AVSIM Special Feature: FS a Century of Flight

AVSIM Special Feature

A Preview of
Microsoft Flight Simulator: A Century of Flight

By Maury Pratt,
Chief Managing Editor, AVSIM Online

February 12, 2003

What could be more appropriate than Seattle's Museum of Flight to get a first look at Microsoft's latest incarnation of their venerable Flight Simulator franchise? A dozen or so FS team members spent Monday with us — editors from the aviation press — to show us what to expect when 'A Century of Flight' launches, most likely in July (in the US).

With this release Microsoft celebrates 100 years of flight. 'A Century of Flight' is a departure in two ways from FS as we've known it through these past 20 years: It features history-making planes, beginning with the Wright Flyer (as well as carrying over FS2002's aircraft); and there's a new 'user interface' that brings content – text, images and video – directly into the simulator while you're flying. That feature alone—the "learning center"—greatly improves the sim's usability, providing easy reference to each plane's history and flight characteristics, revised and enhanced flight lessons by John and Martha King, the flight scenarios recreated in partnership with EAA; as well as access to user help containing hyperlinks to related topics, lessons on specific topics, videos and more. Third-party developers can even add in their own content!

Here's a sample of the detailed virtual cockpit, from the Lockheed Vega.

That brings up one of the FS Team's primary objectives for this version: to make flight simulation accessible to a broader number of users. Experienced hobbyists will see this in many little things that make the underlying sim controls a joy to use; but those new to flight simulation will find it much easier find what they want to know to get into the air, navigate and so on. Microsoft's goal is to expand the market for flight simulation, and in this editor's judgment 'A Century of Flight' does just that.

Most of you want to know what's changed from FS2002? Are those changes significant? Aside from the 'Century of Flight' theme, why should I spend $54.95 USD to upgrade? (Note that there's only one version - the old "Standard" and "Professional" versions are gone; you get it all in the new package.)

The Winnie May as it flys through some interesting weather.

The answer is this: FS (I'll call it FS2004 from here) has a completely new Weather system. Yes, there's lots of other goodies and refinements, but it's the weather system that takes FS2004 over the top. The flying experience is more convincing in the same sense as was the scenery implementation in FS2002. Scenery technology carries over to FS2004 with enhancements such as an improved AutoGen implementation for ground objects, roads and rivers that follow terrain convincingly, and brighter night lighting.

So what about compatibility? Third-party developers will be relieved to hear that whatever works in FS2002 (i.e., adheres to SDK criteria) will work accordingly in 'A Century of Flight'. Today's aircraft and panels (yes, 2-D panels as well as virtual cockpits are carried over in the new FS2004 implementation), scenery add-ons, and Airport Facility files can be used (a converter will be provided for FS2004's improved AFD format). Oh, by the way, Peter Dowson is well aware of the sim's internals and is developing a compatible version of FSUIPC as I write this.

Detailed airport features have been added to a dozen additional airports (there's 24,000 in all, up from FS2002's 22,000), and there are taxiway signs at all but the grass strips this time around.

The J3 Cub over Portland, Oregon.

What else is new? Air Traffic Control (ATC) is much improved. That's tied in with 'Map View' which shows airspace details as well as terrain topography. Speaking of topography, ATC won't vector you into mountains now. The GPS you see (where the old generic GPS appeared on the panel) is authentic; it's user-selectable for either the Garmin 500 or 295 series - and both are fully functional, showing moving map displays in color, and flight plan details (together with an integrated 'kneeboard' system that let's you review your flight plan, look up navaid frequencies, airport and runway details, etc. (I've included a couple of videos in this report to give you an idea of how the new ATC and GPS features look.)

Before I get on with some of the specifics we saw, I'll comment on this version's frame rates/smoothness. First, keep in mind that we were seeing Alpha-level code. Even so, the sim's smoothness was impressive, even when flying in Virtual Cockpit mode (as seen on a moderately high-end processor, a 2GHz Dell using nVidia's GeForce 4 ti4600 video card). We were told that this time around the team is placing much more emphasis on code optimization than with previous releases - a speed optimization phase has been added to the development cycle, following the usual code test phase. Yes, there's still work to do to smooth out the more complex panels, but the good news is that there's still half a year to get that done.

Another point FS team members emphasized is that they listen to users' requests - there are many, many refinements in this new version resulting directly from user feedback. A number of the team members commented to me how important AVSIM's forums are to them, as well as user feedback they get at their website. One developer mentioned that he usually spends two hours a day in our forums. By policy they don't contribute to forum threads, but you can expect to see more and earlier articles in their Flight Simulator Insider web page responding to forum topics.

So here's some further information and impressions, screenshots and the ATC and GPS videos:

Our hosts Monday were Microsoft's Bruce Williams, Ken Lavering and Darryl Saunders. And in a departure from past press events, we also were encouraged to mention the names of key project team staffers responsible for the sections discussed below (but I won't give you their e-mail addresses <g>). I've already mentioned the new user interface to call up documentation and other content files directly within your flight—demonstrated by Marty Blaker, User Interface Manager, and Michael Singer, writer. And in keeping with the 'Century of Flight' theme, Mike Lambert gave us turns flying a full-size mock-up ot the Wright Flyer, which Microsoft will be showing in tours planned for many cities. This plane's flight controls are, shall we say, 'unique'—it's amazing what the Wright brothers came up with for man's first powered flight! To turn you shift your body to the side you want to turn, which warps the wings (ailerons hadn't been invented) and turns the rudder. Getting into a turn is easy—but to get out of it you shift your entire body back, hard! There's nothing subtle about this plane's controls, we all crashed repeatedly until we 'got the hang of it'. That's a tribute to this simulator's flight models—each of the classic planes respond just as did the actual plane. As another example, Lindbergh deliberately had Ryan design the 'Spitit of St. Louis' to be unstable and unresponsive so he'd stay alert the entire 37 hours he was aloft crossing the Atlantic. Fly this one and you'll have a new appreciation for the courage and stamina these pilots had!

