Microsoft Flight Simulator X

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Microsoft Flight Simulator X, also known as FSX, was the 2006 successor to Microsoft Flight Simulator 2004 in the Microsoft Flight Simulator series. It includes a graphics engine upgrade as well as compatibility with Windows Vista, having been marketed by Microsoft as the most important technological milestone in the series to date. It is the first version in the series to be released on DVD-ROM.

Summary

Flight Simulator X marked the tenth version of the popular line of flight simulators. It was officially released to the US market on October 17, 2006. According to Microsoft's website for the game, a standard edition features everything from navaids to GPS and airways. It also included 18 planes, 28 detailed cities, and 40 highly detailed airports. The deluxe version featured 24 types of aircraft and 38 highly-detailed cities.

The simulator was officially unveiled at the 2006 International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) as a gaming showcase for Microsoft Windows Vista with Windows 7 compatability following. Microsoft released screenshots as well as a list of frequently asked questions as a press release on Flight Simulator Insider, as well as numerous flight simulator communities (see External links). This also included mission-based gameplay with mission specific aircraft as well as an upgraded rendering engine capable of increased detail.

Following the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) in May 2006, Microsoft published new screenshots, videos and an official trailer. The overall reaction by the community was quite positive and the graphical quality of the simulator had greatly increased. Flight Simulator X had a required system performance rating of 3 for Windows Vista and a recommended rating of 5.

Editions

Flight Simulator X was initially released in two editions: Standard and Deluxe.

  • The Standard Edition featured 18 aircraft, 40 highly-detailed airports, 28 high-detailed cities, and 30 structred missions.[1]
  • The Deluxe Edition included all Standard edition content with the addition of 5 highly-detailed airports, 10 highly-detailed cities, and 21 structured missions. It also incorporated an on-disc Software Development Kit (SDK), the ability for the player to Air Traffic Control (ATC) other online users with a radar screen,[2] and added Garmin G1000 glass cockpit variants of 3 Standard Edition aircraft.
  • The Acceleration Expansion was released on October 23, 2007 and added 3 additional aircraft over previous editions.
  • The Gold Edition was released on September 23, 2008 and was a bundling of all previous editions together.[3]
  • The Steam Edition was released December 18, 2014 by Dovetail Studios. Changes included the ability to download the game from Steam versus installing from DVD, updated multiplayer functionality, and added support for Windows 8.1 with support for Windows 10 following in summer 2015. This edition includes all content from the Gold Edition.

Features

Aircraft

The following aircraft are fully flyable with complete interior/exterior modeling and flight model.

Note: Third-party aircraft can be downloaded/installed to add many times the number of aircraft above to the simulator.

The following aircraft are non-playable aircraft built only for scenery and ambience. They can be seen in-sim during missions on when landing at specific airports. They are also sometimes a key part of missions as well.

  • TBM Avenger ghost planes of Flight 19 from Lost in the Triangle
  • Boeing 787-9 - from Paris Airshow Demonstration Flight, Loopy Larry & Jet Truck Drag Race
  • Ekranoplan - from Aleutian Cargo Run & Tokyo Executive Transport
  • Airbus A380-800 - from Paris Airshow Demonstration Flight, Loopy Larry & Jet Truck Drag Race
  • Boeing 747-8 - from Loopy Larry & Jet Truck Drag Race
  • Antonov An-225 Mriya - from Paris Airshow Demonstration Flight, Loopy Larry & Jet Truck Drag Race
  • Aerospatiale-BAC Concorde - from Loopy Larry & Jet Truck Drag Race (in British Airways livery)
  • Two variations of UFOs - a flying saucer is seen while flying and nearly crashes into you and two black triangular UFOs; one is seen landing at Area 51 just before the player lands and launches again while the player is taxiing, and a larger, similar one parked on skids - all from Secret Shuttle
  • Two UFOs - a small UFO and a much larger UFO, that can be seen in the background - High Altitude Intercept (Acceleration)
  • Variations of military jets and helicopters - different types from Tutorial 1: First Take-off, Tutorial 11: Helicopter Maneuvers 1, Flour Power, Loopy Larry, Jet Truck Drag Race, Civil Air Patrol Search, Africa Relief and Catalina Day Spa
  • Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird - from Tutorial 1: First Take-off and Secret Shuttle.
  • Boeing B-52H Stratofortress - from Tutorial 1: First Take-off, Executive Tour and Loopy Larry
  • Bell Boeing V-22 Osprey from Tutorial 1: First Take-off and Executive Tour (Acceleration)
  • Lockheed F-117 Nighthawk from Tutorial 1: First Take-off and Executive Tour
  • Lockheed Martin F-22 Raptor at Paris Airshow Demonstration Flight, Tutorial 1: First Takeoff and Secret Shuttle
  • Sukhoi Su-37 Flanker at Paris Airshow Demonstration Flight. There are 2 on the flight line next to an F-22.
  • A fictional NASA orbiter named "Delta V" in Rocket Launch Cover.

