Well I’m sorry, but it does.
The release of Microsoft Flight Simulator X was the most anticipated event for flightsimmers this year, and boy what a disappointment it’s turned out to be.
You may not care either way, but my first disappointment was that the satellite photo underneath Schiphol airport has gone. It used to be that I could follow much of the road that I take to work everyday, but not anymore. This is an improvement? Yes, we now have the new runway 36L/18R, but the very distinctive ATC tower beside it is represented by a very generic one in FSX. Well, at least the spooky extra tower at Schiphol has gone.
The main reason I got the Deluxe version was the promise that I could act as a tower controller. Finally a replacement for the lamented BAO Tower simulation, I thought. Alas, the tower controller position can only be used in a multiplayer game. You can’t control AI traffic. Another hope dashed.
Load times have gone through the roof. Which is funny (okay, not ha-ha funny) because the scenery looks worse. Much, much worse. Everywhere looks like a tundra, with random scattered trees all over the place. Textures (and I mean all textures) look like a watercolor painting that has been hosed down, to the point where even the names of the airline on the side of the aircraft are illegible. Granted, much of this is probably down to my Radeon 9800 Pro videocard (which is all of 2 years old and therefore probably ancient) but my goodness… I don’t think I’ve ever seen a flight sim that looked as downright ugly as this.
The view system, which used to be merely silly in FS2004 is now downright stupid. Where we used to have 4 different views plus an extra top-down view, we now have 6 view categories with a number of views in each one. So now you have to first cycle through the view categories and then through the views in a category to find the view you want (no, there are no shortcuts to get to the one you want immediately). And you need to pay attention because there is not only an “aircraft” category (”Your aircraft from an external camera on or near the aircraft.”) but also an “outside” category (”Your aircraft from an external viewpoint.”). Why on earth these needed to be two different categories is beyond me.
The 3D cockpit still works with TrackIR. That’s the good news. The bad news is that in the 2D pit the out-the-window view also responds to the TrackIR, but the foreground, the panel itself, stays in the same place (at least as long as you’re within 45 degrees or so from straigh-ahead, otherwise it changes to the 3D cockpit). So the panel doesn’t move, but when you move your head you see the horizon moving behind it. Your first reaction is to grab the controls because you think that the aircraft is making a sudden pitching and/or yawing movement, but of course it isn’t. And when you try to land like this you will find yourself wondering why the world is going by sideways when you’re looking out the front, until you realise you’re not really looking out the front. You’re looking out the side, only the panel you’re looking at has moved along with your field of view, as if it is attached to your head, not to the aircraft. Whoever came up with this idea needs his head examined.
“But, ” I hear you asking, “some improvements have been made, surely? How about the annoying feature where ATC cleared you to your next level, just as you were levelling off? Maybe that has been fixed?” Nope, that’s still there.
“Well, now that we have this new ‘hybrid’ system of units, where altitudes are in feet but pressures in hectopascals, maybe we have correct transition levels for different locales too?” Sorry, still 18000 feet everywhere.
“Then maybe screen shots are now written directly to a folder instead of being put in the clipboard? So we don’t have to get out of the sim, start paint, paste the image, save it, and go back for EVERY FUCKING SCREENSHOT? Hasn’t that been fixed?” Uh-uh, sorry. It’s still there and it’s as annoying as ever. Even the ATC window is still as useless as ever for those who (like me) use a speech recognition program like Shoot. Having to choose a phrase from a menu means you can never link a phrase to a set sequence of keypresses, so Shoot cannot be used like it can in Falcon. Another opportunity missed.
I have no doubt that many of these problems will be addressed using third party tweaks and utilities, or by throwing more and faster hardware at the problem. That has been the case for every previous version. But as it stands, the 10th version of Microsoft Flight Simulator is, in my opinion at least, a giant leap backwards.