sound like you had a great time,

Yeah, I had a great time, first time I had ever been in anything smaller than a 767-200!  If I did things that I do in the FS2002 C172, in the real C172, I would pass out cause the G's would be so strong!!  Nothing will stop me from getting these flight sims, nothing!  I will be buying them until they get so real they just can't get any further!

Greg

Speaking as a pilot and owner of all the versions of Flight from 98 until now, actually Microsoft is a bit lacking if you ask me.

I've always been impressed with the lack of realisim and the way the ground never looks right.  Sure Microsoft has expended a LOT of effort with fancy gadgets, sounds, pictures and flashy videos.  We have trucks that move and other airplanes that fly arround, towers that talk and flashing lights at night.. All of this is nice, but landing even a 172 on a clear day has never looked even close to the real thing in the real places.  It has proven to be much more difficult for me to take the 182 into the pattern and run touch and goes than in the real thing.

Flight is billed as some great visual experience, but it's not.  I've seen combat simulators that far surpass Flights visual impact, and some freware simulators that are better visually near the ground.  Flights seceanry is too tiled and not detailed enough where it counts, near the runways.  I suppose Microsoft must be careful to have a product that can run on almost anything while not taking up too much space, and that drives them to dumb the product down, but I'm tired of the hype and running a simulator that only requires a P2400 or better.

Flight is great for knocking arround the sky, flying instrument procedures and the like, but it's a poor platform to do any visual flying like combat, stunts, or just plain "learning how to land" VFR.  Get a real plane to learn how to fly, use flight for procedure training and investigate the various other options... (Falcon 4.0, with some freeware patches for the combat folks, and perhaps flightgear for those who want a visual experience.)

All simulators suffer from the same thing, they are simulators..  Flight suffers more than some.

I agree with steinbuch.  Fs2k2 cost me £69.00.  My joystick £35.00

Total cost £104.00.  This is less than 1 hour flight if I had a PPL.  To train for a PPL would cost me £140.00 per hour.

I'm not bemoaning my poor luck, I think that whilst this is not a great price it is affordable in the future and something I will do.  FS2k2 is as real as it gets for seventy quid.  Seven thousand quid will buy the real thing, for now I'll make do with this.  I look forward to FS2004 and will buy it if it seems good enough.  Should the trend of quality continue FS2008 and 2010 should be well worth getting.

One thing that I would love to see in future sims is:

Airports with elevations!  I don't think that there is one airport in the entire world that is dead flat!  Like in the current sim, I think that is one thing that makes the runways not too real.  At the airport I'm doing my PPL at, the are 2 runways crossing each other like an X, and there's a bit of a hill right in the middle, so when you line up on the runway, you can just see about 400 metres down the runway, then sky, cause of the hill, and lots of heat waves on the runway in this African heat!  You can only see the whole airport from about 50 feet AGL.  And one other thing I'd like to add, I'm pretty sure all, or at least most planes can taxi at idle thrust without accelerating, and you don't need up to 70% of engine thrust just to get moving.

Greg

P.S.  I'm thrilled, cause I flew my first solo flight on Monday!!  And it's a good feeling, just wanted to let it out.

In FS2K, unlike combat flight sims, the graphic ground details are awfull. But on the other hand you have WORLDWIDE elevation data and positioning.
I cant even enumerated what I've learned in Geography using Flight Sim 2000 and 2002.
I always have my comprehensive world Atlas and I love to explore the Globe. When something hapens in the world (Iraq war for example) I like to go there in a Portuguese (my country) Air Force Hercules C-130 to get the feeling off how far it is from here. I like to fly around Bagdag, Kerbala, Kirkut etc etc to really get the grip of where things are and what does the landscape look like (on average of course).
FS series are amazing! It's a truly Global Scale game cause all countries are represented. They even bother to put all 30 or 40 portuguese airfields. Even the smal Santa Cruz  (near my home) is there. And the reall weather provided by Jeppesen is the Icing on the cake.
It's more acurate than Meteo news on TV. I want to go windsurf I usualy check the wind with a Cessna before driving 100 km to the beach 

Of course it cant be REAL, but you learn alot. You learn to understand how planes fly (theoreticly), you learn the altitudes, the gauges, the procedures, etc... It's very educational.

I always feel sad cities are so poorly depicted. I mean, Paris isn't just the Eifel Tower or L'arc du Triomphe you know? But Paris IS there.

On the first sims I used alot more imagination than I do now. I'm shure in 10 years, sims will be unbeliavably more real and still afordable.

Right, I think I'll stick my nose in here too (Oh boy, I am in a mood tonight), my father, a chopper pilot is constantly getting on at me about my sim time, and as there are times I have to share a computer with him (shudder) it's not a pretty site, doing a aproach to Lukla in Nepal and all of a sudden it's his turn, and he's not even a simmer, he rekons that flight sim is a waste of time as the Bell 206 (What he flew) is not modeled correctly, now I am just a couple of hours away from my PPL, written test and flight test to do actually, and I can remember when I started flying real time I stall would freak me out, I hated them, then I'd get home and try stalling the default C-172, next day instructor asked for a stall, he got it, right on the button. (Truth is I now love stalls so much that I want to try a loop, poor C-150). So my vote is Yes, FS2002Pro is realistic, and as the majority agree, for less than C$100 it's value for money.  But the other half of me has to say as well that it is billed as a 'game' nothing more, yes it may be 'As real as it gets' but I feel it's as real as YOU make it. That said where did I put that Lockheed C-130???
Roy