I guess there must be something wrong with the normal cockpit view because
in this view mode I mostly have the problem that lights such as runway
edge lights or the all important VASI indicators are too faint and almost
invisible. Turning up the brightness of the monitor doesn't really help
out. As an old FS2000 carryover flaw the GPS frame (gps.gau) does not adapt
to the night coloring of the panel.
Even on final approach runway lights are sometimes a bit too faint. The
VASI lights on the right side of runway 27R in KORD are almost invisible
even moments before touchdown. During daytime, too, you will often find it
difficult to read the VASI lights during approach in time. Again, this
problem only exists in cockpit view mode like here. In all other view
modes all lights are clearly visible even from a distance.
In
Andrew Herd's review of FS2002 we have already heard
that weather conditions change too rapidly. Moreover, I have also noticed
that flying through the terrific clouds constantly reveals all too sudden
changes of sight. The reason for this is that the clouds are not
3-dimensional, something that was partly improved by Flight One's
FSClouds 2000
for FS2000. This is, of course, very helpful in order to boost frame
rates, and if you are flying in normal cockpit view you are most likely
unaware of this lack of the third dimension, but in other view modes such
as the spot plane view you can easily discover that cumulous clouds
actually are flat as leaves. Seen from their front side these clouds look
splendid, but if you "overtake" and pass them you will have to admit that
this is not a convincing piece of eye-candy, to say the least. MS should
definitely build in some more gradual transitions for those hardened
devotees among us who, once they have dived into a mess of "thick" clouds,
love watching patches of scenery down below slowly emerge into sight again
when visibility gradually improves, as it should be and is experienced by
real pilots in such weather conditions. Clouds are arranged at various
angles relatively to the position of the aircraft, and in most cases you
do not see them from their very flat sides, but if you do now and then, it
largely spoils Microsoft's motto "As real as it gets", doesn't it?
See, you'll have to be a very hardened devotee of cloud flying to consider
this as some sort of eye-candy, right? Does this really cut the mustard?
On the other hand, most cloud formations are so overwhelming especially at
sunset that I experienced some very impressive flightsim moments when
flying through them. So, near Sitka, I happily watched the changing
colors of the sky at night time caused by the northern lights. Wow!
Violet spots in the stratus cloud layer above the 747 are another FS2000
carryover flaw. Everybody has it. They only occur when a 3/8 or 4/8
stratus layer is selected and when seen from below. This issue is due to
the stratus_scattered.bmp file in the FS2002\Texture folder. If you have
Flight1's FSClouds 2000 installed on your system, take their bmp file and
copy it into the FS2002\Texture folder. That solves the problem for
now.
Watching the 737 taking off at Juneau (PAJN) and climbing up to cruise
altitude was a fine cinema indeed. Here MS have come very very close to
the real thing. That's how nice clouds mostly are in FS2002: translucent,
multishaded, and constantly changing here during the first minutes of
takeoff, they truly lend the whole scene some stupefying depth like we
have never experienced in former versions of FS.
However, the big secret that I and perhaps other flightsimmers as well
have found out is that FS2002 appears to suffer from a bug with raindrops
splashing against the cockpit windscreen. I really liked this visual
effect in FS2000 and so I wanted to do a lot of such flying in FS2002 as
well, but activating rainfall in the weather menu almost always results in
lockups minutes later. I did an immense deal of testing about it under
well-defined test parameters (mostly at Pierce Co-Thun, ID S10), which
showed that these full system crashes only occurred when being in cockpit
view mode and with the raindrops splashing against the window pane. In all
other view modes rain doesn't do any harm. If you are in cockpit view and
even use the maximized window function ("W" key), well, you will meet a
fatal lockup very quickly. At least on my test machine, an Intel PIII 1000
with 384 megs of ram and with an nVidia GeForce2 GTS 32MB video card and a
VIA chipset, the screen freezes as it is, with the sound of the engines
still humming on; yet behind the scenes and at first undetected, I notice
that the whole system has come to a grinding halt. There is also some
interdependence with the position of the rain slider, I feel: with this
slider set to max, lockups in cockpit view mode and maximized window
strike even all the more earlier. For those devoted simmers who still
cling to FS2000, let me tell you that you needn't worry about this problem
there. You can have the raindrops splashing against the windscreen for
hours, it will most likely not cause any lockups. I haven't had any so
far.
Even the smaller and less important airports are endowed with abundant
details like trees, bushes, buildings, antenna masts which all attribute
to the general effect of realism very very well indeed. The Cessnas are
all splendidly done, especially the red Skyhawk 172SP which even shows off
a lot of paint peel when you take a close-up look at it. In this spot
plane mode rain does not do any harm as to system lockups.
Splashing raindrops are not displayed on the plane in VC mode, so you won't
have any problems here either, and flying approaches in the virtual
cockpit is a real treat. However, not all the virtual cockpits in FS2002
are that impressive. By the way, personally I strongly recommend the
virtual cockpits of the Cessna Skyhawk 172SP, C182S, and of the King Air
350.
VFR approach to Pierce Co-Thun, a less important airport in the large
Seattle area. Visibility is set to 2 miles here, the rain slider in the
weather menu is positioned at medium. In the cockpit view like this it
took quite a while until the rain droplets on the window pane (hardly
visible here) resulted in a lockup of flight simulator, causing the whole
system to crash. I had to completely reboot the PC each time then.
Bleeding rain droplets on the maximized cockpit window pane as shown in
this screen shot are simply amazing details that add so much to the whole
effect of the dynamics. However, this shot was taken only seconds before
the lockup issue struck again. Wow! What a good idea to position primary
flight instruments at the bottom, thus making way for a magnificent front
view. You can also do without the instruments in maximized window mode by
pressing the "W" key once again.
