Two years ago in the fall of 1999, aviation simulation enthusiasts were dealing with the release of Microsoft Flight Simulator 2000. While that version included a myriad of changes, all greatly advancing the future of flight simulation, it was not without problems—many problems as thousands of forum notes attested. In fact, the biggest detractors were going so far as to predict that FS2000 could not be fixed and would never be used by simmers serious about their hobby. Of course, history shows that FS2000 grew into the best flight simulator platform of all times thanks to a couple of patches and an astonishing number of third-party add-ons.
Now we once again face the launch of a new Microsoft flight simulator version. But what a difference two years makes! While Microsoft Flight Simulator 2002 (FS2002) is not a perfect product, the difference between the public reactions to the two releases is like night and day. If one was to use just the sentiment of the forums as a gauge, FS2002 is near perfect compared to its predecessor.
Of course, you can rest assured the AVSIM FS2002 Review Series beginning today will reflect the in-depth analysis you have come to both expect and demand from our reviewers; it's not a compilation of what you could read for yourself in the forums. We have assembled the finest team of AVSIM specialists to ever concentrate on a single release and over the next eight days you will get a detailed look at every aspect of this new platform.
The Team Chuck Boudreaux: Chuck is the FS2002 Team Leader and a Managing Editor here at AVSIM Online. He is also the developer of the AVSIM Online Aviation Weather Center and is Co-Director of the AVSIM Educational Resource. He has concentrated in the areas of weather, scenery and overall product composition in the past; including the weather and scenery sections of our previous Fly II review. In this effort, Chuck covers Setup, Documentation, Tools and of course Weather.
Craig Wyzik: Craig is a Senior Reviewer at AVSIM Online and has been the AVSIM scenery specialist for several years. If you have read a dozen scenery reviews at AVSIM, the odds are about 10 of them were Craig's work. For this review, Craig concentrates on the FS2002 Scenery and the extensive Jeppesen Database covering tens of thousands of airports and NAVAIDS worldwide.
Francois Dumas: Francois is a Senior Reviewer at AVSIM and the Co-Developer of the popular AVSIM VFR Flight Center, as well as Co-Director of the AVSIM Educational Resource. His work with VFR flight made him a perfect choice to handle the General Aviation and Corporate Aircraft in FS2002. He also covers the Flight Planning, Flight Training and Flight Analysis components.
Steve "Bear" Cartwright: Also a Senior Reviewer here at AVSIM Online, Steve is best known for the Mini-Reviews of top uploads to the AVSIM Library under the "Bear Racing" moniker. He is also one of the senior gurus in the AVSIM Screenshot forum, as well as the AVSIM staff specialist on Bush Flying. In the FS2002 review, Steve covers Aerobatics, Bush Flying enhancements and FS2002's Bonus Aircraft.
Stephen "Highspeed" Kruse: Stephen is a Staff Reviewer at AVSIM Online, having joined the staff after the Fly! II Review. Prior to that Stephen was a moderator in the AVSIM Forums for quite a while. As the rotary flight specialist here at AVSIM, Stephen looks at the Bell 206 Jet Ranger III helicopter and the Schweizer 2-32 sailplane.
Ed Rutledge: Ed is a Staff Reviewer with AVSIM Online and has quickly become one of the top reviewers of Commercial Airliners and airliner related flight. Ed is part of the two-man team looking at the Commercial Airliners and ATC/AI aspects of the platform.
Eric Bishop: Eric, also a Staff Reviewer, is the second half of our Big Iron duo. He worked with Ed on the Commercial Airliners and ATC/AI; in addition to that he looks at FS2002's built-in Multi-Player Support.
Matt Johnson: Matt is AVSIM Online's Senior Technology Specialist. He put his technical and programming skills to use to assess the Tools included with FS2002.
Maury Pratt: As AVSIM's Senior Managing Editor, Maury is responsible for the project's overall editing, assisted by Team Leader Chuck Boudreaux. Maury also acted as a pinch-hitter for the team, assisting various team members when it seemed they would never make the deadlines set early on in the process.