Lane Wallace, Flying Magazine's West Coast Editor, wrote the aircraft essays you'll find in FS2004's documentation. An accomplished pilot, she flew each of the newly-added planes so she could accurately portray their flying characteristics. She commented,

"Flight Simulator: A Century of Flight" is in effect a 'time machine'. You can imagine that you're back in 1925, or any other period in flying's rich history. In writing these articles my 'heart and soul' was back in these older airplanes. This experience changed my understanding of how hard it was to fly them; I have a different understanding now of what it took."

Weather

Many of you will remember how great the clouds look in MS' Combat Flight Simulator 3. Well, they're even better in FS2004! Not only that, but you'll see weather fronts, such as thunder clouds as they approach so you can avoid these... if you have an internet connection (and who doesn't?) real world weather is updated dynamically every 15 minutes—and it's local weather, just as it could be retrieved dynamically in FS2002 with Marc Philibert's classic FS Meteo... and clouds move in response to winds aloft—or you experience turbulence if you choose to fly through these... rain is more dense and droplets move across your windscreen. Finally, aircraft behavior responds to icing effects as these arise.

Weather team members Mike Gilbert, program manager, and Niniane Wang and Adrian Woods, both software design engineers are justifiably proud of their completely new weather implementation. They worked with aircraft meteorologists to map cloud types to real world atmospheric physics. They've created a dozen or so volumetric cloud types that build and dissipate; these are selected dynamically by the simulator as you fly through changing weather conditions. As you can see in the screenshots I've chosen, the sky colors, rain and lightning effects, and cloud density vary with altitude, air density, temperature and dew point. Transparency changes as you fly through clouds, so you can see – in varying degrees – what's beyond them. Also cloud colors change with time-of-day producing dazzling dawn and sunset effects. The sky also darkens as you reach higher altitudes.

This one's the Vickers "Vimy." Notice the transparency in these clouds.
The Learjet 45." An example of cloud variety and color.
Here's The Spirit of St. Louis.; another example of superb cloud rendering.

Even if you fly without an internet connection you can easily create varying weather conditions. There's a set of pre-defined 'themes' with which you create weather scenarios with only a couple of mouse clicks—tedious weather setups are a thing of the past.

An SDK is promised to aid third-party developers in creating custom add-on clouds in GMax, and to write additional weather themes.

Detailed airports (in addition to those in FS2002) will likely include:

Charles de Gaulle (Paris, France) Narita (New Tokyo Intl)

Dallas-Ft. Worth Intl (Texas) Miami Intl (Florida)

Denver Intl (Colorado) Phoenix Sky Harbor Intl (Arizona)

Kennedy Intl (New York) Princess Juliana Intl (St. Maarten, Netherlands Antilles)

Kingsford Smith Intl (Sydney, Australia) Schiphol (Amsterdam)

Oshkosh (site of EAA AirVenture in Wisconsin)

And of course Kill Devil Hills (Kittyhawk strip).

ATC features

Program manager Kevin Griffin, a CFI who's been with the FS team since 1995 described the new ATC implementation. It now supports requests for altitude changes in route, and there's an improved and expanded text and voice interface. It's also "weather aware" and "terrain aware" for improved vectoring. You can request approaches for specific runways, and even open a new flight plan while in-route. There's three female and nine male voices available. And the ATC messages you've received are automatically recorded in the kneeboard for easy reference. Kevin told us you can expect an ATC SDK.

There's much more; so take a look the ATC video (be aware, though, it's 10M bytes) to get your own impression:

Click here for ATC video.

The AI system is improved too; it now includes non-towered airports. There's a 'slider' to easily adjust AI traffic density. As mentioned earlier, there's a new utility to easily add to and modify AI flight schedules. And there's more taxiway support—"if there's a parking space available, there'll be a plane there."

GPS features

The best way to get a feel for the new GPS is to see the video:

Click here for GPS video.

The new moving map looks great!

(Many thanks to SunSITE Northern Europe for their hosting of the above videos)

And a few other things

Each aircraft's virtual cockpit is now fully interactive—you can operate any of its controls with a mouse-click. I found the VCs to be quite legible, and of course the cockpits are highly detailed. In fact I noticed one with a pilot's hands holding the control yoke. And you'll notice that reflections glint off the instruments as your plane turns in relation to the sun.

I won't recount the nine added aircraft (in addition to the 15 contemporary aircraft carried over from FS2002's Professional Edition), as you'll find these described in Microsoft's Flight Simulator Insider website.

Well, these are just the highlights—we'll be writing a complete review once the Microsoft Flight Simulator: A Century of Flight is released. We're sure looking forward to that!