A Great Simulator For Aviation Enthusiasts Of All Levels. Could Use Slightly Better Optimization.
As expected, Flight Simulator X (FSX) improves on FS 2004: A Century of Flight, and previous installments of the series. Air Traffic Control (while still not a hundred percent authentic), offers a much more robust and interactive experience than previous games. There are now ground vehicles like concession trucks, baggage carts and pushback trucks present at major airports to allow simulation pilots the more realistic experience of ground operations pre, and post-flight. In addition, retracting jetways also add to the immersion when at major hubs when piloting some of the larger jets like the A380 Airbus, or 747-400.
Improvements to FSX aren't just limited to airports and ground operations, either. FSX has a completely new graphics engine that takes advantage of DX10 for those who play on Vista, but that also increases the overall fidelity and realism of the simulated world for DX9 users as well.
For example, when flying over densely populated urban areas like Los Angeles, or New York, you will see an infinite number of three dimensional houses, buildings and other structures you would normally expect to see in these areas. Gone are the days of blurry one dimensional textures that are supposed to represent the tops of buildings, streets, etc. The other new feature FSX has flows directly into this and that is you will now see cars and trucks navigating the streets and major highways that run between those urban structures as well. In contrast, when you fly over more remote areas like the Pacific Northwest, you will see hills and mountainsides landscaped with lush, green 3D vegetation (trees; bushes; grass) appropriate for the region. This attention to detail makes FSX one of the best flight simulators to date for its pure beauty alone. In fact, with all the graphics settings turned to full FSX can often times be more photo-realistic than "Crysis" and similar games.
As far as the actual game play is concerned, the newest addition to the Flight Simulator series are the new scripted missions that give beginning and veteran pilots more of a reason to fly various aircraft they've never flown before and visit various places they've never been to. These missions are divided into various categories (Beginner; Intermediate; Advanced; Expert) and range from standard first-time flying tutorials to more advanced (and sometimes dangerous) missions that require mastery of a specific aircraft to complete a specific task. For example, one expert level mission has you in a Cessna 172 in the middle of a raging snow storm, near-zero visibility, high in the mountains as you help Ski Patrol locate a lost hiker before he freezes to death. Another one has you simply taking an empty airliner from one airport to another as a way to familiarize yourself with how to fly jumbo jets. Many in the FS community have chided MS for adding scripted missions because they feel it makes FS more like a regular game than a simulator. Regardless, the good thing about the missions is they are appropriate for their difficulty level and never overwhelm the player. If you play them sequentially from beginner to expert you learn actual skills you can use when in Free Flight mode -- The main mode FS has built itself on over the years; The "Fly Anywhere" mode -- That helps make Free Flight even more enjoyable. This alone makes FSX the best version of FS for complete beginners.
However, all of these new features like the jaw-dropping visuals come at a steep price.
As mentioned in previous reviews, the game requires a lot of horsepower (hardware) to run with many of these features enabled at the same time and at their highest setting. It should be noted a fast CPU (3.0GHz) or above is recommended along with at least, a mid-range graphics (Nvidia 8800; ATI 3870) card for optimal performance. FSX depends more on a faster CPU than a high-end video card because of the constantly streaming environment data as well as the constant real-time calculations being made to simulate the aerodynamics of flight. So, anybody looking to get into FSX would be wise to invest the fastest single, or dual core CPU available and either a high-end, or mid-range video card to achieve optimal performance. If not, FS2004: A Century of Flight will probably be the better choice. FS2004 is five years old and can be run on most modern hardware with almost all settings on max. This would be the only real flaw FSX has in terms of its technical merits: It still is not properly optimized (even after two Service Packs (patches)) to run at levels most gamers expect given current levels of hardware. It will not be until Intel, or AMD release 4.0GHz chips that one will be able to fully utilize FSX's untapped level of realism and visuals.
The only other flaws FSX has are minor and even these are debatable (subjective). They mainly have to do with the age old debate, "How real can a computer flight simulator be compared to flying a real plane?" and center around FSX being a piece of software and not a real plane subject to real world forces. For the sake of fairness, it should be noted some of the included planes are inaccurately modeled in terms of presentation. Also, some of the aerodynamics (handling) and procedures are not 100% accurate like the use of the GPS and ILS landings, but they are as close as they can be for a game of this magnitude that tries to be as realistic as it can be given its scope while still being accessible to armchair pilots around the globe.
I highly recommend FSX for anybody who is interested in flight simulators and is either a veteran of the series, or a complete newcomer to the genre as a whole.
FSX has a lot to offer everyone, regardless of skill level, as long as you have the right hardware to run it well and have the time to experiment with what settings work best with your specific system configuration. It will give you hours and hours of flying enjoyment and being able to travel to places around the world you normally would not want to go, or cannot afford to go to in real life.