Airports

The simulator includes 24,222 airports[4] with the vast majority being procedurally generated. There are 39 hand-crafted airports in the Standard edition with an additional 5 hand-crafted airports added in Deluxe edition and another 4 in the Acceleration expansion.[5]

Note: Third-party airports can be downloaded/installed to add many times the number of airports above to the simulator.

New features

The new features in Flight Simulator X include:

  • Improved graphics including enhanced texture resolution, new Earth model facilitating polar flights, true road data, region-specific textures, minimal 3D animals, star constellations, etc. Also, the scenery textures now line up with the automatically generated (Autogen) buildings. Maximum rendering-engine-supported scenery resolution of 7 cm/pixel (not available with default scenery).
  • Airports now have jetways that move to the aircraft by the key combination Ctrl + J. This happens for AI aircraft automatically. Airport vehicles such as baggage carts, tugs, and fuel trucks also drive around the airport to you and AI aircraft at international airports.
  • The built-in GPS support has been upgraded to include Garmin G1000 integrated glass cockpits for select aircraft in the Deluxe ed..
  • Improved Air traffic control featuring certain non-FAA procedures where appropriate (for example, altimeter/QNH scale in metric units) and numerous minor updates such as an improved progressive-taxi feature.
  • Improved and new default aircraft including, for example, an Airbus A321. Default aircraft systems modeling is rather extensively improved, featuring, for example, Auxiliary power unit, fire protection, passenger advisory sign switches etc.
  • Improved weather system, including better visibility modeling.
  • Revamped multiplayer functionality featuring Shared Skies, a feature allowing multiple users to share the same cockpit.
  • Tower Controller, a feature in the Deluxe version allowing users to simulate local control at many airports worldwide during multiplayer gaming.
  • Revamped sound system with support for 5.1 surround sound.
  • Proprietary SimConnect API to allow FSUIPC-like access to Flight Simulator functions and variables.[6]
  • Mission engine allowing creation of dynamic missions with developer control of many simulation variables, sound file playback, AI aircraft traffic etc. in relation to what the user is doing — essentially an evolution over the APL and ABL adventure programming languages featured in previous versions of the software. Dozens of missions ship with the product.
  • Most of the vintage aircraft that were a key theme in the previous version have been dropped, with the exception of the Douglas DC-3 and Piper J-3 Cub. Both aircraft are featured in the default missions that ship with the product.
  • The maximum altitude in the game has been increased to 100,000,000 ft (30,480,000 m). This is approximately 2.39 times the diameter of the Earth at the equator or 75 times higher than the orbital height of the International Space Station.
  • Camera shake in the virtual cockpit as the aircraft banks, accelerates, brakes, flies through turbulence, etc.
  • Realistic flexible wings in some commercial airplanes: the wings flex while going through turbulence, increasing rate of ascent or descending, undergoing major plane movements, flaps being fully extended, general vibrations to the plane, etc. An example of an aircraft with this wing movement is the Boeing 747-400.
  • New water effect which has 3D waves with curled up object refraction according to the wave movements and with sunshine reflection.
  • Ability to easily take a screenshot while in the game. Pressing the "V" key takes a picture of the game and saves it as a .bmp image in the "My Pictures" folder.
  • Aircraft can cast shadows on themselves.
  • Aircraft interiors and exteriors use different files. This allows an advanced user to take one exterior model of an Airbus A320 and merge it with an interior made by someone else.
  • Red Bull Air Race World Championship racing.[7]

Missions and rewards

The inclusion of Missions adds a new facet to the simulation, adding task oriented goals, and encouraging users to fly worldwide, rather than just from their home field. Although a similar concept was available in previous versions, the new implementation of multipath & event oriented situations substantially extends the potential for user interaction.

Pilots earn Rewards for completing various missions, and reaching specific accomplishments throughout the game, (in 'Free Flight'). Some of the rewards exist as hidden "easter eggs" to be discovered by pilots.[8] Some missions have multiple and hidden rewards, receipt being dependent on performing additional actions.

Some hidden rewards include:

  • Earning a postcard for spotting an item of interest.
  • Earning a badge for landing at a special airport, e.g., highest, most remote, lowest.
  • Earning a reward for completing a challenge not associated with a mission.
  • Earning a trophy for landing a number of times or the number of airports landed at.