So I always live in fear of lockups when flying through heavy rainfall,
and in most cases and under the circumstances that I described above, this
sort of eye-candy has become obsolete, unless you really enjoy booting up
the system again and again. I don't know if it is FS2002, the video card,
the motherboard with its VIA chipset, or all of them who are the culprits,
and I have not tested different video cards so far either, well knowing
that perhaps this particular problem might be solved then, with another
nasty habit of the new graphics card already waiting for me, greedily. But
to be frank, if FS2002 and updated nVidia video cards do not go well
together, I'd consider it a serious drawback because MS did recommend a
GeForce to show off all the finest details.
t
is the same procedure as every two years: as we dive deeper into a new
edition of the granddaddy flightsim of all time, Microsoft's stunning
Flight Simulator 2002, and as we gain a more precise insight into how it
works and how it responds to a particular hardware environment, we
gradually discover the hidden glitches and strange anomalies that almost
seem to be a consistent part of each new version. Most of these little
bugs do not really worry me because they do not badly affect flight at
all. For some of them we have even found a workaround that we can do with
for the time being, and with dozens of extremely well-done goodies, these
minor problems are probably not worth mentioning (before you start
hammering me let me state that of course I do know how nagging even the
smaller issues can be from time to time, so pardon me for saying here that
perhaps many of these secondary trouble spots can be neglected to some
extent). For those of you who intend to reproduce some of the situations
on their systems, too, I have left the geographical coordinates in the
screen shots.
Among the minor anomalies of FS2002 Pro you will find floating trees like
in the Austrian Alps near Innsbruck, Europe. In other scenery areas such
as the bay of Seattle you might as well encounter floating houses and
other buildings that lack contact to the ground if viewed from a certain
angle. I did not come across such phenomena very often though, and it's
not a big deal either, is it?
Yellow taxi lines that are about halfway in the range of fog (visibility
is set to 1 mile here) are displayed in black (in cockpit view mode only),
a minor fault that should easily be fixed in an upcoming patch. It is
possible, though, that this phenomenon does not occur on every system.
Maybe it is a specialty of my nVidia GeForce card only.
Yet there are some things around this new version which should be taken
into consideration more closely than before, not at least due to the fact
that this time MS will certainly release only one patch for this version
of Flight Simulator. So, the more issues we find and put online, the more
likely it will be that a maximum number of problems will be solved by MS
to enjoy FS2002 even more than we do by now.
I guess there must be something wrong with the normal cockpit view because
in this view mode I mostly have the problem that lights such as runway
edge lights or the all important VASI indicators are too faint and almost
invisible. Turning up the brightness of the monitor doesn't really help
out. As an old FS2000 carryover flaw the GPS frame (gps.gau) does not adapt
to the night coloring of the panel.
However, the big secret that I and perhaps other flightsimmers as well
have found out is that FS2002 appears to suffer from a bug with raindrops
splashing against the cockpit windscreen. I really liked this visual
effect in FS2000 and so I wanted to do a lot of such flying in FS2002 as
well, but activating rainfall in the weather menu almost always results in
lockups minutes later. I did an immense deal of testing about it under
well-defined test parameters (mostly at Pierce Co-Thun, ID S10), which
showed that these full system crashes only occurred when being in cockpit
view mode and with the raindrops splashing against the window pane. In all
other view modes rain doesn't do any harm. If you are in cockpit view and
even use the maximized window function ("W" key), well, you will meet a
fatal lockup very quickly. At least on my test machine, an Intel PIII 1000
with 384 megs of ram and with an nVidia GeForce2 GTS 32MB video card and a
VIA chipset, the screen freezes as it is, with the sound of the engines
still humming on; yet behind the scenes and at first undetected, I notice
that the whole system has come to a grinding halt. There is also some
interdependence with the position of the rain slider, I feel: with this
slider set to max, lockups in cockpit view mode and maximized window
strike even all the more earlier. For those devoted simmers who still
cling to FS2000, let me tell you that you needn't worry about this problem
there. You can have the raindrops splashing against the windscreen for
hours, it will most likely not cause any lockups. I haven't had any so
far.
Even the smaller and less important airports are endowed with abundant
details like trees, bushes, buildings, antenna masts which all attribute
to the general effect of realism very very well indeed. The Cessnas are
all splendidly done, especially the red Skyhawk 172SP which even shows off
a lot of paint peel when you take a close-up look at it. In this spot
plane mode rain does not do any harm as to system lockups.
VFR approach to Pierce Co-Thun, a less important airport in the large
Seattle area. Visibility is set to 2 miles here, the rain slider in the
weather menu is positioned at medium. In the cockpit view like this it
took quite a while until the rain droplets on the window pane (hardly
visible here) resulted in a lockup of flight simulator, causing the whole
system to crash. I had to completely reboot the PC each time then.
So I always live in fear of lockups when flying through heavy rainfall,
and in most cases and under the circumstances that I described above, this
sort of eye-candy has become obsolete, unless you really enjoy booting up
the system again and again. I don't know if it is FS2002, the video card,
the motherboard with its VIA chipset, or all of them who are the culprits,
and I have not tested different video cards so far either, well knowing
that perhaps this particular problem might be solved then, with another
nasty habit of the new graphics card already waiting for me, greedily. But
to be frank, if FS2002 and updated nVidia video cards do not go well
together, I'd consider it a serious drawback because MS did recommend a
GeForce to show off all the finest details.
