Hey Mark, excellent post. All anyone needs do is look back at earlier versions of FS to see how far we have come, and how far we are going to go. It's still a "gee whiz" hobby for me. See ya in DC3 land...Shermdca662

well said all! There are 3 things that amaze me and give me faith in people:1. I've been with FS since it wasn't even numbered. I still have the original manual in fact. The advances we have seen are staggering and FS has gotten me through some tough times. I have a high profile high stress job, and I use FS for escape. I can only fly on weekends, but I look forward to it all week and on a weekend I can be "miles" away from home and in the clouds preoccupied by shooting an approach precisely rather than ruminating over some problem at work. My wife hates that I can "waste" a Saturday flying while paying someone to mow my lawn, etc. But she doesn't understand how it keeps me sane.2. I am stunned how hard people work to develop add ons, etc. there are the wonderfull pay and freeware software, of course (I fly FDS and Flight-1 A/C, use FSNav, ActiveSky, FlightKeeper, Reality XP avionics) but I guess I'm more inspired by the little folks who add a gauge, scenery file, repaint, etc for nothing but the love of it. I don't see this type of selflessness in my line of work often.3. I'm amazed how hard people work in these forums to try to help one another. There is a terrific sense of community (opinionated to be sure! But a real family nonetheless.)my hats off to the entire flight simming community

Mark, I am definitely astonished on a regular basis.First of all by the sheer realism of it all... being able to fly anything from a Piper Cub to a 737NG just blows my mind. Never mind a Piper Meridian with completely authentic avionics...Secondly, by the spectacular scenery and the changing lighting at dawn and dusk... it sometimes just takes my breath away.Thirdly by the global nature of our flight sim community. I have posted questions that got replies from Australia, Greece, Montana all within a few hours...Lastly, by the accuracy of the scenery overall... we bought some property overlooking a bay. By just typing in the precise lat and lon coordinates, I can recreate the exact view from our yet to be built home and update it with real weather. We have indeed come quite a way from FS2 for the IBM PCJr which was my introduction to Bruce Artwick's visionary program.Kudos and thanks to the many who have helped me over the years and those who have provided these ever more marvellous toys, freeware and payware alike!!

I'm astonished that I got up to this many posts :(.Seriously, though. I do agree the enormous talent that's out there, and I'm speaking of the third-party developers.I'm also impressed with FS2004 in general. It's just amazing with real-world up to the minute weather.I'm in SoCal, but I fly mostly in the Northwest area and when I get up from my computer, I almost always forget that I'm not up in the Northwest. I fully expect to see the same weather when I look out the window.

Wow, to every one who responded to this thread ... AMAZING ... very thoughtful responses ...Like many of you I have been a 20+ year "flyer" remembering the days of typing in STAR TREK in Basic on my first TRS-80 (hahahaha) and moving around the universe at warp speed ... Then to Artwick's Flight Sim on the Apple IIe ... then to Fokker Triplane on the Mac, then through ALL the versions of FS.It truly has been a remarkable experience .. one which has added significantly to my life ... has spurred me on to learning as much about aviation and the aviation business as I can in my spare time AND to struggle through AOMs to learn and appreciate the massive complexity of these real and virtual aircraft ... not to mention that they actually "get off the ground"!!!!Most of all I appreciate being able to plan my flight, plunk myself down in my flying chair, pre-flight, all the setup, and take off to someplace I have never been and probably would never have the $$$$ to visit. I have been around the world many times in PS1.3 747, a PSS 747, Stellan DC-9, PMDG 737, Dreamfleet 737, PIC 767, Lago Maddog (my first commercial jet!!!) RFP 747, All the great regionals ... Olexiy's awesome Dash 8, Espen's most excellent Fokker 50, the new F1 ATR ... Yannik (et al's) unreal Falcon 50... and on and on ... not to mention all the GA's expecially the Meridian!!I think of Rob Berengt's (sorry for the spelling) excellent pushback and taxi gauge, all the weather programs ... AS4, Meteo, flight planners ... FSBuild, FSCommander, FSNav ... all the other talented folks who provide all the models and liveries!!! to enhance the immersion into my flight experience.What a totally awesome hobby ... I can hop in a freighter DC-9 in Alice Springs for a short hop to Darwin ... or fly from Mongomery Field here in San Diego to Borrego Springs in a Cessna ... and feel like I have really had the experience ... I am so glad that Mark "Dark Moment" started this thread ... it's really a positive thing to recall the "good things" in life as we plod through our daily rituals of work etc. And ... I am totally astonished by flightsim every day ... and by computers and the internet ... at 56 yo ... I am amazed that I am still here (hahahaha) and have been part of the computer biz for almost 30 years, and can sit here ... working at home ... for a huge multinational business .. and take a break from work to read about and participate in this awesome hobby!!!Thanks!!!

