Want to revamp your MS Flight Simulator? Read This

[Flipperk]

I know many of you have MS Flight Simulator, Either it be 2004 or X, this will definitely help you enjoy your experience a whole lot more!


Let us start from the beginning:

Weather:

Now the current weather systems are pretty decent in FS as it is, however if you want to totally revamp your lighting and weather effects and introduce HD picture quality clouds look into this:

http://www.realenvironmentxtreme.com/gallery.html

It is called Real Environment Xtreme, what this program will do is redo water effects, lighting effects, airport environments, new weather engine, and add HD photo realistic clouds into the game environment. This program will cost $34.95, but I assure you that it is worth every penny.

The frame rate hit is very slight, only 2-4 FPS difference.


Ground Environment:

http://www.flight1.com/products.asp?product=utusa

(click on the thumbnail pictures to the right)

The program I have is called Ultimate Terrain USA. This will replace old scenery files and update them with higher quality photo realistic scenery files. This will also replace all roads, and reposition them according to GPS coordinates, and add street/car lights on major highways and cities.

This program is also $34.95, and I have not noticed any frame rate hits at all with this program.


Air Traffic:

Global Freeways, Orbit, Gaia Airlines....WTF?! Where is Southwest? Delta? American?...

... Now we have real traffic! And best of all this is completely free!

http://www.world-of-ai.com/

Install the installer, and then download any airline you want to add to the game world. The full instructions are on the website, but if you need help, just ask here.


What will this do? This will add real world routes, airplanes, and paint schemes for each airline that you download to the simulator. So you are now flying with real world routes for all of these airlines. Here is a short youtube video showing some airports with this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fEndjyQPvaU


I did not notice any frame rate hits with these additions.


Aircraft:

There are many many many....many.......MANY....ai rcraft you can download both free and payware that are fantastic to fly:

http://simviation.com/1/front-page


Simviation is a great place to get many of these planes, or pretty much any add on you want. Although I mainly use this for airplanes.


I personally fly the iFly 737:

http://www.flight1.com/products.asp?product=iflyfs9

This is my main ride, it is so close to being a real 737 that the operations manual is almost 600 pages long... and it took me a good week or so to get it in flying condition from all of the checklists... But I never flew a stock plane ever again after I got this.



New airport scenery:

I personally use BluePrint Simulation to download new airport scenery:

http://www.blueprintsimulations.com/BluePrint_FS9Catalog.html

Just click on any airport to look at the gallery.

They have scenery for both FSX and FS9, they do cost per airport but they do have two airports that are free, TSJS and TBPB. These two airports are EXACTLY like any other in terms of quality. So you can download these airports and see for yourself how much of a difference this makes.

I currently have, TSJS, TBPB, KDAL, KIAH,and KLAX.


I did not have any Frame Rate hits with any of these airports.


Online flying, Virtual Airlines:


I currently fly on VATSIM:

http://www.vatsim.net/

The largest network of virtual pilots and air traffic controllers. They all play on one server and I have seen upwards of around 1200 pilots on at once during peak hours.



I fly with Phoenix Virtual Airways, and this is because it has a large pilot base and it has over 300 airlines programmed with full schedules to fly.

http://www.phoenixva.org/


Here is a pretty big list of VA's that are avaliable:

http://www.vacentral.net/airlines


You do not have to be apart of a VA to fly online with VATSIM.






That is pretty much what I have to offer, I hope this helps anyone out who would love a better FS experience.

[Flipperk]

I did forget to mention that the above consists of what I use, and what I personally think are the best products to add to FS. I have both FS9 and FSX, but all of these add ons are for FS9 as I get better performance and it is very comparable to looks as far as FSX.

Simviation is a great place for payware and freeware add ons of ALL types, from scenery to aircraft:


http://simviation.com/1/front-page




Now for those of you who want more immersion for your aircraft, look into FS2Crew:

http://www.fs2crew.com/cart/categories/FS2004-Products/                (FS9)

http://www.fs2crew.com/cart/categories/FSX-Products/                         (FSX)


They have a great line of products to help with getting that airline pilot feel. I personally have this product:


http://www.fs2crew.com/cart/products/FS2Crew%3A-iFly-737NG-Voice-Commander-Edition.html


Of course I have the FS9 version, but this is a full voice activated program. You can talk to your first officer, flight attendants, and ground crew, and they will all respond appropriately.

Here is a youtube video of the button version of this commander program:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ivwzweKgWF4


This video also shows the iFly 737 in action... my personal favorite video





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Now for those looking for that airline pilot feel without the interaction above, then look into this:

http://www.fspassengers.com/


This will add passengers to your aircraft, inflight services, create your own airline, add failures to your aircraft when not properly maintained, and a in depth in flight grading system. This will basically tell you if your a bad pilot or not lol.



 

[Flipperk]

This is all that I have to offer, if any of you want to add input to the above, or if I missed something you would like to add. Please do.



What you have above is not all free, but I did accumulate all of these items over the course of a year. Just purchased one feature per month to make it affordable. As far as frame rates, I do not have a super computer. I have a dual core 3.1 ghz processor...nvidia 9500GT card with 4 GB of DDR3 RAM.


With all of these modifications and add ons I only noticed about 5 FPS less than original settings with FS9.

This has made my experience with FS a total rehaul...I LOVE what all of these have done to the game...it is finally what I considered to be a great simulator.


I hope you will find this post helpful in at least pointing you in the right direction if you want to modify or add anything to your MS FS. Thank you for reading.

[M0nkey_Man]

This is all that I have to offer, if any of you want to add input to the above, or if I missed something you would like to add. Please do.



What you have above is not all free, but I did accumulate all of these items over the course of a year. Just purchased one feature per month to make it affordable. As far as frame rates, I do not have a super computer. I have a dual core 3.1 ghz processor...nvidia 9500GT card with 4 GB of DDR3 RAM.


With all of these modifications and add ons I only noticed about 5 FPS less than original settings with FS9.

This has made my experience with FS a total rehaul...I LOVE what all of these have done to the game...it is finally what I considered to be a great simulator.


I hope you will find this post helpful in at least pointing you in the right direction if you want to modify or add anything to your MS FS. Thank you for reading.

lol you almost explained my computer there

[Groth]

 Only fly it when AH is down for some reason...but one of my fav mods was a controler's voice, she was South Africian, spoke in english, believe it was freebie from simviation or another.....very sexy.

[Flipperk]

Only fly it when AH is down for some reason...but one of my fav mods was a controler's voice, she was South Africian, spoke in english, believe it was freebie from simviation or another.....very sexy.

 I have a couple of add ons for the ATCs' that speak hillbilly when I fly into Atlanta