- Quick specs
- Price: Free to try (Three missions);
- Operating system: Windows XP/Vista
- Date added: August 10, 2006
- Total Downloads: 1,093,492
- Downloads last week: 4,069
- See full specifications
- CNET editors' rating: stars
- Average user rating: stars out of 106 votes
See all user reviews
CNET editors' review
Reviewed by: CNET Staff
The tenth release in Microsoft's esteemed flight-sim series makes a major break from tradition with the inclusion missions to complete all over the world. The prerelease demo for Flight Simulator X offers you three of those missions, one of which is a tutorial that introduces the basics of flying. Although the demo for the in-progress game includes minor graphical errors that can make aircraft and scenery look slightly askew, there's more than enough fun to have with the four provided planes. The 625MB download is a bear, and the installation process is considerable, but once it's on your machine you'll be up in the air in no time.
The provided planes in the demo are the Air Creation Trike Ultralight, Beechcraft Baron 58, Bombardier CRJ700, and the deHaviland Beaver DHC2. The areas available to explore are in the Caribbean, including the Netherlands Antilles and surrounding islands. Most notable, perhaps, is the inclusion of the famed Princess Juliana International Airport, with its tiny landing strip and low approach over the beach. Aside from an introductory tutorial, the demo includes two other missions that let you drop flour bombs and fly to (and land at) various airports. We experienced minor frame lag even on the lowest graphical settings on a machine with plenty of processing power, good memory, and a reasonable video card, and graphical glitches are evident at the highest settings. However, the excellent interface, user-friendly missions, and free-flight options make this demo a can't-miss for flight-sim fans.
Publisher's description
From Microsoft Games :From award winning game developer ACES comes Flight Simulator X. The latest installment will include the usual genre leading realism that continues to awe real pilots and will serve as the graphical benchmark for games on Windows Vista. Additionally, Flight Simulator X will deliver for the first time structured game play with more than 55 missions to choose from which will test the skills of players of all levels.
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User reviews
- Average user rating: 3.4 stars out of 106 votes
- My rating: 0 stars Write review
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Showing 5 of 87 user reviewsSee all 87 user reviews
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3 out of 6 people found this review helpful
Version: Flight Simulator X demo
"WOULD BE GOOD IF THE SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS WERE TRUE!"
Cons: Ok, my system isn't the greatest in the world but at least it exceeded the minimum requirements (1.3GHz,256mb,ati radeon 9550) but these were not good enough. For some reason the min resoulution is 1024x768 when many games offer 800x600 or even 640x480. GT legends offer 300x240 resoulutions too!
I turned everything down to minimum, during this I found the interface very slow. It took 20 minutes to load the mission first time round and at best I got 4 FPS.
The controls didn't seem to work and the plane kept crashing!
I think people with a similar spec to mine would be better off with the 2004 version, its graphics may be out of date but it will look better than this with this quite of PC spec! Alternativly, if you like flying planes, helicopters etc: BUY GTA SAN ANDREAS!
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11 out of 14 people found this review helpful
Version: Flight Simulator X demo
Pros: cant get any better
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13 out of 18 people found this review helpful
Version: Flight Simulator X demo
Pros: There's a noticable graphical improvment, and it's realism is far more well, er realistic then its predecessors. It's very fun, and it's only a pre-release demo to begin with!
Cons: The graphics somewhat disappoint me. There nice, of course, but not what I was expecting. Right now, the problem is:What is so great about this game that seperates ir from FS 2004 or X_Plane or any other flight sim? The Flight Simulator is my favorite flight sim though, because of the accuracy of realism and physics put into the planes. X, unlike 2000 was geared towards graphics and fun gaming.
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5 out of 7 people found this review helpful
Version: Flight Simulator X demo
Pros: the best flight sim ever! i have never seen something like this before.
Cons: requires a lot of computer power and a very good graphic card
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4 out of 9 people found this review helpful
Version: Flight Simulator X demo
"You'll like it if you like planes"
Pros: Graphics are good and it gives you a chance to fly a plane.
Cons: Must have a good video card I have a 128MB NVidia 5200 and it really put it to work. I didn't like the feel of the controls. Takes forever for the game to install and uninstall.
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