hi. i bought fs9 after we got the computer just to while away some time between other games. in fact once loaded up i was stunned and have been ever since. i think what amazes me most is the dedication, skill levels, humour, humanity and general interestedness, and interestingness of the forums where information and advice is exchanged and offered. this in turn leads on to the people who spend their (free??) time in developing add-ons of all sorts to enhance everyones simming time. so, as well as the magical qualities (to me anyway) of the sim itself- the planes, the weather etc etc, there is also all the work that has gone on behind the screen as it were. people like yourself make it possible for people like me to fly a banged up dc-3 through a snowstorm into vancouver at night!! it's another world and, yes, i am astonished on a daily basis. thank you

As they say in another sim site, somewhere..."It's not a hobby, it's a friggin' obsession!"And so it's been with me since v2.0. The only thing I'm more amazed at are brunettes about 26-38 yrs old... Oh, never mind.Glenn"If God would have wanted man to fly He would have given him more money"

>As a child, I used to lay under my bed and pretend I was in>the cockpit of an aircraft. I would fly that thing for hours,>with panels I had drawn from crayons and colored markers.>Jordan MooreFrom Robert Louis Stevenson's A Child's Garden of Verses:When I was sick and lay a-bed,I had two pillows at my head,And all my toys beside me lay,To keep me happy all the day.And sometimes for an hour or soI watched my leaden soldiers go,With different uniforms and drills,Among the bed-clothes, through the hills;And sometimes sent my ships in fleetsAll up and down among the sheets;Or brought my trees and houses out,And planted cities all about.I was the giant great and stillThat sits upon the pillow-hill,And sees before him, dale and plain,The pleasant land of counterpane.Sherm

I can remember running "niteflight" by Hewson Consultants on a Sinclair ZX-81 or ZX Spectrum here in the UK. I think the program was about 16k if that, and was loaded by tape. I used to spend hours on it, that's what got me started back then, around about 1983 I think.So I still get amazed by all this, and spend all my time on FS9.Anthony.http://www.reality-xp.com/community/nr/rsc/rxp-customer.jpg

I have to agree with everything that's been said, and maybe take it up a notch.A quick look through the different "design" forums will give a good look into the personality of most designers. Like this forum, if you ask a question, there are people there to help. But one thing really stands out to me. In the "real world", when someone does something special or unique, and you ask " how did you do that?", you get an "I'm not telling" response. But here, you'll not only get details on the process, but also something along the lines of "let me know if you have any questions or need more help". And then there's all the tools that the designers use. Ground2k4, LWMviewer, TCalc, Afcad... I'm not gonna try to name 'em all. I'm amazed someone takes the time and effort that goes into creating the software that's used, and give's it away for free. Without all of these donations to hobby, you wouldn't see near as many new creations, or near the quality and detail that you do.Even the little things like "can I use your texture?" "can I include that gauge in my panel?" How about those cool trees that Garrish gave us? Or the ai boats that Holger shared with everyone?That scenery or plane that you download may have only one authors name on it, but there's almost always a lot of other people involved who don't get much if any credit, and keep updating or creating new stuff anyway.You're right, Mark, I am amazed. Larry S

Heck, I remember when I first stumbled upon AVSIM 6 (?) maybe 7 years ago in the FS98 days.I was like a kid in a candystore. And that was in the days when 10 new files was a motherlode and add-on aircraft only had a limited number of nonmoving parts. :)To see how far we've come in just a few year's is truly amazing.

