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From: stevo@ucrmath.UUCP (Steve Groom)
Newsgroups: net.micro.mac
Subject: Re: Microsoft Flight Simulator
Message-ID: <164@ucrmath.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 27-May-86 18:36:49 EDT
Article-I.D.: ucrmath.164
Posted: Tue May 27 18:36:49 1986
Date-Received: Sat, 31-May-86 05:17:44 EDT
References: <112@uicbert.UUCP> <17@tekirl.UUCP>
Organization: University of California, Riverside
Lines: 59

> In case the Summary Part of this header got clipped, I'll repeat it here.
> 
> I have a copy of MS Flight Simulator, bought two weeks ago for $29.99
> at a local software shop.
> 
> The program has much detail, the manual details a lot of information 
> about navigation, etc.  I spend a lot of time with it, in spite of
> its slow operation (2-3 screen updates/second) when running.
> 
> The program is pretty buggy and you soon discover that the dynamic
> realism has some fixed limits:  such as stall occurring at a given
> elevator setting at any speed, rather than being interdependent.

I've had my copy for about a month and a half, and have been generally pleased.
I do have a few gripes about the manual, though.

- Some of the information is wrong, i.e. radio frequencies for certain airports,
navigational beacons, etc. I don't remember which ones, but I do remember that
several around the Bay Area had frequencies that were out of range, like
NAV beacons in the COM range and/or vice versa, so that it is impossible to
tune the right radio to that frequency. I suppose an exhaustive search is in
my future, some night when Letterman isn't on...
- Also, the locations/elevations of different airports aren't always right.
For instance, if you try using "set position" to go directly to Riverside
Municipal airport using the coordinates in the manual, you will find yourself 
a few hundred (thousand?) feet in the air! If you were not in flight when you
blinked in, you're in for your own physics experiment to measure g (for you 
non-physical-science people, I mean you are in the air, but not moving... 
gravity takes over!).  Again, the problem is that the elevation listed in the
manual is not quite right. The solution to this appears to be to turn
"crash detect" off before teleporting, then when you hit the ground you
only bounce a few times instead of crashing. Not exactly an award-winning
landing style, but it works.

  One other thing about crashing. After a crash, the simulator insists on 
starting you off back at Oakland again. What happens if I crash in New York?
I'm back in Oakland. I don't want to be in Oakland! Maybe in a future 
version the author could see fit to leave me in New York? Or Riverside?
Or wherever it was I crashed. I do that a lot (I'm getting better) and I
like to pick up where I left off, and try again instead of starting from
scratch.  It wouldn't be so bad if the coordinates were right so I could 
teleport back again without crashing... that gets to be a pain.

A note about copy protection... 
Flight Simulator uses the "you get to make one and only one backup copy"
scheme. I don't trust things I can't back up! So, I tried Copy II, but
no go. (I did this before making my one allowed copy) Eventually, I became
impatient and made the one copy. Then later, I tried to make a copy of
my one authorized copy, and it worked! Maybe its not a copy of the master
disk, but its a copy of one that works, so I'm happy.

-steve

/* Steve Groom
 * Graduate Computer Science, Univ. of California, Riverside
 * {ucbvax!ucdavis, ihnp4!ucla-cs} !ucrmath!stevo
 *
 * "Whaddaya want for nothin' ?!" 
 */