Fly! 2K--the Gold edition

Flight Journal, Apr 2001 by Marks, Bob

Repackaging is an accepted way of life in the entertainment industry. When a musical group finds that the production of its latest record is taking longer than expected, it releases a "Greatest Hits" album. After movies have had their run in theaters, they are put on video or DVD; hardcover books eventually become paperbacks. Computer games and flight simulations are no exception. A publisher will often release a game a second time as a "Gold" edition-usually in a new box that contains a latein-its-life-cycle sim with all of the patches applied.

That is exactly what game publisher Gathering of Developers did with Terminal Reality's Fly! flight simulation with the release of Fly!2K. When originally released in the summer of '99, Fly! appeared to pose a real challenge to Microsoft's supremacy in the civilian flight-sim genre. Packing a leading-edge graphics engine (for mid-1999) and unprecedented systems modeling, Fly! broke new ground in many areas. For a variety of reasons-not the least of which was the release of Microsoft's revamped and very powerful Flight Sim 2000-that challenge was never fully realized. Fly! was also originally shipped as a fairly buggy product, and that necessitated the release of many patches during the first year of its existence. These patches, along with a few enhancements, are all incorporated in the repackaged Fly!2K. That's the gist of it; as the "Gold" version of its ancestor, Fly!2K gives the civilian flight-sim fan a chance to pick up a very capable, stable sim in a much more mature state of development.

Go configure

The setup screens in Fly!2K are about as intuitive as they come-with all the usual control, graphics and sound management. The realism window lets you set up things such as accurate engine startups (a command option walks you through it, if this is selected), auto mixture and prop, ground traction, icing and other traffic. There is not, however, any way to induce random (or not-so-- random) system failures. I think this is a major oversight; dealing with something breaking is part of the fun in sims, particularly in sims where nobody is shooting at you.

Fly!2K offers a spread of general aviation mainstays, and each one requires an increasing degree of proficiency. The Cessna 1728, Piper's Malibu Mirage and Navajo Chieftain, and the Raytheon Hawker 800XP bizjet are all represented in impressive detail. For some reason, the 3D models of the included aircraft appear smudgy and somewhat blurry. It's difficult to turn back the clock on one's perceptions, but I seem to remember quite impressive-looking airplanes in the original Fly. Perhaps it's just the comparison with the since-released Microsoft FS2K that somewhat degrades the appearance of Fly!2K's models. Whatever the case, the Fly!2K aircraft appear to have been rented from very seedy FBOs.

Once you've selected your smudgy steed, you can choose from a set of several "canned" scenarios or plan your own trip in the Flight Planning window. You can choose from a whole planet of airports and select waypoints and pick the weather: rain, thunderstorms and snow; the weather is very well done. You can even download nearly real-time weather by importing METAR files that Fly!2K translates into local weather conditions. Fly!2K also models aircraft performance as a function of weight and balance, so load up your passengers, luggage and fuel carefully.

Happy fingers

To me, Fly!2K's biggest appeal is its detailed systems modeling. If you hate to push buttons, give it a wide berth. Everything you would have to fiddle with in a real aircraft-weather radar, radio stacks, deicing equipment and pressurization-are on beautifully rendered panels just waiting to be played with. Unlike Microsoft's Flight Sim 2000, which crams most of your instrumentation front and center, Fly!2K meticulously models the realworld counterpart; switches and controllers are on different consoles around the airplane's cockpit. This makes for some high-workload stuff. It's quite challenging to have to pan around the panel in search of the transponder while shooting an ILS approach through nasty weather.

The modeling is very deep on the Allied Signal (now Honeywell) King avionics, especially on the KLN-89 GPS set. In fact, it would be pretty cool if you could play with the avionics while artificial intelligence (AI) flies the airplane, just like flight sims for the real thing do. That's not to say that Fly!2K is a good procedures trainer, either for IFR or VFR. It's a decent familiarization trainer for the types represented in the sim, maybe, but the flight modeling and radio environment are a bit lacking for serious training. At its heart, Fly!2K is still a game.

ATC works well but sounds very robotic. Though the different controller posts (ATIS, departure, ground, etc.) have different voices, there is little chance that it would be mistaken for flight through real airspace.

Time to fly

That elusive feeling of flight in Fly!2K is right on a par with any other civ sim I've flown. The sound effects are excellent, as are the atmospheric effects. With varying densities, colors and opacities, the clouds are a blast to fly around, over, or through. Fly through clouds with a cold outside air temp, however, and you can ice up-a nice touch and fun to deal with by engaging the deicing gear. There is no way to see the ice on the wings from inside the cabin, however. There are signs-performance inexplicably bleeds off-but you must get an outside view to confirm the white stuff on your leading edge. It is a major annoyance to have to access an external view to confirm a situation, as your immersion takes a hit. But ignore ice at your peril; you will end up spinning out of the cloud deck and plowing your $2 million kerosene-- burning toy into a strip mall or a coffee shop, no doubt. But not to worry, you won't actually break anything.