Well, I must grudgingly admit I’m impressed. Not a big fan of MS in general, and in particular not of their last flight sim. But they have done a good job with this one. I am a Private Pilot IRL, so I have a pretty good idea of what we’re trying to simulate here.
I’ve long been a fan of X-Plane. It’s sort of the Unix of the flight simulators. Harder to use, loyal user community, and more geared toward realistic flight characteristics than looking at scenery. The program was originally developed to study laminar airflow, and I feel the actual stick & rudder flight is simulated wonderfully. There’s also Air Traffic Control (text), and some really cool in-game options like carrier landings and takeoffs, glider towing, B-52 drops, forrest fire drops, etc. It also loads faster and is less buggy than previous MS flight sims.
But the new MS sim is really something. It still focuses more on scenery and such rather than realistic flight modeling, but it’s a serious step up from anything I’ve seen before.
Microsoft was smart to have listened to the complaints about the last sim. This one loads quickly, and doesn’t require a friggin’ Cray supercomputer to run smoothly. Much less buggy from the get go.
The scenery is great, which I would expect from a MS flight sim. The planes look VERY realistic. I still think the runways themselves could be done better. Ironically, X-Plane’s runways are better looking.
The flight modeling is about the same. I’ve found that it’s almost always harder to fly a sim than a real plane. It’s very touchy in pitch, and hard to find the right trim settings. But apart from that it’s not bad.
But what impresses me is the ATC. Wow! It’s truly interactive, with real voices and everything. I’m working on my instrument license IRL right now, and this feature is getting me used to copying long clearances. They do the whole thing. You file, contact the tower for clearance, read it back… You even get yelled at when you screw up! (More on that in a minute)
The radio frequencies are almost all correct. I was startled at first when I tuned in the automatic weather reporting frequency for an airport - and got a real voice giving the report just like I hear in the real plane! It’s not mechanical sounding like the last sim. It sounds like the real thing.
While cruising around I tuned in an approach frequency and heard other planes getting clearances, reporting altitudes, and receiving traffic alerts from the controller. Pretty cool!
My only criticism of the ATC is that there are relatively few choices when conducting an actual filed flight. You can’t declare an emergency, or just decide to talk to a tower or approach facility you don’t need to. But that’s a small criticism, because this was really done well.
There is other air traffic, and it’s really neat to see other planes taxi around, take off, and land. Just now I was sitting on a virtual taxiway and was told by the tower to hold short of the runway because of another plane on short final. Sure enough, I look to the left and a Cessna lands, taxis off the runway, and is told by the tower to contact ground control.
I found it fun to try to screw up ATC and the other planes. So I went to the virtual La Guardia in a Cessna without clearance. Approach warned me that I wasn’t cleared for the airspace, and an ATC option popped up for me to request a Class B transition. I ignored, landed on a taxiway and then took off again, prompting the tower to tell me I was NOT cleared to land.
Then I noticed a jet taxiing toward the runway. I put my plane on the runway to see if I would get run over. Goshdarn if the tower doesn’t call the other plane and tell them, “Pacific Air 100MS, hold short of runway 4, traffic is a Cessna Skylane on the runway.” The jet stops and waits patiently for me to move. When I exited the runway the tower cleared it to take off, and off it went.
To conclude, I think this product is a turning point for civilian flight sims. I’m a real pilot, and no fan of Microsoft, but I gotta say they nailed this one.
Some folks will want to know the particulars of my setup:
- Dell 1.7 ghz computer, 128 RAM, standard 3D graphics card.
- MS Flight Sim 2002 Pro Edition. Most graphic sliders and such are set on the high end.
- I use a CH Products flight yoke and rudder pedals.