I will stay with IL-2. There is not enough time to do the download/addon thing like in FS2002. Even that has gotten tedious. I have moved on to racing sims.Tony

Just one off-topic reply from me... Need For Speed: Hot Pursuit 2 on PS2 ROCKS!!! >:-) :-rotor :-scatter

I quite honestly enjoy combat sims . I have waited to get a new computer and now find there is nothing to run on it in this genre , and nothing on the horizon. Why is that? I am looking forward to this 2002 pro experience and the "real" aspect of flying. I hope i can get up to speed quickly. Mike

Hi LAdamson.Your point hits it on the head.CFS3 will never be able to incorporate anything we have taken for granted with the FS series, that actually qualifies it as a simulator.CFS2 was an improvement on FS2000. With some addons it qualifies nicely as a simulator, as well as a combat game.Users of CFS2 hoped for a true combat simulator... just like FS2002, but with guns and bombs. :)What MS delivered was a game, with little simulation value. Also with little prospect of anything concerning simulation to ever be added on. There will be game addons ( effects, weapons, missions, planes... ), but forget weather, terrain, airfields, VOR, etc...Additionally, the crisp graphics and terrain we see in FS2002 ( and CFS2 ) are no more. Blocky, angular terrain, muddied textures, and in many cases, very poor graphics performance.. even on highend machines.There are already some very vocal CFS3 fans. I'm glad they like the game. I was hoping for a sim.Dick

I'm a happy former CFS3 owner. I actually felt relieved when I got rid of it and got my money back. I really enjoy FS2002 amd ACE Combat 4 on my PS2.Happy Jet Trails To Youflyking

I love it. The first installment of the review basically covered installation, support documents and an overview of the role-playing dynamic campaign features. From this, we are supposed to believe that Avsim is some kind of appologist for Microsoft? Microsoft makes games in order to make money. The enthusiasts who frequent this site and these forums are a very small subset of the larger audience for these games. Microsoft has to appeal to a much larger audience in order to justify the costs of developing its flight sim products.If we are looking for a villain it is X-Box/PS2/Nintendo. I spoke with the Biz Dev guy from Microsoft for CFS at the conference in Reno (ex-commercial airline pilot who clearly loves aviation and airplanes - not some corporate suit/bean counter) who said that their budgets and staff were frozen about a year ago, and all the money is going into console games. It's a trend across the entire game industry which is really bad news for flight sim addicts. I don't see how you could pull off MSFS2002 on X-Box, though combat sims that don't require sophisticated avaionics might be successfully adapted. It's a good thing that FS2002 is as good as it is, and that there is a 2004 on the horizon. After that, who knows?

Would someone explain to me why 2002 does not have landing lights when fs98 had good ones?I have over 8000 hrs RW jet time and I have still to understand how they expect ANYONE to be able to navigate around an airport, let alone land without those lights. Wake up M$, another step backward.FS98 had great video playback, FS2000 sucked, not many things indicated correctly, like gear up, engine instruments only showing idle indications.Along comes 2002 and the video playback for a short flight is 10 MbSomeone's elevator does not go to the top floor.In other words the wheel is turning but the hamster is dead.bobg