Game needing 2007 hardware reviewed

WHEN IT COMES TO FLYING, there are three sorts of people. People who love flying, people who consider flying as a necessary evil, and people who cannot stand the idea of a human leaving the ground.

Ever since I was a kid, I loved flying - therefore, I fit in category three.

As such, playing the Fright Stimulator series of games from Microsoft comes as a default. To be able to get in the air, even without the feeling of all those "jeez".

You've got that loving feeling

Lower the flaps to 5 deg, hold brakes until 80% throttle... and do not stand at the beach prior to take off. Of course, it's not Photoshop, it's Princess Juliana Airport.

FSX team had a lot of job in store, and team took two years to complete a new iteration of famous Flight Simulator brand. As of FS2004: A Century of Flight, even FAA accepts hours spent flying in FS as legitimate simulator hours, which only speaks about the level of reality that FS offers in its ultra-realistic mode.

2D Cockpit is sometimes more easier to use than the virtual one...

...but Virtual one just gives you all the room in the world... but not all commands work in this more, so be ready for 2D/3D cockpit view switching

The game gives you a choice between free flight, completing one or more of 40 included missions that come with the game, play in multiplayer mode, or visit learning centre, which will If you are new to the world of FS, taking a training lesson is far more recommended than picking up a Boeing 747-400, parking it at airport of choice and flying up (if you pick most demanding airports such as Princess Julianne, you will end up in water instead of air, due to your lack of knowledge about using flaps for short runway take-off).

This game is pretty much ideal for people who would like to check the feeling of freight, yet without feeling their feet leaving the ground because of a lack of "jeez" and air movements can calm your fear a bit, or for pilots that would like to get the feel of various planes and helicopters. The game comes on two DVDs, and after installation, your hard drive will have approximately 15GB less free space, but it is commendable how fast installation finishes. There are two versions of the game available, but we reviewed the Standard Edition, not the Deluxe one. Deluxe differs from bog standard by offering more planes... and that's pretty much that.

Weather selection options are extensive, but perhaps it is best to play on-line with the real world weather mark switched on. The feature does not work at all times, because we didn't got Airport Closed information while trying to land in UK during the horrific closure of UK airports in the run up to Yuletide.

Planes, planes, gimme planes...

Airbus makes an official retail debut with boring-cockpit looking Airbus A321

When it comes to available aircraft, FSX does not stray from the course set by FS2004 and FS2002. There are helicopters, propeller and jet aircraft, vintage and new models, acrobatic planes and gliders - a little bit of everything.

The Cessna 172SP Skyhawk is pretty much the most popular four seat aircraft of all time, and the stimulation level is as good as it gets. FSX also features 17x's enlarged brother, C208B Grand Caravan. The De Havilland Beaver - no really - DHC2 will give you the ability to turn every little stretch of water into a landing strip, while the Extra 300S will probably be the aircraft with largest fun factor. I found that a DG Flugzeugbau DG-808S was the real deal as far as flying goes.

When it comes to commercial jets, we welcome the inclusion of Airbus as a manufacturer. In the past versions, the Voles simply forgot about the success of this European manufacturer and focused solely on Boeing Boeing. FSX finally brings you one Airbus aircraft, in the form of A321, but there are also Bombardier CRJ-700 and two old school heavy-weights, Boeing 737-800 and 747-400.

When it comes to small jets, members of the rich boy club will cherish the opportunity to fly executive jets such as the Learjet 45 but the real deal for crowded cities is the Robinson R22 Beta II and Bell 206B JetRanger.

Airports baby
When it comes to the airport segment, this is perhaps the most improved section since FS2004. Proven that you've enabled the option of maximum traffic, airports come to life with many airplanes and complete maintenance crews. This also requires a bit more cautious approach, because touching one means crashing and rolling back the fright until the last checkpoint. While this may be real, I personally found it offensive that I need to brake because there are maintenance boys driving their cars and trolleys in a plane taxi runway. Frankfurt and JFK require maximum care, because crashes can occur quite often. But it is welcome to see the sight of tens of workers running around the planes.

In all, there are 24,491 airports to choose from, but do not expect 100% accuracy when selecting an airport outside the World's Top 100. For instance, my gate to the world is an archaic monument from communist Yugoslavia waiting to be torn down, but when you load the LDZA airport, you will see a forest at both sides of the runway. That would not be so bad if there wasn't for the fact that there is no forest on the runway (in real world, only US Embassy and a huge mountain of trash), with a 1,034 metre high mountain in the background, but hey, you can't expect everything is perfect.

