Fly! II. Better graphics, nice addons and good performance.Keyton Cabral

I have nothing to contribute, but I feel like posting this one single pic (yea yea it's not good I know)

Unfortunately I don't use Fly! that much anymore since I always fly on Vatsim and the lacking airport sceneries is a drawback then. But I do have both Fly! and Fly!2 installed and of the two mainly use Fly!II because of the nicer graphics, the Pilatus and the scenery editor. However, Jak Fearons clouds in Fly! and Terrascene are so good that I can't remove the sim from my hard disk.Krister

That picture my friend says more than a thousand words and why I love FlyIIStevie :-bat'The best aid to navigation is having been there before'My Contributions:http://ftp.avsim.com/library/search.php?Se...=&CurrentPage=1For FREE Website Traffic go here :-eek http://www.nomorehits.com/cgi-bin/start.cg...er=steviegeebee

I like them both equally well and use them both for the equal amount of time. I did buy FS2002 upon Michael's recommendation though, have tried so hard to like it, but finally erased it from my hard drive. I now only use Fly!2k and Fly! II. ;-)Cheers,

I second that. I would add that Fly!2K gave us a whiff of what true innovation could be. There are still tons of breakthrough ideas to be born (e.g. clouds, fractals, flight models, 3d representations of towns), all of which are now explored by researchers here and there, but not anymore in the flightsim world, where competition is no more.

>all of which are now >explored by researchers here and there, but not anymore in >the flightsim world, where competition is no more. I think competition is now "tougher" than ever. It's very evident with the "other sim" at the moment. The "bar" keeps getting raised about every month with truer life virtual cockpits and flight dynamics. It's also got to the point of more team effort being involved because some of these models are requiring thousands of hours to produce. L.Adamson

>I think competition is now "tougher" than ever. It's very >evident with the "other sim" at the moment. The "bar" keeps >getting raised about every month with truer life virtual >cockpits and flight dynamics. Competition is alive and well between the payware developers for FS products, but there is no competition to the simulator itself. MS can give us whatever features they want with FS2004 and they'll still hit their sales forecast because they will most likely be the only GA game in town. Assuming that multiple miracles do not occur.

I have both as well. I prefer FLYII, but because I have a few performance issues with FLYII, I'm using FLY2k. The SKY! add-on for FLY2k is really very nice.IMHO, at it's time FLY!FLY!2k was hands down the best GA sim around. I own all the GA sims, FU2 and 3, FLY series, MSFS series, X-plane. I use them all.I am really looking forward to getting a new system in a few months so I can get back into FLYII. I can use FLYII, but I occasionally have a few instances of low performance because my system is a few years old.In FLY2k I can max out all the eye candy and don't have to worry about any performance problems at all. Oh well, my lousy 2 cents.

I was afraid of this. The only other GA sim is x-plane. Many people don't realize that FS2k2 is so much better than FS2000 because the original FLY! was so awesome. With no competition other than pathethic x-plane, I'm afraid we could be in for a rip-off for FS2k4. I just hope that some company will see that they can grab some of the market share and purchase the FLY! series and carry it on.FLYII is just so awesome and could be even so so much better with just a little bit of extra development. It's sad to see it go.I don't want to get scolded, but the Flight Unlimited Series was also fabulous. It too was run out of town.So basically, I'm afraid that next year we will get whatever Microsoft wants to give us. Don't get me wrong. I'm a big fan of all the sims and will buy them all. I just desire what is best for the flight sim hobby and I think healthy competition is what we need.

Prefer FlyII because of the sharper graphics, the scenery editor andlast but not least the helicopter.Find no other alternative in othersims for that "being there feeling".Fly is deleted because of space needed.Have a nice flight :)Jan

>Competition is alive and well between the payware developers >for FS products, but there is no competition to the >simulator itself. This is probably correct observation. I also wonder what MS will do (or not do) once they feel relief from any outside competition. However I would not underestimate competition between payware developers. It is fierce and we users benefit from this immensly. For example there is a team now working on the Piper Meridian project that claim to have managed to find workarounds to most FS-built in limitations and this includes existing limits to cockpit/instrument/gauge graphics. First screenshots suggest a product that has no equals even in the FLY world. So the core MSFS is being pushed daily further to the background and its 'features' become less and less relevant. And it is not hard to imagine a situation when MSFS will be relegated to a role of an sim operating system while the real content will be provided by volunteers/vendors. I have no problem with such vision.Michael J.

>This is probably correct observation. I also wonder what MS >will do (or not do) once they feel relief from any outside >competition. I figure MS will do about the same as in the past. Fs2002 is what I consider a major improvement over FS2K, but Microsoft made no attempt to develop any realistic looking panels like FLY/FLYII. In fact, they just basically stuck with their old panel concept...... Everything quick to get to and see, but all "crammed" onto one panel and not as graphically pleasing as FLY. Never seen any of the FLY quality sectional maps in MSFS either!What MS "DID" do is improve on the concept of working guages for virtual panels which is something FLY wasn't doing anyway. They also improved on their data-bases for airports, navigation, and topography. Even a built-in ATC which isn't bad for the first time out. Seems like MS figured Terminal Reality had their own special "niche" in the flightsim market and MS didn't go out of their way to improve on what FLY/FLYII already had. L.Adamson

Yeah! That's what it comes down to: work-around solutions... And like Larry says "improvements". Things move forwards with innovation not with improvements. Innovation is costly, it requires either lots of money or lots of drive and grey matter. When competition is gone only money remains. And the strategic choice is then clear: improvement. Almost anybody would make the same choice. Fly!2K was innovation. All that is left now is improvement. And work-arounds.I have issues with this "vision", or rather lack thereof.

>Things move forwards >with innovation not with improvements. Oh, I disagree completely with this statement. Significant or less significant improvements are the bread and butter of daily progress in everything. Innovations come only so often.>Fly!2K was innovation. But FLYII was not. Another example that innovations are hard to come by. Maybe FLYII was an improvement but some even say it was step backwards. Progress is not always linear and it is even true in the FS world. Michael J.