Old Fashioned ...

By Mike McCarthy (24 November 2006)

... It's late in 2012. FSX is now hopelessly out of date, the new release being FSxvi, which requires a Cray 1 to run it. Microsoft's game people have done it again, allowing their developers to run unfeelingly rampant over the user community and the add-on developers. And they want you to feel ashamed that you're still running FSX so you will buy the new version. Of course you'll also have to buy a new computer as well, but that's your problem, not theirs.

With that prediction, let's now roll the clock back to 2006, and to my personal situation.

Andrew Herd's initial reviews of FSX make it clear that it will be quite some time before I can afford a computer that will do it justice. In fact, because of the demands of cloud rendering, I can't afford even a machine suitable for FS2004. After FSX we will be on to another version of FS requiring yet another unaffordable (for me) computer. What to do?

What to do is, for me, to break the cycle of FS-motivated computer purchases. I have already done this. My current Win2000-based machine runs Thunderbird and Firefox just fine along with older versions of Word, Excel and Photopaint ... and it runs FS2002 just fine also. The hardware and software are all out of date but I can still exchange data with my fairly new at-work Office 2003 computer so I'm content. (I don't want the things I can't have.)

At the office I have a much faster machine. I own FS2004 and I have FSX on order, and both products will run adequately on that machine. Unfortunately, while I am the office manager and can pretty well set my own rules, I don't have a lot of time for FS during the day, and I go home at night just like everybody else. So most of my flying ends up being on FS2002 after all.

I'm like North Korea, living in a bubble, largely unaware of what has been going on in the post-FS2002 world. Yet between FS2000 and FS2002 I spent years putting together a suite of utilities and aircraft that I like, many of the aircraft built from piece parts that I tracked down and integrated/modified myself. I have no plans to give any of these up. To assemble the equivalent software for FS2004 would cost a lot of money, and in some cases there is no FS2004-or-better payware equivalent. (While I don't fly my DC-4 very often, I like it. It is a Tom Gibson creation.)

All of what I use was the product of an intense freeware golden age of development which will not be seen again. The aircraft and utilities are just as enjoyable for me today as they were during the heyday of FS2002. I'm not the only one who feels this way, so Nels Anderson sees to it that FlightSim.Com continues to support these user communities.

So ... I can't have the expensive snazzy FSX computer which would also require me to purchase a bunch of expensive add-ons to go with the purchase of FSX. Instead my already-paid-for old warhorse has a 900 MHz cpu with 128 Mb of ram and a 128 Mb Nvidia graphics card. This is sufficient for me because I can lock the sucker to 10 fps, push all the sliders all the way to the right and then do everything of interest to me.

You see, unlike most of you I have no interest in exterior views of my own aircraft. I care only about 2D panels and flying IFR. When not connected to VATSIM I run Ultimate Traffic for FS2002 and it has no significant impact on performance. I do like to see the resulting AI aircraft on the tarmac but I don't mind that the paint jobs may not match what can actually be seen today at DIA, nor do I mind that I can't see rivets.

I can hear most of you laughing. How can I stand looking at simplistic exterior views, or at simplistic close-up scenery? The answer is that I don't do either of those things, or anything else that would compromise my all-sliders-to-the-right 10-frames-per-second performance. That's right folks, 10 frames per second. You quickly get used to it, and it frees up a lot of cpu/graphics throughput capacity for graphics detail. The visual results are surprisingly good.

When I take off from DIA, Denver International, I can see Pike's Peak to the south of me and it looks perfect. If I make a short-haul trip to Colorado Springs, the illusion doesn't break down till I'm twenty or so miles out from COS. If I fly to LAX, the stock basin-and-range scenery is convincing from cruising altitude. The FS2002 clouds are a very interesting kind of modern art. For even more satisfaction I can fly online with VATSIM using no-cost actual FAA approach charts and airport diagrams. (See my companion article.)

Improving today what I have would not be worth the money to me at this time. It's a Good Thing that we now have a well-developed payware industry, but the old days were good too if you were willing to spend a lot of time doing downloads, tests and fixups. I spent hundreds of hours on these matters and while I'm not sure I would care to repeat the experience, the result still works for me.

Mike McCarthy
xxmikexx@qwest.net

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