Unfortunately the best flight simulator around
The graphics suffers badly from very low resolution ground textures. It’s all basically low resolution satellite photos smeared over some heightmap, with some blocks and simple 3D objects spread all over to resemble buildings, trees, stones etc. It looks dreadful and unnatural. You see flat buildings in the satellite photo, then some poorly textured cubes on top of it resembling the buildings. The objects does not blend into the scenery in a natural way at all, and it looks very artificial. Especially at low altitudes. If you plan to fly anywhere near the surface of the Earth, dont bother with scenic rides.
I have not yet come close to seeing anything in the game like in those screenshots posted by Microsoft here at Gamespot. In fact, the gap between the screenshots and the graphics I experienced in the game is so huge, this borders to unethical marketing measures. Maybe Microsoft will try pull it off by saying you have to wait until Vista and DirectX 10 for that kind of quality, but the graphics is so fundamentally poor I can hardly believe a simple DX10 patch can take care of it. And forcing fans of the game to buy another of their products just to play it the way it is meant to be is just not right.
Having said this, it is also fair to say the graphics IS better than the 2004 version.
One of the new graphical improvements you will notice is the new dynamic scenery. This means there will be cars on the roads, whales in the sea, planes in the airports etc. But, again this fails to live up to its promise. The cars for one looks terrible. They hardly can follow the roads, turn in steps of 45 degrees at a time and they magically disappears into thin air, then pops back at random times.
And, then there is the issue with framerate. Despite the poor graphics, they managed to pull off an incredibly low framerate. Even on my high end system, I get around 10 FPS. Turning down the graphics detail is the only way to deal with it, and then the graphics will suck even more than it does already on “high” level. So, choose between unplayable or graphics that would make your friends laugh at you for bothering spending time with something as ugly.
Yes, a lot complaints about graphics here. But seriously, why bother to fly around to explore a flat and dull looking world? And, the complaints are deepened by the fact the screenshots looks so much better than graphics in a regular gaming session. This is not just happening on my PC, many people I talk to had the same reactions on their systems.
A newcomer to the series is the inclusion of missions. I had high hopes for this, as just flying around with no aim or goal like before is a bit too dull after some time in FS 2004. Unfortunately the missions I tried so far have been very boring, and a test of patience more than any real fun. However, it is still an improvement from before, and it definitively makes it more interesting to learn how to fly a plane, a process that takes a while due to the many controls and reslism of the simulator.
You also have an online play mode this time, which really does not appeal to me, so I did not try it out. If you want to share flying over blurred textures with your friends online, this might be for you though.
As always, there's lots of little bells and whistels to play aorund with, you can change a lot of settings to customize your flying experience. And the game has much and realism. However, I hoped they already covered this well enough in previous versions, and could focus on the visuals this time. So, I am not giving credit for old technology already present in the old version.
In conclusion, this new version is better than the previous, but only slighter where it counts. Especially if you take into account the large number of third party enhancements out there for the 2004 version. The graphics really fails to deliver to the expectations. From FS 2002 to FS 2004 we saw a dramatic improvement in graphics, from the 2004 version to FSX I did not even really notice much difference at all.
Only for hardcore flight simulator fans, which is a shame, as the genre clearly has much more potential than this...