I agree with all of the above. FS2002 is quite tremendous for a $60 program. Obviously, it can't replicate the real forces exerted on an aircraft, but it does afford the illusion of real flight and provides a good learning tool. I just wonder what Microsoft's product will be like in a decade or so -- with much more powerful computers and the expected quantum leap in programming capabilities.

Lets never forget that the terrorists that took out our twin towers got the "feel" for heavy jets using this very program.(Not political,Ozzy-fact!) How mutch more real does it have to be?

Hey,Brad-Stick around

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I've flown in a 182. It's my favorite plane. The torque is pretty awesome but best of all is the time it takes to get up to rotation speed. All I can say is don't blink or you'll miss it.  8) The thing seems to jump off the runway compared to the 172.

Here'smy two cents, ...

I have some stick time in the Huey UH1D and friends, they can't make a simulator for the PC that can make you fell like you just swallowed your feet at full pitch .. elevator ride north in no time, or hovering in the wind trying to place a skid on the side of the mountin on a medevac mission.  

This section added after I posted because 1. I sounded like I was "snooting" and 2 for many of us unable to get a PPL I thought this section needed to be added for clarification of my reality.

Hello, my name is CW, and I'm a simaholic
I have simmed in CFS, CFS 2, Flying Fortress B-17, IL-2, FS 98, and many of Janes simulators, but by far FSK2 Pro (whats the diff between FS2k2 and Pro?) has me so addicted that I am often either flying or looking for new aircraft or in the forum almost all day.  This may not be "real" but it sure beats all the others hands down.  Anyway, I will never qualify medically for a PPL so if I want to fly, I fly the virtual skies.

I will never have the funds but I would love to have a virtual reality headset and chair, that would be a gas.  But for PC life, it probably is as real as it gets, keeping in mind that this is a sim, and I'm not in the Nam anymore.

I think I would have been disappointed if I had bought a FlightSim before this. There is nothing to replace  strapping yourself into that cockpit,putting on the headset,adjusting the pedals---I could go on but I won't because I'll just upset myself.

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I have to agree here...

My father and my brother are pilots so needless to say I have flown quite abit...
Flight Sim is very accurate for learning to navigate and to a certain extent, learning the requirements for banks and climbs and descents...

However, one thing the simulator will not teach you is how to deal with a "dead air" pocket that you hit 20 feet off the ground. Or how to deal with a sudden thermal that is pushing you all over the place on approach...

But don't get me wrong! I absolutely am addicted to this game and think it is extremely educational and entertaining!!!

Well, I got my turn in the C182....  I loved it !!!  It's harder to control and there are more things to remember than in the C172, but I love that power!  You climb at 500fpm in the C172 at 80mph, then in the C182, you climb at around 100mph, landing the 172 went quite well, landing the C182, took lots of power in my arms, yikes those bloody elevators can get really heavy, trust me, you need big strong arms if you want to fly it!!  The funny thing is that I'm always having bloody crosswinds at my local airport where I'm training, which ever runway we take off or land on.  You should have seen the bloody crosswind I had today on takeoff, in the C172 at lunch time!  As I left the ground the wind took us off the side of the runway, had to add lots of rudder!  Lucky I had left the ground, otherwise I would have snagged a few of the runway lights!  One thing I can say about crosswinds:  in the flight sim, you are forever having to turn the plane back onto the runway while rolling, whereas in real life, it doesn't make a hell of a difference, only really when you are at higher speeds.

My instructor did stalls and the 360 degree turn today.  I loved the stalls!  LoL   Especially when you get to the part when you're literally falling out of the sky, it was easy to recover in the C172, when you hit full throttle, it pulls you right out of the stall in matter of seconds!  Cause it's nice and light.  The turn wasn't bad either, the cool thing was when you pull back on the yoke while in a 60 degree bank, your head feels really heavy!  As if you had a hangover, but worse!  Very different to a flight sim!!!  It's also cool when you suddenly just drop out of the sky a few feet, in turbulence and wind!  It's a great feeling, leaving you stomach hanging about 10 feet above you!

One other thing that I noticed is that in real life it feels so much higher than in the flightsim, at 500 feet it's amazing how much you can see.  My favourite is watching cars driving on roads way down beneath you!  But near this airfield there's only 1 main road, and lots of bush, and farms.  So if anything went wrong, you could really land anywhere.  As long as you avoid the trees!  And especially when you're coming into land and you're just getting lower and lower, over buildings and trees, then touchdown.

I reckon the hardest part of flying, is definately the ground school!  For those of you wanting to get you're PPL, You get a textbook about an inch and a half thick, that you have to study, thoroughly!  The hardest is the bloody Air Law, like for instance, learning all the different types of airspaces, the resticted ones, the danger zones, the prohibited airspaces, all the different types of ATC units, an basically that type of stuff.  Then meteorology and weather, different weather and stuff.  Then you have radio, which is slightly more difficult, especially when, here in Zim, the bloody Air Traffic Controller is listening to music!  Or something when we are trying to hear what he's trying to say.  They also talk bloody fast in a horrible accent and in a low tone, so you have to listen so carefully!  Lucky that the airport isn't that busy.  That's why you need good eye sight, so you can look around for other airplanes and all sorts.

I was scared I was going to fail my medical cause the colour blind test was quite difficult, cause they give you different pictures, with circles of different sizes, and you have to read letters or numbers off the page, the letters are made using the circles, in a different colour, very close to the background colour, so it can get confusing, I couldn't see about 3 of them, out of about 10, all you really need to be able to do is distinguish between greens and reds.  That was the first time in my entire life when I thought that I could have been colour blind, I guess it's cause I sought of panicked cause I thought he was gonna fail me, I got really scared, cause that's probably "the" major thing, that you have to pass!  Ah well, I only have to take that bloody medical again in 2 years time.  Ah well, sorry about going on and on, but I got carried away.  Now, this has to be one of the longest posts I've typed out, and my fingers are tired so I'm stopping now, even thought I could go on for a good 1000 more lines!

Happy flying,
Greg