The Review
So what can you expect from this point forward? In addition to the Introduction above, we take some time today examining Installation, Setup and Documentation in FS2002. In Part Two, you will get your first look at the aircraft of FS2002. Included will be a look at both the new and carry-over General Aviation and Corporate aircraft. Part Three gives you a look at the new Scenery and Weather modeling in the simulator. In Part Four, we move back to the aircraft with a look at the big guys, the new Boeing 747 and the carry-over Big Iron. Part Five will focus on Flight Planning, Training and Flight Analysis functions. With Part Six, we cover Aerobatics (featuring the Extra 300), Bush Flying (featuring the new Caravan), and finally FS2002's bonus aircraft, the F4U Corsair—with picture essays adding literally thousands of miles of extraordinary scenery images to this review. Part Seven will bring you a look at the new ATC/AI in FS2002 as well as the Tools Microsoft has included. Finally, in Part Eight, we cover the remaining aircraft, including Rotary Aircraft (Bell 206B) and Powerless Flight; and finally FS2002's Multiplayer capabilities. We close with some comments from the team and, of course, the all important Rating.
As you can see, we have pulled out all of the stops to give you as much information as possible. And as you have come to expect from AVSIM Online, this includes objective analysis, supporting data, lots of screenshots, and targeted conclusions. It represents over 400 hours of work – of which more than 300 hours were spent flying in FS2002 – by eight of the best reviewers in the game. All of them doing it for no compensation, other than the knowledge they are giving something back to the flight simulation community that has given them so much enjoyment over the years.
This team approach offers the added benefit of having the simulator platform tested on a variety of system configurations. With each part of the review, we will include the system information for one or two of our review team members. These are presented in the order corresponding with that author's initial review topic. Hopefully, these will give you an idea of what you can expect on your system. But please understand that it is impossible for us to address the thousands of different system configurations out there today. At best, we can give you enough general information to at least point you in the right direction.
One final note before we move on to the first part of the review itself: From the beginning, this team has been instructed that this was to be a look at Microsoft Flight Simulator 2002 Professional as it comes out the box. There is often a tendency to compare the latest MSFS release to the most recent incarnation as it now sits on their computers. But that is an unfair comparison. The FS2000 of today is the result of adding two major patches and tens of thousands of hours work by third-party add-on developers.
So when and if there are comparisons made, it will be with the base product, sans any patches or third-party work. In the end, simulator platforms such as FS2000 and FS2002 are merely a starting point. They provide everything you need to have an enjoyable flying experience, but are readily configured so that they can soar to even greater heights as talented third-party developers push the basic platform to the limits and often beyond. If a look at one of the early third-party releases will help you understand the basic FS2002 platform, we will include that information as a short sidebar, which will not reflect in any way on the final rating. But as that is what you have told us you want, I am probably "preaching to the choir" as the old saying goes.
Installation and Configuration
M Just what are those system requirements? Glad you asked! Microsoft Flight Simulator 2002 requires a Multimedia PC with a Pentium II 300MHz equivalent or higher processor; 64 MB of system memory; DirectX8.0a compatible 3D Video Acceleration, with 8 MB of video memory; Microsoft Windows 98, ME, 2000 or XP (Windows 95 is not supported); at least 650 MB of Hard Drive space, along with an additional 100 MB for the swap file; a Super VGA Monitor supporting 800x600 resolution in 16 bit color or greater; DirectX8.0a API or later; a DirectX8.0a Sound Card with speakers and/or headphones; Joystick or Flight Yoke (recommended); Microsoft Mouse or a compatible pointing device; and a Quad Speed or faster CD-ROM Drive.
Now while the program will run on this configuration, it will not be possible to get even close to the potential offered in the program with this setup. Using a PIII processor in the 800Mhz or higher range, with 256 MB of system RAM, one of the new 3D graphics cards with 32 or even 64 MB of video RAM, the 1+ GB of hard drive space needed for a full install, and one of the newer monitors will show you just what FS2002 really has to offer. And going up from even this setup will do nothing but help.
