I have Flight Simulator 2000 and enjoyed it. I was wondering if I should pick up 2004 since i have extra cash? Any new planes, terrain like mountains and trees, or cities/buildings?

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America, home of the free gift with purchase.

Get 2004. Best. Flying. Game. Ever. just make sure you have a good graphics card.

X-Plane!

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I have a signature.

I like how this latest edition features classic planes along with the requisite Boeing and Cessna planes. You get classic planes such as the venerable DC-3, The Spirit of St. Louis (yes, you get to fly it by periscope, like the real thing if you want to), Piper Cub, Vickers Vimy, Curtiss Jenny, and the Ford Trimotor. Of course there are the requisite Cessnas and Learjet models too. There's auto-generating terrain, so while what you see below isn't what it really looks like, you'll atleast see buildings and forests approximately where they should be. There are also a few dozen cities that have many recognizeable landmarks (London, Paris, Chicago, Tokyo, New York, Dallas, Los Angeles, San Fransisco, Seattle etc.) The clouds and weather effects are exquisite. You can even make the program fetch the real current weather for your location and update it every 15 minutes.

Of course, there's always a HUGE amount (read: THOUSANDS) of planes and enhanced scenery that you can download for free. Pretty much any airplane you can think of can be found (I've got stuff like the Short Sunderland floatplane to a Hawker Hurricane or stuff as obscure as the Boeing P-26 Peashooter. take a look for yourelf and search for pretty much any fairly known model. Then there's plenty of downloadable scenery packs to enhance the MS standard scenery. This site has practically all of coastal Finland and it's airports available for free in far better detail than the standard scenery.


I can (almost) see my house! Well, thanks to the downloadable scenery I can at least see the same 300 meter mast that's there if I look outside.

It depends on how much you like flying, or how much you can come up with. Personally I love it, especially with what you can find for free by the commmunity. There's hundreds of hours of gameplay in it to discover. It can be as profound and challenging a game as you want it to be.

[edit: sleepy daeron make typos. Graaa.]

[This message has been edited by Daeron the Nerfherder (edited March 08, 2004).]

Ok, i got the game. I went to that site you mentioned and i was wondering, i wanted to download the Stockholm Scenery pack in Sweden, but also want the Swedish landmarks. Can you put two of them together?

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America, home of the free gift with purchase.

I can't figure out why mine won't run.

I can see my house in 2002. It is actually about a few feet from where I live.Pretty funny.

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*Bjorn*
muhahahha FIRE!!!!!!!! >:) ;(.
hi

Agreed that game was awsome.

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Don't be unwise judge me not by my size. You wont believe your eyes watch the xwing rise!

Speaking as a person who does a fair bit of simming, I say dont get it. Bit late now I know. Its not up to par with 2002. Sure it looks better, but 2002 has so many better addons that work for 2002 only, its just not worth it.

Check out the following sites:
www.flightsim.com
www.avsim.com
www.vatsim.net <-- REALLY check out that one.
www.wilcopub.com <-- Authors of 767PIC, AWESOME
www.dreamfleet2000.org <-- Really good stuff there.
www.phoenix-simulation.co.uk <-- Not so good, but still good stuff there.

2002 is better overall IMHO. 2004 is just eye candy really (upgrade wise)

The second release seems to always suck. FS98 ruled, 2000 didnt, 2002 kicks but, 2004 doesnt, 2006 hopefully will.

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Founder of the Massassi Brute Squad (MBS)

B'tduz: A popular dwarfish game which consists of standing a few feet apart and throwing large rocks at one another's head.

"Yes, it's a bloody flying alligator setting fire to my city!" - His Grace His Excellency the Duke of Ankh, Commander Sir Samuel Vimes.

Morituri Nolumus Mori

The scenery can overlap itself quite well. Just assign a higher filter priority level to the scenery that you want to see. For example, I assign the Helsinki Malmi Airport to Layer 1, Helsinki scenery to 2, Finnmasts to 3, Finnterrain to 4 and so forth. Just go in order from the smallest most specific things (airports etc.) to the more detailed things (general scenery)

Hope I haven't misled you into choosing a suckier version of Flight Simulator. Personally I hadn't owned one since FS98 and FS5 before that. It's a significant upgrade compared to the previous version I had in any case. Only problem is the lack of my luverly Sopwith Camel. I was just looking for something constructively relatively relaxing, you know, that didn't involve a whole lot of violence (I must be getting old...) and this hits that spot

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Lost in a flood, run red with your blood

I've just locked an open door. Strange, yet symbolically compelling!