In each mission description, a map is included with it. It notes that they are for entertainment purposes. The maps and charts are supplied by Jeppesen.

Add-ons

Players may also download additional aircraft from a number of user generated content websites which allow expansion and customization of the shipped game.

Soundtrack

There are several songs on the soundtrack, the most noticeable is the song "Pilot for Hire" by Stan LePard.[9] This song plays during the menu of the game. The song "Emergency Response" is featured in several missions. Both songs can be heard on his website.

Demo versions

Flight Simulator X is notable for being the first product in Microsoft's Flight Simulator series to have a demo which contained a subset of features of the retail product including a restriction to the duration of a flight. It required Windows XP Service Pack 2 or Windows Vista for installation.

The first limited demo of Flight Simulator X was released to the public on 2006-08-09 and available for download on the official website. Even though playable, the August demo represented a beta release of the product and had a number of bugs, some of which were recognized in the official installation's README file. On 2006-10-02 the demo was superseded by a newer release which, while containing fewer bugs, is almost identical to the first demo. The DHC-2 Beaver was removed in favor of a Learjet 45. Both of the demos feature primarily feature Princess Juliana International Airport as the main airport. Terrain is limited to Sint Maarten in the Netherlands Antilles and its surrounding area only.

Patches and expansions

Patches

Service Pack 1

Microsoft released Service Pack 1 (SP1) for Flight Simulator X on May 15, 2007. It addresses the following problems:

  • Activation and installation issues
  • Performance enhancements, including multithreading of texture synthesis and autogen to provide modest performance improvements on multi-core computers
  • Third-party add-on issues
  • Content issues[10]

Service Pack 2

Microsoft released another service pack for Flight Simulator X about the same time as its expansion pack (below). The update is primarily for Vista users that have DirectX 10 (DX10) compatible graphics adapters. The DX10 version takes advantage of DX10's improved shader model and more pixel pipelines and increased performance for Vista, approaching overall FSX performance on XP. It also adds the capability for players who do not have the expansion pack to participate in multiplayer activities with users of the expansion pack, along with support for multi-core processors.[11][12] FSX-SP2 also fixes some more bugs over Flight Simulator X. SP1 is not compatible with SP2 or Acceleration in Multiplayer. People with SP1 cannot enter a session with players who have SP2 or Acceleration in Multiplayer. According to the documentation you are required to install Service Pack 1 before installing Service Pack 2.

Expansions

Flight Simulator X: Acceleration

Microsoft released their first expansion pack for Flight Simulator in years, called Flight Simulator X: Acceleration, to the US market on October 23, 2007 rated E - E10+ for mild violence, and released to the Australian market on November 1, 2007 rated G.[13] Acceleration introduces new features, including multiplayer air racing, new missions, and three all-new aircraft, the F/A-18A Hornet, EW101 helicopter and the P-51D Mustang. Unfortunately, in many product reviews, users complained of multiple bugs in the initial release of the pack. One of the bugs, which occurs only in the Standard Edition of Flight Simulator X, is that the Maule Air Orion aircraft used in the mission has missing gauges and other problems, as it is a Deluxe Version-only aircraft.

The new scenery enhancements cover Berlin, Istanbul, Cape Canaveral and the Edwards Air Force Base, providing high accuracy both in the underlying photo texture and in the detail given to the 3D objects.

Flight Simulator X: Acceleration takes advantage of Windows Vista and Windows 7 as well as DirectX 10.[14]

Because the expansion pack includes the content from the service packs, installing both is unnecessary.[15][16]

Lockheed Martin Prepar3D

Main article: Lockheed Martin Prepar3D
[[File:Important.svg|45px|link=]]
This sub-section uses material from the Wikipedia article Lockheed Martin Prepar3D, which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0.

In late 2007, Aces Game Studio announced Microsoft ESP (Enterprise Simulation Platform), a development platform for companies that want to create products that use the technology in Flight Simulator. Following the closure of the Aces Game Studio in January 2009, Lockheed Martin announced in late 2009 that they had negotiated with Microsoft a licensing agreement to purchase the intellectual property (including source code) for the Microsoft ESP product. It is the commercial-use version of Flight Simulator X SP2. On May 17, 2010,[17] Lockheed announced that the new product based upon the ESP source code would be called Prepar3D (P3D). Lockheed hired members of the original Aces Game Studio team to continue development of the product.

In November 2010, Lockheed Martin debuted Prepar3D version 1.[18] Version 1.1 was released in April 2011, with a retail license cost of US$499.[19] A developer license is also available for a monthly fee of US$9.95. In March 2012, along with the release of version 1.3, the pricing strategy was revised. The Professional edition is now available for US$199, with an Academic License available for US$59.95.

