Now, I'll get this out into the open from the start: I'm generally quite critical about MS sims, in-fact on occasion branded a troll / moaner etc.

So I'll try even harder to dispell these rumours and give a fair opinion on the FSX demo, at least from a punter's point of view.

Downloading it was a reasonable 200Kb/sec, considering the size this remained fairly constant.

On initiation of the app, egg timer was missing and there was some delay before anything happened. after a mandatory reboot the installation failed because a temporary file could not be found. A second installation cured this problem however some people say it won't install. I think they may be getting caught out because they think nothing is happening. It IS, just be patient with it.

I WAS impressed with the scenery, this really is a vast improvement from FS9. I had no diagonal lines or jitters.

In some ways the scenery actually looked as smooth (if not smoother) as what you can get from CFS2 textures on a modern machine maxed out. Well done MS for this.

As expected a fairly standard P4 did struggle a bit with frame rates, but to be fair this is bound to happen. Although the demo was still quite useable on this machine.

Here's the crunch: the Bombardier had no external view from inside the cockpit. The windows were blacked out.

The handling on both the Bombardier and Beech turboprop was to put it mildly, ABYSMAL! A quick check with AirWrench revealed the same old dumb trick: reference AND cog directly off the nose tip, giving a cog at about -6% mean aerodynamic chord. After years of writing dynamics for MS aircraft I am still at a loss to understand why they keep on doing this. ???

That said, I would give credit to the characteristics of the small ultralight. I enjoyed flying this around for almost a couple of hours.

Here in the UK there are loads of small private fields / strips which are solely for ultralight activity. usually on farm land. Multiplay with this sim could become very popular with the bird-men.

Overall however, the same old guff flight modelling tends to spoil it I think. Has MS got no one who can apply common sense to flight modelling? Really it isn't that difficult.

All said and done, I was at a cross roads in deciding whether to switch to X-Plane. Having installed the demo I think I would go with FSX despite a few shortcomings. In my opinion if FSX is given a chance it could be every bit as good if not better.

Certainly, FSX appears to have full accesibility. This is a deffinate strength.

Just a shame it is not a combat sim, if it were I am sure MS would have had an instant winner on their hands since this is X-Plane's major weakness. Our's is not to reason why I guess ???

I'd give this sim an 8 out of 10. Worth buying if you're into non combat stuff.

Regards
Jasper

I agree with you concerning the combat stuff. This sim is getting so full of misc details that it would offer really a great combat sim environment.

For the flight models, you are more expert than me in this area. Anyway, in the readme it is stated that the planes are not finished yet, so "maybe" we can expect some improvments when the retail version is out.... else, well I supposed you and Bob Chicilo (is that spelled correctly ? You know, that guy that spend its time making new flight models for the existing FS9 aircrafts ) will pretty soon offer some alternative stuff.

Additionnaly, excepted some visual problem, it appears that the FS9 planes are working fairly on FSX, meaning that most likely CFS2 models would work as well, so I expect your CFS2 work to be imported on FSX quite easilly (most likely with some tweaking, though).

I told it again, but I can't wait seeing what kind of new addons the community will be able to provide for that new FS.

Apparantly, a MS representative had said that the combat issue was the most wanted feature by the community. He also said that MS have no plans to incorporate weaponry and damage into this sim.

Personally I don't follow their logic unless of course there is some future agenda with another sim, and they want FSX solely as a means to shaft X-Plane.

I got news for them, a replacement for CFS3 in it's own right will not sell. There are too many bitter memories.

FSX 'could' have offered something for everyone, especially what many have been saying for a long time i.e. "just give us an FS2004 with guns"

Pity... ???

Jasper

Quote:


I found the problem with the blacked-out windows was solved by Alt-Tab(ing) out of FSX into Windows, and then Alt-Tab(ing) again to get back in FSX.  The problem usually began when I would switch views too fast and then land on the cockpit view.  Hopefully this is just an overlooked flaw that will be corrected on final release....(hopefully).