Before we move on to configuration, I want to mention framerates and the overwhelming attention they seem to garner. Now much of this debate can be traced back to FS2000 before the patches and even to some extent after. However, you will not see specific framerate figures as you work through the various parts of this review. What! No framerates! Yes, but with an explanation.
First of all, framerates are a product of system power and the software. And as any of you who have been around for a while know, FS2000 had some serious framerate problems. It was not until processors started approaching 1 GHz and 128+ RAM became the norm that FS2000 really began to shine. But FS2002 is an entirely different animal. It is the first of the flight simulator series to take advantage of the massive power now available in state-of-the-art 3D Video Accelerator cards and their onboard processors and RAM. Now while this is a very good thing for flight simmers, with FS2002 now running very smooth and stutter free on machines that still had problems with FS2000, it has made the analysis of framerates nearly impossible. There are just too many different configurations out there today to make any serious attempt.
So how do you know if you are getting good performance if you can't compare framerates with your friends? By using a far better tool—the one located between your ears. If FS2002 is flying smoothly and shows no sluggishness, who cares what that equates to in framerates? So you will hear the term fluidity at lot in this review. When you hear it, just remember it correlates to those old framerates. And if you still just must know what the framerates are, the old Shift-Z command still works.
Those of you who have FS2000 will find the configuration of FS2002 to be nearly identical. There are a few extra option fields, especially in the graphics area to take advantage of the power of the latest video cards. But most of the setup is no different than that in the last version. Take the time to read the documentation and readme file. This is a complex piece of software designed to pull every bit of potential out of your computer. But you have to know what tweaking those sliders does. In addition, because of the workload now placed on the video card processor and video RAM, the age of your video card and the driver it is running have become very important. The vast majority of "bugs" reported early on in the forums ended up being related to video cards and drivers. In most cases, updated drivers were a big help. But some users with really dated video cards do face the need to upgrade for full enjoyment.
The other thing to remember when dealing with video and performance issues, is that there is really no need to go in and push all the Scenery, Aircraft and Hardware option sliders to the far right. Sure if you have a P IV 2 GHz with 1 GB of RAM and a GeForce III video card with 64 MB of DDR RAM, go for it. But even in that case, you will find it is possible to pull back on those sliders, increasing the speed and fluidity of flight without giving up anything as far as scenery goes. This is of course very system dependent, but start with those sliders in the middle and work up until you find the point where you get the best look without any slowdown or stutter. And again remember the latter seems to be mostly due to driver issues.
With FS2002, Microsoft has gone the way of most developers today by providing the documentation on the CDs in Adobe Acrobat format. A copy of Acrobat Reader is provided for those who might not yet have it on their system. While many of us miss the 'good ole' thick documents of old, we also realize the new method has many benefits. There is a cost reduction thanks to not having to print these massive documents, the documents are much more timely as Microsoft does not have to send the copy off to printers well before release date, and finally it allows for much more complex documentation. All in all, the benefits seem to outweigh the disadvantages – both literally and figuratively. And if you want to have some of the documents in hard copy, they are easily printed on today's ink jet and laser printers.
Overall the documentation is the most comprehensive to come with a MSFS product thus far. All aspects of the simulator platform are covered, including a massive training package. You will hear more about that later in the series. But as with any piece of software, no matter how comprehensive the documentation – including readme files – might be, these are helpful only if you take the time to read them. Time and again in the various forums, you will find someone reporting a new "bug" only to come back an hour or so later to say "Oops it was in the readme file" or "I found it in the documentation." Take the time to read at least the readme file and the introductory documentation. It will save you lots of headaches, and lots of time, in the end.
Up Next
In Part Two tomorrow, you will get your first look at the aircraft in the FS2002 hanger. While many of these are just the tried and true aircraft from past versions, FS2002 does bring some pleasant surprises in the form of new aircraft and beautiful renditions of the old favorites.
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