THE REVIEW OF THIS PRODUCT EXCEPT: My PC, a Dell Pentium 4 (3.2 Ghz) with 512mb RAM, and no graphics acceleration (yet).

terrible

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 6 / 32
Date: October 22, 2005
Author: Amazon User

The program gets lost in the tutorials and can't correct itself. If you can't do exactly what the program says to do when the program says to do it, the only way out is to crash the plane and restart the flight. Thus, one is unable to make any progress.

It looked so great, too...

DO NOT ORDER THIS AMAZON

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 5 / 25
Date: October 22, 2003
Author: Amazon User

I PRE-ORDERED THIS SOFTWARE FROM AMAZON EXPECTING TO GET IT AS SOON AS IT WAS RELEASED. I NEVER RECEIVED IT!!!!! I TRIED TO CONTACT THEM BY E-MAIL AND BY A CERTIFIED LETTER, NO REPLY ON THE E-MAIL AND THE LETTER WAS SIGNED FOR BUT I RECIEVED NO REPLY. MY ACCOUNT WAS CHARGED BUT I NEVER RECEIVED THIS PRODUCT. YOU CAN NOT CALL THEM AND THERE IS NO CUSTOMER SERVICE!!!!!!!
I FINALLY PICKED UP THE FLIGHT SIMULATER FROM WALMART.
I AM A PRIVATE PILOT AND HAVE HAD MICROSOFT FLIGHT SIMULATER SINCE THE FIRST ONE WAS RELEASED. IT GETS BETTER WITH EACH RELEASE, MY ONLY COMPLAINT WITH THIS RELEASE IS THAT THE BRIDGES ARE MISSING, HOPING FOR A PATCH TO FIX THIS.

the coolest game on earth

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 2 / 6
Date: April 17, 2007
Author: Amazon User

i love flying and i want to be a pilot when i graduate. so i bought this game at my local walmart for $[...] it is the best game ever. it has flying lesons right in the game and u can fly any thing from a boing 777-400
to the write brothers origanal 1903 flyer. its a must for any one that likes flying.i would also recomend the Logitech Extreme 3D Pro Joystick. i found it works best for this game.
Hope u have as much fun with this sim as i did
Injoy!

What I expected

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 2 / 6
Date: January 14, 2007
Author: Amazon User

Low cost flight simulator.. work ok but need to be improved by showing the position of the flight surfaces .. you tend to porpoise intell you figure out what is going on...

Truely is as real as it gets

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 2 / 6
Date: August 31, 2003
Author: Amazon User

It is an amazing game, the realism is truely noticed on high res monitors. It is fun because it is ones chance to fly a plane and not die when the mess up landing. It is, though, a hard drive space eater, and requires very high system requirements to run at high. Amazing game, lot of fun.

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