Microsoft Flight Simulator 2004 - A Century of Flight

I'm not a BIG fan of simulators but I did like this game. It has an amazing graphics and design, the planes look real. The realistic effect of the game is quite amazing. I am also not a certified pilot nor an air traffic controller but I did find this game interesting and very enjoyable to play.

It's quite an experience, what more if you have some background in aviation? For sure, this game is a winner for you.

Microsoft Flight Simulator 2004 - A Century of Flight is a very good game but it is very hard to land the big jets. I would recomend this game to anyone who would like to be a pilot because on the challenges you have to close all the cabin doors and do all the checks that you would do in a real plane.

Microsoft Flight Simulator 2004 is great way on how to crash your own plane and not get sued! You can choose your own plane, from EASY JET to AER LINGUS to B.M.I. Choose your own airport and take off from there and land in FRANCE, BEJING, LONDON, or RUSSIA. Take off from Belfast and then land on a person who lives in a forest and hasn't done anything to you, it's wild, buy it, I said buy it, you're not buying it, are you.

I love the game. People say that FSX is the milestone, but for me and most of my friends, its still FS2004. It is such a good game. What makes it better is the add-ons you can get, for example FSNAVigator. I am an experienced Air Traffic Controller on Flight Sim, which also makes it an extreme game for realism. Thats another point, its the most realistic game ive ever played, and ive played alot of games

Great graphics on planes and option of creating your own flight. In this game you dont have the option of mouse yoke but still the option of using joystick or keyboard is fun.

I've always had an interest in aviation, and of course in the Microsoft Flight Simulator series. No other flight simulator to date can match the sheer depth, realism and quality that these 'games' bring. So does the '2004: A Century of Flight' edition of the series live up to the name? You bet it does.

Those who have played the previous simulators in the series, specifically MS Flight Sim 2002 will feel right at home with this version. There are plenty of new features that I'll touch on later, but the theme of the Flight Simulator series hasn't changed; Its main goal is still to give you a plane, give you the world, and say 'have fun, don't be home too late.' I have always felt this is central to the series, and its great to see that hasn't changed at all.

New pilots are not neglected in the slightest however. Infact, this is the most 'new user friendly' sim of the series thus far. There's reams and reams of written information to flick through, and even better: your very own flight instructor, flying veteran Rod Machado who will literally teach you as though you were a student. It's a fantastically deep learning tool that sets the building blocks of flying from your first flight, to your final flying practical exam. By the end of it, you'll be competent at flying and navigating a Cessna Skyhawk in plenty of different situations, such as fog, or night time flying. With this knowledge safely under your belt, you can move onto more complex aircraft like a Learjet, or Cessna Caravan.

Graphically speaking, Flight Simulator 2004 is incredible. The plane models are unbelievable in detail on the outside. Inside is the option of a virtual cockpit allowing you sit in a 3D cockpit of your aircraft with fully functioning dials and instruments. While not quite so pretty, its still a great looking feature. The terrain below you looks best from far away. Up close you will find its blocky and made of low resolution textures. Fortunately, you'll be spending most of your time a long way above it where the lie of the land mirrors its real world counterpart to great effect. Mountain ranges, hills, valleys, lake and the like are all there as you would expect from the series.

Radio's can be tuned manually for ATC flying. Contact with the tower can be made constantly, and you'll hear the responses as you leave their airspace telling you to tune to the next tower on the way for further instructions. You can request a whole host of things from the tower, just like real life. You really feel like your part of a bigger world, with air traffic controllers telling you to stay in a holding pattern around an airport while a Boeing 747 clears the runway for example. It's vibrant to say the least.

There are new aircraft to fly than the previous versions too. Whats more you can try your hand at flying some of the old classic aircraft over the past 100 years, included the Wright Brothers Flyer, all with respective 'missions' to reenact their famous flights. Of course there are still the modern planes such as the Cessna Skylane and Boeing 747 to fly, and even a Robinson R22 Beta II Chopper.

