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Microsoft ® Flight Simulator X is the culmination of nearly 25 years of the landmark Flight Simulator franchise-the most significant addition to date.
Flight Simulator X immerses you in a beautifully rich and realistic world with dozens of aircraft and interactive Missions for a completely new and innovative gaming experience. Free Flight lets you fly anywhere in the world, from your hometown airport to the most exotic places you've ever dreamed of.
Gamers and simmers of all ages and skill levels feel firsthand what it's like to be an aviator traveling the globe solo or online with others.
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I was lucky enough back in 2004 in my previous job to have to use Flight Simulator 2004 to develop a couple of customised Flight Sims for helping to train pilots, so it was with some joy that I agreed to test drive the latest Flight Simulator incarnation from Microsoft. What can I say Microsoft have once more surpassed themselves and have securely cemented their position as #1 in the Flight Simulator genre. With even more aircraft than before, even more interconnectedness and cooperation in the form of the Internet, better ground textures and even more places to fly to.
One of the first things I did upon receiving this gem was to do the old how is the height map for NZ in this version test. So i jumped in a little Cessna, selected an airport located in the sounds of the South Island and fired her up. Well the height map is better than in 2004, but it still is lacking and doesn't quire give you a good sense of scale. So it was off to Geographx to see if they had a height map/mesh for FSX in their downloads section and lo and behold they had a free 75m mesh, they also had a 20m mesh available for $80 but I decided on the free version as that's what most will likely opt for, so I downloaded it put it in fired it up again. This time I got a much better sense of scale.
Next I decided to see if some of my old FS2004 aircraft would work with this new version. Sadly a large number of these did not work, it appears that most 2004 aircraft are incompatible with FSX, however with the large number of Flight Sim modelers out there your favourite FS2004 aircraft will beconverted over to FSX.
So the next question I had was how does it handle and I must say it handles beautifully, however while the minimum system requirements are still quite low, you will need at fairly hefty system to get the full effect from it. One thing to note is unless you are running Windows XP SP2 or Windows Vista forget it, all older OS's are no longer supported by FSX.
So is this a worthwhile upgrade from 2004? In my opinion (especially as i'm a PC upgrade junkie) yes it is.
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