Yup, FarCry is a beautiful game. I was, and still am, stunned by it.Just wish I could get past the helicopter with the boat sinking after setting explosives....been trying for 4 weeks now.Cheersallblack

Been there and done that (on the sinking boat I mean). I mostly played it with my headset during night and my girlfriend AND my dog got up MANY nights to check out why I was cursing and shouting like a maniac! My only advice is don't try to shoot it down from the stern, stay at the front of the boat! Now if I can only bring myself to trying Thief - Deadly shadows too. I've read players comments and it seems it makes grown men wanting to sleep with the lights on!This was totally OT BTW! ;)/Krister

HAHAHAHAHA.... FARCRY was an awesome game, but when I first installed it, it killed my computer.. updated my 3d card driver and i was pushing over 50 fps! That would be awesome if FS used the graphics engine in farcry.

While the water in FS can look good on screenshots, it's not truly reflective. It's just a texture that is overlaid on to the water. Also, rather than animated waves, the water in FS oscilates...

That screenshot really isn't doing the FarCry water justice at all - you have to see it in the game live - you can actually see the coral reef structure underneath it, see schools of fish swimming around, it refracts light correctly, etc... I thought it was extremely convincing for water off the coast of a tropical island. (which I have seen in real life) There's one level where you leap off a cliff on a hang glider and drift down over a cool little inlet thing surrounded by jungle - so cool!

Sorry Richard, real water from any kind of altitude just doesn't look like that. Those wave textures are far too large and smooth. It's suggestive of real water but not at all realistic.TonyDigital-Flight

>With some help from 3'rd party add-ons, the water in FS9 can>look like this which I find quite good-looking and realistic.G'day Richard What addons do you have that produces the picture you gave us?Thanks Barry

Might be so Tony, but at least IMHO it looks far better than the default water in MSFS.

Hi there Barry,The water replacement is Lynn and Bill Lyons called fs9wat, you'll find it in AVSIM's file library.The a/c is PMDG's 737NG.All the best,

After hearing good things about Far Cry I bought it a couple of days ago. I can only say that I am very, very impressed. It certainly does raise an interesting question that has been discussed in this thread: how can a game like this look so much better than Flight Simulator? The environment, terrain and graphics make this game look several years ahead of FS. The textures are far more realistic and they are not blurred. The water is far more sophisticated: you can see the ground beneath the water, very realistic reflections of background terrain and the waves lapping on the shore make the FS equivalent look crude. A floatplane floating on water like this would look fantastic. Of course in some areas this game is doing less than FS: the clouds are just background textures, the terrain visibility distance is just a few miles, the map area is fixed so the engine probably does not have to dynamically load scenery from the hard disk as you move around. And of course the scenery area does not cover the world. But I don't think any of these are fundamental drawbacks. If Crytek made a determined effort to build a flight simulator based on their engine then I think they could replace Microsoft as the top flightsim company in, say, five years. They would have an awful lot to do, of course. But let's suppose they decided to challenge Microsoft.... They would have to extend terrain visibility considerably. But distant terrain doesn't have to be rendered in any great detail. In FS distant terrain usually looks quite blurred, so I don't think it would be difficult to match FS. They would need autogen scenery. I think Far Cry has a kind of autogen for specifying density and types of vegetation. They would need realistic clouds. No great problem. The particle effects I saw were outstanding, so maybe they could go for real volumetric clouds. They would need AI aircraft and ATC. The game already has amazing AI for humans - and the AI humans do a great job driving vehicles and boats - oh, yes, and helicopters! They should certainly retain the element of AI humans. And why not keep combat in as an option? Oh, yes, and another strength would be the ability for the user to get into other vehicles as well as aircraft and to drive them. In Far Cry, driving vehicles was almost as good as Need for Speed (except that, when driving a vehicle, you can shoot at AI humans driving other vehicles!) ATC would be more challenging. The first release would probably only have very basic ATC. It would need flight dynamics and aircraft systems to be modelled. It would need a world scenery database. This would need time to build up, so the first version would only have detailed scenery for some selected areas. The sim would be completely open for third party scenery creation, just as Far Cry is. The editor that comes with Far Cry is amazing. You can create terrain mesh very, very easily (you can also import terrain bitmaps). The perspective view is virtually the same as the game view. As you move around the world in the perspective view you can modify the terrain mesh in real time, either on the large scale, or very detailed changes on the small scale. And you can place objects (including AI characters and animals!) very easily, also in the perspective view. Perfect for making lakes match the terrain. I've hardly scratched the surface of the editor - it actually reminds me of Gmax. FS scenery designers would kill for tools like this. What on Earth have Microsoft been doing all these years? Finally, the first thing I noticed when looking at the official Far Cry forum is that Crytek do communicate with their users, and have offered help on specific problems. The second patch and the SDK should be out soon. As well as fixing problems, the patches also add new features. A complete contrast to Microsoft, who doggedly refuse to speak with their customers or to fix genuine defects in FS. I hope that another company will succeed where TRI failed. Some really strong competition that threatens to eat into their sales would be a good thing for all of us. How about it, Crytek? Best regards, Chris

This sure was a good one IMHO Chris! Will be interesting to see what kind of feedback you'll get...;-)Cheers,

