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DC Gamer Club / Re: Microsoft Flight Simulator - Free!
« on: March 31, 2012, 12:12 PM »PS: I have MS FlighstSim X and am just downloading Free MS Flight.
I have now discovered why they haven't gone for a new packaged version!
The base game is free but lots of stuff that was in X now has to be bought as an addon - and they are not cheap at all.-Carol Haynes (March 31, 2012, 11:30 AM)
True, and it's been a common complaint. Then again, the same can be said about third-party add-ons to FSX, without which the sim environment is rather bland.
The Hawaiian Adventure Pack gives you all the major Hawaiian islands and one (only one!) new plane - a small, fast, single-prop RV-6. Even that doesn't allow you to fly all the missions in the game though. To fly cargo and passengers you need the larger Maule, which is a separate paid add-on (but a very satisfying plane to fly, unless your main joy is in aerobatics).
I've actually gone and bought the pack and the Maule and I love them and I am seriously hooked, even though I don't like how MS is selling them at all. But, the sim experience is really cool; it's just bound to become very expensive in the long run. Ask me if there's anything I can help with. (If I can find the time, I may write a detailed review of MS Flight.)
In short, MS Flight cannot be seriously considered free, since the free package is extremely limited. It's no more than a demo.
A couple of those 'addon' packs would probably cost more than the complete MS FS X (which by the way still runs fine on Windows 7, including 64 bit).
Yeah, but barely :-) It's another story. I bought FSX and MS Flight within days from each other. MS FLight, with all the detailed terrain, weather, lighting and shadows, runs fine at max quality settings on my system. In FSX, by contrast, I have to pull the terrain, weather and all other sliders almost to minimum just to get a frame rate that's usable but still not smooth. FSX really shows its age; I've read that it doesn't offload any graphics rendering to the GPU, so the CPU has way too much to do. Does it even use multiple cores? It feels as if it's running on one! In fact, with the generic airports, default terrain both ugly (water!) and boring (same everywhere), I am seriously underwhelmed. MS Flight only gives you Hawaii, but in an amazing detail and quality. I fly just to look around, and it's awesome. (And the airports and other landmarks check out against Google Maps in satellite view - there's a lot of actual terrain, not generic textures).