Has anybody ever played this game before? My dad's always been interested in aviation and first bought Flight Sim 4 when I was a kid, back when it was in 16 colors and only four buildings were shown for the Chicago skyline. It had an add-on program where you could build your own airports and landscapes, so I built my hometown and most of Western Iowa.

Then we upgraded to Flight Sim 5 around '95, and this was huge because it now had 256 colors, texture map scenery, and thousands of airports around the US. New York and Chicago had 3D buildings, but I think that was it.

Then we bought Flight Sim 95 (for Windows 95), which was another big leap because it now had 3D terrain, more realistic clouds and weather, and more cities and airports from around the world. Flight Sim 98 was pretty much just an evolution of 95...I can't really remember much about it other than it had better textures for cities and mountains.

Flight Sim 2000 got more detailed with cities, adding helicopters to the aircraft list (they even had a heliport on top of the world trade center). Las Vegas was added and lit up at night.

The last flight sim we bought was 2002 since I was graduating from high school the next year and the price kept going higher, especially for the Professional Edition. The main things I remember about 2002 are the better weather and 3D buildings that are generated over the entire landscape to make it feel much more realistic.

Flight Sim 4

Flight Sim X

I've been active in the FS Modding community since 2004 and I can personally tell you, as an owner of FSX and FS9, that for now FS9 is better for longhaul commercial flights, but FSX is great for VFR.

pcs can do amazing things now. even google earth has a very simple flight sim in it.

side note.. UT3 demo on my athalonxp 2600+ 1 g ram X800 looks ...worse than doom in terms of detail. (running at 800x600)

pcs can do amazing things now. even google earth has a very simple flight sim in it.

side note.. UT3 demo on my athalonxp 2600+ 1 g ram X800 looks ...worse than doom in terms of detail. (running at 800x600)

Why thank you!

Why thank you!

sadly, i kinda saw that coming....