Hi Everyone - I haven't "simmed" since the days of FS 98 (Please forgive me) although I am a fan of IL2 Sturmovik. Anyway I am now ready to climb back into the cockpit of a commercial aircraft but am unsure as to which version to go for. Now I am slightly limited in the hardware department - Athlon XP 1700, 512 Meg DDR RAM, Radeon 9600 XT for basics - based on that small snippet of information which do you think I should aim for FS 2002 or FS 2004 ???Many thanks and apologies if this is a much asked question.

Hi,you may struggle somewhat with FS9, better stick to FS2002 until you up-grade, otherwise it's SssTttUuuuTttEeeeeRrrr city for you matey,Steve.

Well I think you should press on with the community and go for FS2004. Certainly if you replace the default clouds and tweak your settings a bit you can run ok with your setup. FS2002 is fading away as did FS98,2000, the development is moving forward so why keep 2002? There are many guys who perfer 2002 for Online or simply to fly PIC 767. Thing is FS2004 is working great online and PIC for 2004 is at the doors..Best Wishes,[h4]Randy J. Smith[/h4][h3]P M D G's 747-400[/h3][h4]coming to a runway near you[/h4][/font color]Caution! Not a real pilot, but do play one on TV ;-)AMD 64 3200+ | ASUS KV8 DELUXE | GFORCE 5700 ULTRA @535/1000 | Maxtor 6Y080M0 SATA 80 GIG | 512 DDR 400 | Windows Xp Pro | Windows Xp Pro 64 |

hi,i'm flying(ahum....using this term loosely) fs2004 on an AMD Athlon1800XP w/512mb PC2100 ram and a GF4 Ti4200 128mb.since i moved to windows xp i have had better performance with the new sim then with win98se and fs2002.enjoy ;-)

P4 1.8/768 megs ram/GF4Ti4200 here and FS2004 performs like a champ. I use the simple clouds (I actually kinda prefer the way they look to the detailed ones anyway for some reason), keep the AI at or below 50%, and the autogen at normal and it runs great at 1152x864x32. I must say too that the more I fly FS9, the more impressed I am with it. Its a truly remarkable piece of software and while I know it isn't perfect, I really think MS did a great job on it overall...its certainly a good-sized step up from FS2002 imho anyway.

I still use FS2002 simply because I haven't gotten around to buying FS9 yet. I am also sad to part with the game that I have spent countless hours tweaking over the last couple of years. But, I will be buying FS9, and will probably be upgrading my computer a bit to un it.In FS2002 I use the RealXP clouds (I think that's what they're called?) and I love them. Are these useable in FS9? I don't like some of the clouds I have been seeing in the promo pictures. They're a big technological advancement, but I don't like how they look.

I flew 2004 for several months on a 1.4 Athlon Thunderbird, 512MB PC2100, and a GeForce 3 and I think it ran better than FS2002 did. I don't think you'll have any issues with 2004 as long as you don't expect to be flying around with maxed out weather, sight distance etc...

Go FS2004.Ive was running FS2004 on an athlon XP1800, 512 PC2700 DDR and GF4Ti4200. She ran fine for me!Pete

IMHO FS2002 is cheaper, has nicer looking water textures, and you can use older non-GMAX aircraft. I have been using FS2002 since November 2001, and I'm perfectly happy with it :)

FS2004 is newer, Has better looking aircraft, clouds,textures, weather affects and GPS! Why would you want to step backwards in FS???? Ive used Flightsim since I first had it back on the Amiga500 in 1988. Ive owned every version since then and every time they release a new version flightsim moves forwards! Not backwards! And thats what you will be doing if you choose FS2002!

Hi,I have to agree with Pete from YMML. FS2004 has a few quirks and a couple of things that could be considered problems. But so has previous versions of MSFS. Neverthless FS2004 seems even more stable to me than FS2002 did. I have had fewer CTD's(Crash To Desktop, or just plain crashes) with FS2004 than FS2002, and FS2002 was pretty stable. Anyway, Pete is right, FS2004 is better and a step forward. FS2004 is improved in many ways over FS2002(perhaps one area it took a step back though is IMC conditions). And you should be able to run FS2004 on your system, although with fairly low settings. Most folks have said that even with low settings FS2004 looks as good or perhaps even a little better than FS2002. Feel free to check out 'FS2004 and WinXP Optimization Guide V2' in the Hardware Discussion section if you want. If your running Windows XP and you could get yourself another 512 MB's you probably wouldn't get more FPS, but you would probably get a smoother experience.Just my two cents,Jim

I have had fs2004 installed since it got available here in Portugal, but the thruth is that a few months ago I reinstalled fs2002 and have been palying just that version. Why?- Because no matter how good fs2004 can be graphics-wise, I really do not think that from the purely phisics model, in each and every aspect I can think of, ranging from FM to weather and it's influence in flight, fs9 is any better than fs2002. As a matter of fact, in order to get more slots for graphics-sugar the MSFS airheads simply truncated the FM in so many important aspects that fs9 helos are pure crap, and many aspects that fs2002 and previous versions had acquired towards a better simulation of reality, namely when flying GA prop aircraft are simply *** lost **** I wonder if fs10 is going to be X-Box-ready... Expect even more cuts then - just look at what they did with poor-old CFS....Just my 2c

FS2004... no question.Runs better on my system than FS2002 ever did and looks better.