Nicely put Chris :) I sure hope that in the future a new competitor to MSFS will emerge that will hopefully de-throne it or at least make it sweat so that Microsoft will get a wake-up call and improve MSFS. It should really take a long hard look at the new FPS games out there - specially the external scenes. Like Chris mentioned the water anim in Far Cry is brilliant. Credit to MSFS for giving us a great sim but on a graphical & realism level I think its got a way to go.I think the creators of ATP need to meet up with the Crytek crew :)

Um ... well it does look astonishing, but fps engines are much different from flight sim engines. I've modelled for Half-Life a while ago, and it's totally different. It's optimised for speed, and it's done by "tricking" the user, by removing invisible polygons and such. (of course, newer engines are different from HL's engine, too). There's little you could hide in a flightsim, apart from some scenery from high above...The Novalogic engine is very pretty, just look at Comanche 4. But only small areas are included, with low visibility. Of course, an open-source type of approach would be neat in a flight sim, but nearly impossible to realise - who would want a flight sim which consists of thousands of seperate downloads? You could do that in freeware, but not in a payware flightsim. Apart from that, the storage space needed for such detailed ground would be totally out of control. I'd rather have a look at lo-mac and compare that to FS. I agree that full usage of current hardware (NOT talking about processing power, but rather about features) could and should be done - Like the shaders in lomac, some ANIMATED!!! bump mapped water, etc. Maybe transparent water with some depth. Better textures is a problem, because so many different ones are needed for different types of ground and seasonal texturing - twice the resolution would be a big step for the next release. -Daniel

I think as others have alluded to, the problem is and will continue to the be the expected backward compatability with other FS products.In pure FS terms, MS would probably be best served by building an entire new product with an entire new engine foresaking any backward compatability with other products. Heck, there are no doubt elements of FS95 in the FS2004 code.Flight models, scenery, AI would probably all improve tremendously. They'd also benefit (from a pure FS perspective) if they utilized the narrowest band of high end CPU/graphic capability. (note, despite the complaints from the FS community, FS2004 is very playable on a wide variety of platforms.)The problem is that the FS community demands some level of backward compatability with products. Or at the very least, we have an expectation that they can be updated for a new version. We also expect it to run on a wide variety of machines.Imagane the uproar if MS said FS2006 was going to be coded from the ground up. There was no expectation of compatability with previous versions, but it would be a vastly superior version.People would go nutty! 3rd party vendors would pull their hair out. People would scream conspiracy and crucify MS.FS is almost painted inself into a corner. It has to forsake current technology (remember the uprising if FS2004 1) wouldn't run on Windows 98, 2) required DX 9.0 graphics cards and 3) wouldn't run at release on a lowly 1.0 Ghz processor). It also has to keep some semblance of backward compatability restricting the amount of real innovation than can be done.I think at some point, MS will have to cut the cord and really start over fresh. IMHO, they should announce it early and take an extra year for the development cycle and come up with a new product. For example, roll out FS2006 (which is probably fairly deep into development for a release next summer). Then announce later that year that FS2009 will be coded from the ground up. Then build the whole thing over from the ground up with everyone realizing FS2009 is a whole new ballgame.

>I think at some point, MS will have to cut the cord and>really start over fresh. IMHO, they should announce it early>and take an extra year for the development cycle and come up>with a new product. For example, roll out FS2006 (which is>probably fairly deep into development for a release next>summer). Then announce later that year that FS2009 will be>coded from the ground up. Then build the whole thing over>from the ground up with everyone realizing FS2009 is a whole>new ballgame. I agree. A week ago I was dubious about that, particularly as I have spent many hundreds of hours developing AutoAsm, an FS scenery development program. But a couple of days using Far Cry has changed all that. It really has opened my eyes! So here's a suggestion for the future development of FS: In the short term, provide one or two update CD's for a small cost. These would enhance FS2004, adding some new features and fixing a few bugs. This would keep FS2004 alive for a few more years for a fairly minimal effort. Meanwhile, throw all your money, talent and enthusiam into creating a brand new simulator that uses a completely new engine (they might even consider licencing the Crytek engine if it could be suitable for flight sims and other applications). Give it a new name: World Simulator. That's right. It's a flight simulator. And a car racing simulator. And a yachting simulator. And a spaceflight simulator. Maybe Universe Simulator would be a better name! Like Far Cry, it would be filled with AI humans as well as vehicles and aircraft. And it would use today's - and tomorrow's - technology. Far Cry shows what can be done right now. Of course the sim should be completely open just as Far Cry is. Other companies could produce add-ons that cover just about any aspect of life, from peacefully flying aircraft to staging full-scale battles. I can't stress the importance of human AI as demonstrated in Far Cry. I now regard flight simulators as a bit sterile, because there are no people. Of course the purpose of the human AI in Far Cry is to kill you. But human AI could be completely peaceful as well. In fact the Far Cry editor allows you to change AI characteristics - you could probably make missions where the human AI just smile at you and go about their peaceful business! I'm convinced that in time there will be a World Simulator. The only question is whether it will be Microsoft - or a smaller company that will be tomorrow's Microsoft. Best regards, Chris