Fly!
Retail Version
1999
Installation of FLY! was a bit confusing to me because the map and scenery disks weren't labelled as such. So when I first took off from San Francisco the scenery looked a bit lacklustre.
Mmm... Let's see... clicking on "Setup.exe" on the first CD Rom and selecting "Reinstall", and "Custom install" whizzed thorugh the first CD and prompted me to insert the "Scenery Disk".
Disk 2? Yes! And Disk 3 must be "Maps"? Yes again.
Now we're talking :
The rolling landscape around San Francisco Bay.
The scenery is rich in detail if you install the scenery packs on CD no.2. Areas outside the detailed spots use generic textures, which won't bother you if you fly above the clouds. Of course everything comes at a price, and the price for clouds (on a Pentium 233 machine with 64 MEG RAM and Banshee 16 MEG 3D card) was a slooooow frame rate. They did look good though!
The famous San Francisco Golden Gate Bridge, old stomping grounds of Karl Malden!
I must fly under the Golden Gate Bridge....simply have to!
So, back to the install options... if you install everything on the 3 D's you will need about 1.6 GIG free hard drive space. However if you do the basic install and add say 1 area in high detail and maps you're up for about 800 Meg.
You can specify the fuel, passenger and cargo loadouts. Ok, where are those passengers?
Needless to say this threw my oh so precise fuel calculations out a bit.. ahem.
No passengers?
Cessna 172
Resizeable and moveable windows can be called up to show navigation aids and maps.
Radio navigation aids
Moving Map Display
Rudder pedals from the Cessna 172 . Every last nut and bolt in the cockpit is reproduced.
The small instrument panel option gives you the basic panel and frees up most of the screen for sightseeing.
Details from the Hawker 800 XP jet instrument panel
Cessna 172 flies away!
Bye bye to FLY!
In short, a detailed civil flight sim which needs a fairly powerful machine to run at full graphic settings and should see a lot of expansion with added scenery packs.
MiGMan, 1999