Microsoft Flight Simulator 2000 Professional Edition
- January 01, 2000 00:00 AM PST
If you were ever curious about Flight Simulators, you can't pass up a look at the grand-daddy of them all, MS Flight Simulator, which has gotten a major overhaul for it's 2000 release.
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When opening the box, users will be pleased to find a three CD-ROM set and a 300+ page manual. There's a long list of program enhancements to take up the space on those three disks but one of the biggest improvements over the previous Flight Simulator is the manual. The FS98 manual was electronic. You had to pause the simulation to get at the information. Someone at Microsoft must have listened to complaints about not having a paper manual handy while using the program.
FS2000 has a hanger full of aircraft. It adds four new planes for a total of eleven. The Boeing 777-300, the first airliner to be completely designed with computers is included. You can also get behind the stick of the Mooney Bravo; one of the fastest and highest flying crafts in civil aviation. The twin engine Raytheon King Air 350 turboprop has been added to the inventory and the supersonic star attraction of FS2000 really needs no introduction, the British Airways Concorde.
There are just a few more planes to fly but there are many more places to fly to. The last Flight Simulator boasted all of 3,000 airports. FS2000 has upped the ante by more than 18,000 airstrips. Microsoft claims you can fly out of almost any airport in the world, large or small.
FS2000 lets you use the Global Positioning System (GPS) to make your own flight plans. It gives you point-to-point navigation with constant updates of position, ground speed and course. But the most exciting new feature is the real-world weather system. Just choose the location you want to fly from, click a button and live weather data is downloaded off the Internet and inserted into the program. Hourly feeds of weather information from airports around the globe are fed to Microsoft by Jeppesen Sanderson Inc. It is the same data that real pilots use everyday.
To test the real-world weather system, set myself up at the end of a runway at Buffalo, New York on the evening of January 20th, I used FS2000 to dial in the weather data and the program showed snowy and very cold conditions. I used the Internet to check the real weather in Buffalo and found current conditions to be virtually the same. Very impressive.
Microsoft Flight Simulator's greatest value is its educational content. For years flight students have used the program to supplement real-world instruction. With the release of the Professional edition of FS2000, Microsoft is actually encouraging customers to use the product as a complement to formal flight training. Much of the space on the program disks is taken up by lessons taught by professional flight instructors and content from aircraft industry associations and manufacturers. After "students" successfully finish online training they can print out Flight Simulator pilot certificates that parallel real-world aviation certification.
With Flight Simulator 2000, Microsoft gives all virtual and real-world pilots a chance to come back to the well and dip from a marvelous collection of aviation education content designed to make good pilots better.
