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From: toma@tekgvs.LABS.TEK.COM (Tom Almy)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.misc
Subject: Re: Game wanted: EGA/VGA Fighter Game
Message-ID: <7852@tekgvs.LABS.TEK.COM>
Date: 21 Jul 90 18:27:20 GMT
References: <10325@stiatl.UUCP> <1990Jul20.182211.11078@mintaka.lcs.mit.edu> <1990Jul21.035737.5524@msuinfo.cl.msu.edu>
Reply-To: toma@tekgvs.LABS.TEK.COM (Tom Almy)
Organization: Tektronix, Inc., Beaverton,  OR.
Lines: 36

In article <1990Jul21.035737.5524@msuinfo.cl.msu.edu> draper@cpsin1.uucp (Patrick J Draper) writes:
>Speaking of Microsoft's flight simulator version 4, is it better than 3?
>I found ver.3 to be incredibly unresponsive to fly. There's nothing
>worse than pressing a key and nothing happens for 2 seconds --- even on
>a 20 Mhz 386 machine!

I never found v3 to be slow, but v4 needs more compute power than v3. I could
use v3 on an 8088 based machine, but v4 is totally unflyable on such a machine.
It is ok on a 386, in fact, there is now an 80386 configuration choice.

My major gripes about v4:
1) Maps are no longer included, you have to send away for the "free" maps,
   and pay a shipping and handling charge. Since you can't really fly from one
   airport to another without a map, this is really shoddy on MS's part.
2) The bugs that kept some of the autopilot functionality from working except
   in the Chigago area (gee, guess where the program was developed?) in version
   3 are still there.
3) Most of the improvements in v4 are somewhat shallow -- the ground radio is
   a joke, as well as the airport trafic (other planes can taxi right through
   you.  I also don't quite believe the automatic weather generation actually 
   works as advertised.
4) Can't they make cloud layers that work like cloud layers? Well,  maybe not.

>I think there's a second Chuck Yeager program out there, does anybody
>have any comments on that?

I have it (as well as the first). I like it better than the first, except you
cannot get coordinate readouts to find your location anymore (there is only
an indicator that tells you where to aim the plane to get to the airport.
The choice of planes are terrific, and each has a different control panel
which obscures the view. It will run in 640x350 EGA mode now, but only if you
turn off the control panel display (boo-hiss).

Tom Almy
toma@tekgvs.labs.tek.com
Standard Disclaimers Apply