Preview
Microsoft
Flight Simulator 2004:
A Century of Flight - Part 1
by Jim
"Hornit" Campisi
Microsoft's
next step in the line of flight sim evolution is coming soon.
A Century of Flight will build on Microsoft's legendary line
of flight simulator. Every two years Microsoft releases a
new version of Flight Simulator This years variant is appropriately
named "A Century of Flight", commemorating 100 years
of powered manned flight since the Wright brothers fateful
day at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina.
A Century
of flight concentrates more on the historical aspect giving
us new aircraft all with rich backgrounds in aviation history.
Many small enhancements(and some large!) have been made to
the simulation and one could actually consider this almost
as a patch to what we have with Flight Simulator 2002, but
the scope and breadth of changes along with advances in our
hardware technology dictate that it will be a new and standalone
title. In this set of previews I will touch on some of the
things which have evolved rather nicely giving us a much more
realistic and sometimes even challenging aviation experience.
Before
starting I would like to spend a few moments on some technical
details. Please keep in mind this is an official beta copy
obtained very recently while at E3. It is more than likely
not what one would consider final software so some of the
things mentioned (or seen in screenshots) may be already changed
or fixed by the time this goes gold. The sim comes as a set
of four, that's right four! CD's and ends up on the hard drive
with a whopping 3.2 Gigs after a full install. You better
make some room for this baby!! Startup requires the number
4 CD to remain in the drive and after the initial scenery
configs and facilities files are installed you are ready to
go! Fans of the Microsoft series will feel right at home on
the User interface. Its not the same but mostly some color
changes and better organized placement for options and choices.
Navigating is a breeze and I had no trouble finding what I
needed and using the interface.
Now
to the meat of the sim. Most of us are aware of the improvements
to FS2002 and this is where I will focus my previews. Microsoft
took great leaps by adding Air Traffic control and communications
to Flight Simulator in their last version. While a great addition,
it lacked any flexibility and was very limited in its ability
to handle traffic in a realistic fashion. We will look closely
at this and the enhanced environmental effects available.
I will also take a good look at the improved training and
the resources available for this module.
After
firing up the sim I was eager to see what my low to midrange
PC could do with ACOF. I currently run an Athlon T-bird at
1.4 Ghz on a Windows 98SE based system with 512MB DDR and
a GeForce 4 Ti4200 with 128mb RAM. This rig runs most everything
I have thrown at it fairly well. I cant run some sims at super
high detail levels but I can run with most of the important
settings allowing nice graphics and smooth frame rates most
of the time. Those who know about the frame rate slider in
FS2002 will understand what I mean here. Flight Simulator
allows you to set the frame rate or "lock" it to
a set number. This lets the CPU do other work rather than
trying to pump out pure speed. It goes a long way to making
things like scenery and autogen appear in crisp detail. I
run at about 27-30 fps in FS2002 and it does very well except
with aftermarket high detail add-ons and scenery. ACOF has
all these sliders and tweaks allowing it to be very configurable
for a wide range of systems. I run with medium to high detail
settings and midrange clouds and scenery coupled with about
60-70% mesh details. ACOF appears to allow even more fine
tuning with cloud cover percentages and detail settings for
the clouds themselves. I am very happy with barely midrange
cloud detail and 3D settings at this point. So what's the
bottom line?? I have my frame rate slider set to 22-25 in
this sim and it will do more, but I'm seeing very close to
the performance I did in FS2002 I am very surprised at this!
If you load her up though the performance will plummet with
a full load of AI and high cloud settings at the nicely rendered
high detail scenery's. Just be smart about your system and
what it can handle. Even though there is more here, my bet
is your performance will be fine as long as you don't try
to do it all. The nice thing about ACOF is you don't need
to have it all to have improvements in what your used to with
FS2002 Things have been improved nicely in this regard.
The
weather is one area which has seen huge improvements. We now
have a full blown realistic looking 3D type cloudscape as
you do in real life. No more cumulus turning into stratus
layers after you climb a few thousand feet above them. They
stay nice and puffy as long as you can see them. The haze
and visibility look more realistic also. It appears there
is some variation to the haze which looks very good. One of
the best improvements is the dynamic nature of the color of
the sky. FS2002 was OK but the colors were too generic and
did not change with the time of day and sun angle. Now we
have glorious sunsets and sunrises. Viewed in conjunction
with the new clouds yields nothing short of what I would call
breathtaking. Its truly a pleasure to take a nice evening
flight around your favorite airpark just to enjoy the sunset
now. Another noticeable difference is how the zenith is depicted
in darker shades, and as you approach the horizon the sky
brightens noticeably just as it does in real life. The attached
screens show this to good effect. It reminds me a good bit
of IL-2 and some of the recent screenshots of LOMAC. This
color and lighting issue has a huge visual impact, it goes
right to the heart of putting you inside what looks like a
realistic sky. I should know having spent several thousands
of hours in all kinds of skies!
Precipitation
appears to have had a small makeover and rain and snow effects
are definitely better and more realistic looking. This includes
what looks like a bit better animation of rain on your windshield
too. The visibility settings work about the same, but with
the new clouds and tweaked vis you can finally overcome that
annoying ring of blue sky with overcasts we saw in FS2002
ACOF allows very realistic looking low visibility and bad
weather. The lightning is spectacular. The bolts are thicker
and actually light up the clouds they flash near. You can
see cloud to cloud and cloud to ground lighting going off
all around you. Thunderstorms are a much more realistic sight
now. Wind and turbulence seem unchanged since FS2002 It would
be nice to see a gust or downburst system applied to simulate
really nasty weather, but honestly you shouldn't be flying
in weather that bad!
Another
really nice addition is the ability to have different weather
at different reporting stations without downloading realtime
weather or maintaining an Internet connection to play. On
one of the screenshots you can see that the mapview is used
(with terrain!) and you can individually pick a reporting
station and set up whatever kind of weather you want for that
specific station. You also have the choice of how fast the
weather will change with a slider controlling the rate. This
is a huge improvement and it works fairly well too. I set
up a flight from Keene, NH to Nashua, NH with decent weather
at the start and low ceilings and visibility at Nashua As
I flew along the skies clouded up and I ended up on vectors
to an ILS with about 1 mile visibility and 400 foot overcast.
I didn't have to change a thing after I set it up! Really
nice and much more realistic.
That's
enough for this preview, more to come as I get more time with
the sim, enjoy the screenshots! Next we will look at overall
improvements in scenery and aircraft.
The Microsoft
Flight Simulator 2004: A Century of Flight official
web site is here.
Video downloads showing different
aspects of Microsoft Flight
Simulator 2004: A Century of Flight are available here.
The Microsoft
Flight Simulator Insider web site is located here.
Click here
to go to top of this page.
|