"Wincons" wrote in message
...
Pattern flier, no tomatoes please, looking for a good flight sim. Having
lots
of helath problems and cannot go out to practise..... need a FIX! Looking
at
Real flight, but is that the best available? This computer has more than
enough power for any program, hyper threading, 2 GB RAM, 256MB video; just
need
some input as to program selection.

TIA,
Brian

Brian,
No tomatoes, I'm something of a pattern flier myself. I've only had my
single-engine VFR license for a little over a year now, and I have logged
about 95 hours in Cessna 172's. However, I have been flying computer flight
simulators (both civilian and military) for as long as there have been
computer flight simulators for the PC, Amiga, Atari, Commadore, etc. My
recommendation is Microsoft Flight Simulator 2004: A Century Of Flight. It
is in my opinion the best all-around civilian flight simulator ever made. I
like it because the scenery in FS 2004 looks very similar to the scenery in
the area that I normally practice flying in when I fly in real life
(southwestern Idaho). FS2004 has good weather simulation, pretty good ATC,
and great aircraft. Also, I like it because one can download and install
terrific free add-on aircraft, VFR scenery, terrain elevations, utilities,
the list is long. For instance, I have downloaded the 38-meter terrain
elevation for the Rocky Mountain area, which is the area of the country that
I live in. This means that the scenery terrain elevations (mountains,
valleys) are accurate to within 38 meters anywhere that I fly. I have also
downloaded & installed a great water texture that makes flying over lakes
and oceans look very realistic. I downloaded and installed some excellant
free add-on aircraft, like a French APM-20 Lionceau single-engine VFR
mid-wing trainer, a Lancair Legacy 2000 high-performance single engine, an
Alon Ercoupe, a Lake Renegade amphibian, even an F-16 Falcon supersonic jet
fighter with functioning radar and heads-up display! I also like FS2004
because the airports that I normally fly out of in real life look very
similar to the ones that are programmed into FS 2004, the radio frequencies
are the same, the taxiways are the same, and the taxiway signs are accurate.
FS2004 also has a Garmin GPS that is very similar to the Garmin GPS that is
installed in most of the aircraft that I fly in real life.
The downside is that FS2004 takes an pretty hefty computer system in
order to get decent framerates. I run FS2004 on a 2.8 gHZ Pentium 4 machine,
with a Radeon 9800XT video card, Windows XP Home, and 512 megs of ram. It
seems to get good framerates of ~35 fps.
There are people who like to put down Microsoft products, but as a real
life pilot, I really do think that Flight Simulator 2004 is the best
civilian flight simulator for the price. I hope this helps....

Randy L.