For that, we would need two to three Blu-ray or five to six HD DVD games and game installation taking around 100GB. However, airports such as JFK in New York, London City, SFO in San Francisco, Nice in France and McCarran in Las Vegas are a delight to fly from given that you have the view to complete city while landing. The reality of flying from these airports is, naturally, somewhat different.

As good as it gets? Not yet...

Graphics may look good on first sight, but according to Microsoft, best is yet to come

One of the things which will you notice is a small sign on the box "Designed for Windows XP - Works Even Better on Windows Vista" is a small taster what will you get once Microsoft releases DirectX 10 API. Game will be patched to DX10 version and all of the sudden, everything should look tremendously better and framerates should rise. But we'll discuss performance later.

We have seen several artistic inqpressions how should a DX10 version look like, but we won't show you the "DX10 Artistic Impression" pictures. Microsoft needs to release official DX10 screenshots.

But this is the first DX10 title which might send out a tidal wave of hardware shopping bonanza in the world of gamers. I know several SIM adoring gamers who just bought computers worth well over ?3000-3500, running Dell 2407s and 3007s just for this game. Trust me, if the DX10 really looks that beautiful and runs better, this will be a killer-hardware title and don't be surprised if Nvidia and AMD start promoting this game as an R600/G84/G86 launch title.

Why is the game slow?
Zoom out in top-down view (F12) only goes to show that for Microsoft, world is a playground

Cynics might say that Microsoft only wants to sell new hardware, but seeing that FSX brings Kentsfield with 8800GTX to its knees, I could only conclude that the team did a really pathetic job in optimizing the game. First of all, graphics aren't all that drop-dead gorgeous, and the idea of rendering complete scene and then slapping a bitmapped cockpit and textures (you've wondered why virtual cockpit is slow? That's why - you're rendering everything) is pretty much 1990s, but nothing can be done here. Dev team works like they did 10 years ago and no help can be given here. It's really no wonder that so many FS2004 add-ons and textures work flawlessly with FSX.

There has been several fixes to improve the performance, but seeing the game running in low-20s on a Kentie+8800GTS in 1024, 1280, 1600 and 1920x1200(yep, no resolution scaling) only speaks that Microsoft should really release a Service Pack for the game and significantly increase performance - ninja PCs are dying out, yet alone your mainstream configuration. To be perfectly clear, there is multitude of performance options available - but seeing lowly framerate when virtual cockpit is identical to FS2004 - that's unacceptable.

The reason for everything stated here is pretty simple. Like most game developers, Microsoft too speaks of "I yearn for a 6GHz Pentium" instead of optimising the software for a multi-core world. It's quite funny to watch my CPU load on G15 keyboard. During the most intensive scenes, the frame rate slows to a crawl and the CPU is loaded only 25%, so one core is dying because of the burden, while the three others have got their feet up. This game means a 3GHz Athlon is better than a 2.8GHz FX-62. Having Conroe or Kentsfield is a minus, since the game admits only a single core clock.

In short

Volumetric clouds look just...wow.

First of all, congrats to Thee Vole for creating yet another memorable flying "experience", and the fact that FSX is recognised by FAA as a simulator tool for Cessna 172 means I respect the team's work. However, said team spent literally zero time in optimising the game, and once you see how a ?4000 system is on its knees, you can only imagine what's gone wrong.

The stimulation part is done with high attention to detail, while the real world weather is really an excellent feature. Flying a Cessna over Rio de Janeiro, gliding over lake Tahoe or flying a modified sea-plane in the Maldives only brings a holiday planner to my head, and if you can't make it there in the real world, flying in virtual worlds can relax you to some extent. [Er, you can't drink in the Maldives, Theo. Ed.]

If you're looking for a real flight SIM, then fly in prop planes, since they're stimulated to the highest details. Jet planes are give or take stimulated to a certain extent, but for real jet airplane simulation, the team should learn to use GPGPU or wait for AMD's Octal-Core - you really need tens and hundreds of GFLOPS to do that. But flying in Canadair CRJ-700 in snowy Iceland or landing a 747-400 at Princess Juliana in St. Maarten is something to do in this wintry time of year. ?