So, one would expect that with all of this Real World (don'tcha just love that?) invasive poking and prodding, we of the age of the barely straight and steady stream would have better things to do than playing our silly games. After all, time is passing, along with all sorts of other age related nasties.

But no, our prostates may be enlarging, but our gray matter is not and is in serious need of attention. Flight Simulation, as we all know, is just dandy for that. Would that it would have a similar effect farther down south, but one can't expect miracles.

So with all this in mind, let us be eternally grateful to the developers of Flight Simulator for their more or less metronomic release of new versions of the sim. I must confess to the occasional slice of boredom that comes across my plate every now and then. Usually this is assuaged with new scenery, aircraft or hardware, but eventually even the staunchest of us will succumb to the FSBlahs every now and then. We face the Solomonesque decisions as to which stays, and which goes from our hard drives as we make room in our already choked repositories of SimStuff. And slowly, inexorably, the time is upon us yet again when the next installment of FS is singing its siren's song from the shelves of our local computer store.

But you know what? Something is still missing. This came upon me just the other day when I got a mail from a gentleman in London, who related an absolutely fascinating story about flying a twin and having both engines go belly-up simultaneously. But the best part was, he was really really unnerved by it! He had that moment of panic, those few moments during which you'd swear there's a cock fight raging in your belly. And then, like any good pilot, he scanned, thought a bit, and corrected the problem. The twins fired up, and he continued on. Have you seen the movie, "Apollo Thirteen"? Tom Hanks makes the observation, while exiting a simulator, something along the lines of "That was three hours of boredom followed by eight second of sheer terror!" That, my friends, is a true sim pilot! If you can manage to become so wrapped up in your flight as to nearly wet yourself when your props autofeather, then by God, you've accomplished something!

While this is something to which one would aspire, I'm afraid that for many of us, we simply are unable to get to the wetting-oneself-from-fear level. For those of us who tend to sport dry shorts throughout the flight, who laugh in the face of microbursts and wind sheer, there are products such as FsPassengers which will at least give the flight deck pause to reconsider that barrel roll to celebrate reaching cruise level. Certainly, Radar Contact 4 will obligingly kick you in the pants should you stray from assigned course, altitude and speed. There are all sorts of Big Brother programs out there that will look over your shoulder while you fly, and deliver to you the good/bad news once you've shut down. But is it the same?

Being a young and spry (uh huh) fifty, I'm hopeful that FS developers will at some point within my ever-dwindling future, be able to provide us with something that will push us right to the edge. A program that will ensure that each flight we make will be new and exhilarating, and designed for even the most callused among us from finding those times when we actually consider doing something other than firing up the sim and going for a jaunt. A sim that will give all of us the sense of urgency as experienced by my buddy in London (here's to ya, Fred!), one with the ability to really grab us by the appendage and twist, leaving us spent but satisfied with another successful flight upon touchdown. Is this too much to ask?

Let me tell you, if they do develop this beast, I have every intention of owning the rights to a new product I intend to introduce, FSChairPads!

Three Green!

Chip Barber
rfbarber@optonline.net