Plea To Microsoft Flight Simulator Developers

By Paul van Dinther

Recently I purchased a brand new PC with all the power I could get. Of course such luxury needed to be put to good use and I decided to upgrade my FS98 to the latest and greatest version of FS2002.

I am not about to write a review on FS2002. there are plenty good reviews out there and I agree with most of them. What I want to talk about are the opportunities of the development team that made FS2002 missed. I have some issues with this software and the issues have been around at least since FSFW95.

Issue 1

FS2002 can be customized to a high degree and one of the features that drew my attention to FS2002 is the included editor.

Yeah sure, Gmax, the great editor promoted here turns out to be a free piece of software that after installation turned out to be outdated and could not be licensed. A new copy needed to be downloaded anyway. Did I pay $20 extra for free software?

Any version of FS makes use of a massive number of little files that somehow work together to form a scenery, plane, structure or whatever else. Although I am a computer programmer by trade, when I grab FS I want to have things easy.

Gmax, the editor being quite a powerful product, does not integrate very well with FS. What I expected was a button in the FS menu inviting me to modify a plane or structure or create one. Back in the very old versions there was a nice build in editor that made it easy to make and change planes. I did not expect having to read numerous manuals and work out how to get many little files to do something. I tried and failed by the way.

Same applies for added scenery. All way too complex. Please guys, hire a non programmer and get this sorted.

All versions of Flight Simulator have always hung together through obscure links. Proper build in management tools would help to show the true awesome power that is clearly present in this product.

Finally I seriously dislike the dumbed down menu system. I have spent several hours trying to turn on the menu bar inside the simulation screen as a grayed out pop-up menu option seems to suggest you can. What happened to saving you current situation and changing your aircraft mid-flight?

Instead of proper help files I am now forced to mess around with Acrobat PDF files trying to find how to do things but I am having trouble finding the information I need (such as "How to turn on the menu bar in the simulator").

Issue 2

Scenery editor, well I can be short, unless I missed some obscure file somewhere I don't believe FS2002 comes with one. Here I want to draw attention to the most powerful scenery editor I have ever come across.

The program with this powerful editor is called Trainz from Auran (http://www.auran.com/trainz/default.htm). Here you can build your scenery in full 3D view. Pull hills out of the ground. Paint some grass or rock on it. Draw some splines forming roads, fences and powerlines. Chuck in 3D structures and so on. In this editor you build while you are in the scenery and not through some obscure plan views. This is jaw dropping stuff making you feel like a god creating the world.

Please Microsoft guys look at this program and learn from it or license it.

Issue 3

About a year ago I wrote an article about load balancing in flight simulators. In this article I claimed that the amount of effort required to perform an action in flight simulators needed to be similar to real-life. One of the suggestions I made then and I repeat it here is that "+" and "-" to tune a radio, altimeter, pitch and whatever else it totally inappropriate!

These are at least drag type operations. A heading bug should be selected with a left mouse button down and then dragged up or down to adjust.

I tried this the VOR holding pattern in FS2002 trying to apply the procedures that I used when I was an airline pilot. No, there was no way I can keep up with adjusting my instruments frantically clicking on an invisible "-" button.

The greatest improvement in FS for me would not be dynamic scenery or ATC chatter but dragable knobs where applicable.

And... while you're at it, can you please put yoke mouse support back. It is greatly missed. I ran FS2002 on my old PC that does not have a joystick. To my surprise the mouse support was gone and so were the little indicators telling me the position of the control surfaces making it pretty much totally impossible to fly even the most docile of aircraft.

Issue 4

Wow, the idea of a virtual cockpit. Wonderful! Really. I could not think of any reason I would want to fly in any other mode until I tried to adjust the propeller pitch...or the Nav lights...or anything else. Why does nothing work in the virtual cockpit? I know it is virtual but should it be this virtual? Come-on boys, would it take that much effort to get switches to work in a virtual cockpit view or are you holding back for the net version?

Anyway to show you this article is not only talk I produced a little altimetry program that can be used to learn about QNH and QFE. the reason I offer this free program for download is because it shows a photo realistic altimeter with a draggable "Alt" knob to adjust the reference pressure of the instrument rather than awkward invisible "+" and "-" buttons.

I just hope some smart flight simulator developer reads this and takes the credit all you like just use it. Each of these issues appear minor efforts compared to the mammoth improvements made in FS2002 but to me resolving these issues will put me in the market for FS2003 or X-Plane if they do this first.

Regards

Paul van Dinther
paul@diprode.com

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