The real show stopper when it comes to the visual realism of the simulation is the new weather system. In a sentence - 'Clouds look real.' Gone is the hazy layer of fluff from the previous sims, replacing them are real time, unique to the second clouds formed as they do in real life. Whispy, bubbling, and photo-realistic. No two clouds look the same, cloud formations form as they should, dissipate and cumulate as you would expect. Weather happens as it does outside your window, you can even have up to the minute auto downloading of real time weather.

To give you a feel of the detail, I was sitting at East Midlands Airport, awaiting taxi clearance, prepped and ready to go in my learjet for a short flight to Gatwick. It was an overcast day, raining quite heavily. The forecast predicted a thunderstorm moving up from the south, and although those clouds were skidding across the sky above me, it appeared to just be a shower. The tower buzzed through the radio, giving me clearance to begin taxiing to the runway. The sky was gradually darkening by this point, thicker clouds were rolling in, the wind picking up, I thought I could hear a distant rumble of thunder over the engines but I couldn't be sure, the rain was getting a little heavier, but nothing to worry about, I'd flown in worse. By the time I'd reached by designated runway however, I was getting a little worried, the awesome weather system had mapped out a frontal system that was actually happening in the middle of England right there and then. The clouds had formed as I watched them, small ones blending into thick cumulo-nimbus formations which in turn provided heavy rain and strong winds. As I increased throttle to 100% and released the holding breaks, a spear of lightning crackled down from a cloud. It was immensely beautiful, and I was about to fly right into it. Turbulence and buffeting hit me as soon as I was clear of the runway, I was enveloped in clouds almost immediately, the rain streaking off the windscreen as I dove in and out of clouds, it was mind bogglingly realistic and then suddenly, blue skies. Clear of it all. I spent a good long while flying around the top of the storm cell, It was just like a geography lesson. Like a photo from a text book. Breath-taking all the way.

In closing, if you like planes, want to fly, and want to experience something so real its almost impossible, then this is it. You'll need a decent machine to do it, but Microsoft Flight Simulator 2004: A Century of Flight once again re-defines 'As Real as it Gets.' And it is.

Microsoft Flight Sim is amazing. You need a pretty good Computer to run it on though. The graphics are brilliant. You can fly to any registered airport in the world!! I went on holiday to France and when I got back I typed in the airport names. They came up and i managed to recreate the flight. My friends and I attempted to fly to Hawaii from Scotland but ran out of petrol. I love how it's in real time. You can actually download the weather so its even more realistic. There is a wide selection of planes and the flying lessons are clearly explained. This is a great game. If your looking for a realistic flight Sim this is the best.

Have you ever dreamt of roaring down a runway in a Boeing 747? If yes, then you should definitely buy the Microsoft Flight Simulator 2004 - A Century of Flight PC game! To me it doesn't even seem like a game! It's like having your own Cessna permanently parked in your hard drive! Truly Amazing!

The Microsoft Flight Simulator 2004 - A Century of Flight PC game is very good. In fact, it is so good that I don't like to call it a game. To me, it's a simulator and not a game although, it cannot really be compared with real simulators used by real pilots).

If you have no idea on how an aircraft works, it's no problem! You don't have to be a pilot to use Flight Simulator 2004. This simulator offers many "flying" lessons, which defiantly get you on the right flight path!

FS2004 can be modified to the extreme. There are so many additional extras (add-ons) made for it; all of which are not developed by Microsoft. You can add more aircraft. You can make the scenery look more realistic, and you can even join huge multiplayer networks (i.e. VATSIM) and talk to real people at the control towers. Using the VATSIM network also enables you to see other real people flying around you!

What you do on FS2004 is entirely up to you. You can just simply mess about and fly wherever you like. You can perform stunts. Or, you can do a realistic flight in a jet! FS2004 is quite realistic when it comes to aircraft systems. OK, some of the main features in commercial aircraft are non-existent in the default FS2004 aircraft (such as the flight management console), and although this can be considered as a downside, this can easily be solved by downloading more realistic aircraft from the internet (such as the PMDG 737NG).

Please note that Flight Simulator 2004 is designed for entertainment purposes only. If you wish to become a real pilot, I suggest contacting one of your local flight schools and take real flying lessons.

Using Flight Simulator 2004 will increase your aviation knowledge to some degree, but it isn't the same as the real thing. Although, for a home computer, it is "as real as it gets".