After releasing Version 2 in 2013 and Version 3 in 2015, the team released 64-bit Version 4 in May 2017 and Version 5 was released on April 14, 2020. During the FlightSimExpo 2023, Lockheed Martin teased that Version 6 will be released in 2023 [20]

Downloadable content

There are many downloads that both versions of Flight Simulator X can use, ranging from free aircraft and liveries to commercial, high-resolution scenery. They may change many aspects of the simulator, such as adjusting the visuals, gameplay, adding new features or content such as scenery objects and modifications. Numerous free downloads are available from community websites (such as Simviation.com, Avsim.com, and Flightsim.com) and the downloads include:

  • Jet airliners
  • Propeller planes
  • Helicopters
  • Vintage planes
  • Ultralight aviation and Glider (sailplane)
  • Military aircraft
  • New paint jobs (repaints) for default aircraft
  • Missions
  • Conceptual (proposed future) aircraft
  • Add-on scenery
  • Miscellaneous items
  • Drivable cars
  • Utilities (tools such as a software development kit)
  • Additional AI aircraft, taking the form of real life airlines/aircraft
  • New "voicepacks" or small programs allowing FSX Air Traffic Control to refer to the user/ai aircraft using the correct callsign i.e. "Heron"
  • Legacy (real/fictional spacecraft)
  • System service packs which improve the performance of the program.

Unit Availability

Microsoft announced in early 2010 that there was currently a shortage of the game in retailers, after receiving complaints. They expressed that they had not stopped manufacturing the popular simulation game, but that there was currently a shortage of available product activation keys. As a result they needed to make an engineering change which resulted in reduced output. New copies of the game were expected to return to shelves in May 2010.[21]

External links

System Requirements

Minimum

  • OS: Windows XP Service Pack 2 or later
  • CPU: 2.0 Ghz or higher (single core)
  • RAM: 2 GB RAM
  • HDD: 30 GB available space
  • Graphics: DirectX 9 compliant video card or greater, 256 MB video RAM or higher, Shader Model 1.1 or higher (Laptop versions of these chipsets may work but are not supported. Updates to your video and sound card drivers may be required).
  • DirectX: Version 9.0c

Gallery

FSX: Steam Edition

  • FSX-Steam 1.jpg
  • FSX-Steam 2.jpg
  • FSX-Steam 3.jpg
  • FSX-Steam 4.jpg
  • FSX-Steam 5.jpg
  • FSX-Steam 6.jpg
  • FSX-Steam 7.jpg
  • FSX-Steam 8.jpg

References

  1. ↑ Flight Simulator X – Product Information
  2. ↑ http://www.airsidetv.com/main/play.asp?date=7/28/2006
  3. ↑ http://store.microsoft.com/microsoft/Flight-Simulator-X-Gold-Edition-PC-Game/product/25ACE6F8
  4. ↑ FSXmap.com. FSXmap.com. Retrieved on 2021-07-31.
  5. ↑ Taylor, Phil (2019-01-14). High-Detail Feature list, and then some. PTaylor's WebLog. Retrieved on 2021-07-31.
  6. ↑ http://simuvuelo.org/pagina01.aspx?npag=93
  7. ↑ http://www.canadafreepress.com/2006/bray121806.htm
  8. ↑ http://blogs.technet.com/p-12c_pilot/archive/2006/10/18/easter-eggs-in-fsx.aspx
  9. ↑ Stan LePard Music
  10. ↑ Flight Simulator X Service Pack 1
  11. ↑ http://software.intel.com/en-us/articles/microsoft-flight-simulator-x-soars-to-new-heights-with-multi-threading/
  12. ↑ PTaylor's WebLog : FSX-SP2(DX10) delay factors
  13. ↑ http://www.microsoft.com/Products/Games/FSInsider/news/Pages/AccelerationGoesGold.aspx
  14. ↑ http://www.microsoft.com/games/pc/fsxacceleration.aspx%7Ctitle=Flight Simulator X Acceleration Expansion Pack
  15. ↑ http://www.microsoft.com/Products/Games/FSInsider/downloads/Pages/FlightSimulatorXServicePack1.aspx
  16. ↑ http://www.microsoft.com/Products/Games/FSInsider/downloads/Pages/FlightSimulatorXServicePack2.aspx
  17. ↑ https://web.archive.org/web/20100713125615/http://www.lockheedmartin.com/news/press_releases/2010/05172010Prepar3d.html
  18. ↑ https://www.prepar3d.com/product-overview/
  19. ↑ http://www.prepar3d.com/
  20. ↑ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vN4tBoDp9VU.
  21. ↑ [1]
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