Those Dear Dead Days Beyond Recall

By Ulrich Klein

Perhaps you also know that particular Hollywood view of the past which glorifies things we have experienced years ago whereas we often tend to minimize the beauty of what we can share today. Since the early days of FS3 - that's about the time when I fell in love with flightsimming, and you all know what flightsimming was like at that time, don't you - there have been several times when I longed to go back to earlier versions of FS because I was pretty much frustrated by the current version of the time. This happened when FS5 came out (although it was the first MS FS which offered somewhat photorealistic panels); things became even worse with the Windows version FSFW95, so I immediately deleted this version and went back to FS5. Then FS98 was shipped, and for the first time I felt at ease with my flightsimming hobby again. Unfortunately my happiness did not last for long because with FS2000 frustration struck the hearts of most flightsimmers. Mine, too, and you all know why. Again I yearned for the former edition of FS, thinking of those dear dead days when performance was more fluid. Are they really nothing else but dear dead days beyond recall?

Well, since two weeks I am a believer again. No longer do I want to think back, never again would I install any previous version of MSFS. With the latest edition of Microsoft's Flight Simulator FS2002 Pro at hand, I am fully convinced that this version is the future again. There is absolutely nothing terribly affecting flight as far as I can judge from what I have seen so far. On my test machine, an Intel PIII 1000 with 384 megs of ram and with an nVidia GeForce2 GTS 32MB video card, this awesome sim is extraordinarily smooth, almost liquid smooth. It's fantastically amazing as to most aspects such as visuals, sounds and many others. Fluidity like we have never had before. Also, never before have I enjoyed so many "flightsim moments" in such a short time after release as in FS2002, and it wasn't only once that my eyes almost popped out of my head. Really stunning! Especially at dawn or sunset flying is a fine cinema indeed. Watching dynamic planes arrive at and depart from airports during nighttime is truly a sight to behold.

However, there are some minor problems that need to be fixed, including some slight FS2000 carryover flaws, and I am sure we will soon hear more about this on this web site, too. Overall I think this latest edition of FS really puts any previous version to shame. This time the people at Microsoft have made it, and we really gotta thank them for what has been created here.

Anyhow, I just wanted to get this thank-you word out before all of you dive into this sim so deeply that you won't be getting any sleep for days and won't have any time to read this here either.

Ulrich Klein
huki.klein@t-online.de

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