Yes! I have been continuously astonished since over ten years ago when, during one of my visits to the Newcastle University (UK)one of my contacts there shouted: Hey, Domingos come and see this! It was FS5. He himself was astonished at what he had got. The interesting point was that John was an ex-RAF airman, who had been serving during WWII. In spite of his professional and dramatic past, he was astonished at what a computer program could provide.Needless to say that the first thing I did after my meeting at the University was to go to the Newcastle Mall and buy myself a copy of FS5 and a joystick!Since then the astonishment never ended.Regards,

Flight Simulator 2004 has enriched my life in ways I never though possible!Using Microsoft Encarta, I read-up on the names of people after which the airports to which I fly are named (like Princess Juliana in Sint-Maarten, Netherland Antilles or Gustavo Ordaz Diaz at Puero Vallarta, Mexico or Chiang Kai Shek in Taipei, Taiwan and countless many others) and learn about these people and the country too, so flying to these places virtually is linked to the reality. I also look at the amazing world atlas in Encarta to get a better feel for the geographical location and neighbouring countries. Right now, for example, I have become a lot more familiar with the "Lesser" Antilles, the Eastern chain of relatively small islands in the Caribbean. So flying becomes not just a "pass-time" in learning how to fly but a learning experience about the whole world itself and triggers my curiousity for the politics, the people, and the geography of all wonderful places I'm "visiting" in FS2004. FS2004 has become a catapult for me to further educate myself about the world AND learn about the beauty of using (near) real-life procedures thanks to simulations like READY FOR PUSHBACK (RFP).The third-party add-on payware like PMDG, Ready for Pushback, Active Sky 2004 4.5 and others are also quite amazing in their detailed flight dynamics and manuals (RFP has about 325 pages of manuals!).Speaking of Dickens, what I feel may be summarized with what Charles Dickens wrote:"It is a far, far better thing that I do than I have ever done...It is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known..."(from the ending of "A Tale of Two Cities")John

Yes sir. Quite an awesome hobby we have here...I ma absolutely always beguiled by this simulator. I have just about finished building a full size flight deck of an A320 right in my house..and I am always amazed at the sheer complexity of the simulator and its ability to coax me into believing I am truly shooting a difficult bad weather approach on an IFR flight plan, with traffic, weather, jet sounds, cabin sounds, multi-visuals, coordinated instrumentation, and ATC into major airports like JFK or LGA. Best of all, I often times get a real touch of vertigo if I bank too steeply in the clouds or make a "bad" move and I just crack up. My wife wants to know why I am laughing when she is within earshot above the din of the cockpit hum and I tell her that realism is just so good that I just have to laugh. Having gone through RW pilot training with IFR and accumulating over 500 hours, this simulator is so much more practical in my life to satisfy my "simulator jones" because I can "fly" whenever I want and when I am done, I am home.

Just for kicks, I decided to fly somewhere new last night. I ususally stick around home, but years ago I visited a friend on Spruce Island (off the coast of Kodiak) in Alaska...so I decided to see it in flight sim. I found that the aleut village of Ouzinkie, on Spruce Island, had a gravel strip in the sim...perfect. Took off from Kodiak muni in the realair cessna skyhawk, and using default "real weather"...shortly after takeoff it began to snow. the ground looked amazing. off the coast of kodiak, turned left heading over the channel between spruce and the mainland. Then the clouds lowered, now I'm flying in very low visibility, with a driving snowstorm going on. All I can see is the ground just below me thru the 45degree view. As I get to the end of spruce island I'm thinking worst come to worst I can keep going till I'm over open ocean, turn around, and head back to Kodiak. And yet....omg...there's the gravel strip..it came into view...almost by accident thou I knew I was pointed in the right general direction. The windsock is full out...straining against its mast. what a hoot.two missed approaches....flying low enough to stay out of the whiteout, and still line up for that 2000' gravel strip was a blast...and not easy. Still against that ferocious wind, once I got into good position, the touchdown was sweet. stopped in about 1200'Flying back to kodiak...given the whiteout...weather ever-worsening, I decided to return to the big airport....with full landing assistance. very rough landing, glad to be back on firm ground...so foolish of me to venture out on a day like that...what was I thinking???????oh, wait a minute, this wasn't real, it was the sim. LOLBob Bernstein