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Real Environment Professional ( Flight Simulator 2004) One will brighten your overall FS2004 experience with new lighting and reflection effects, while the others will keep you aloft in two of the aftermarket's sweetest-looking aircraft. To better appreciate the experience, we've rounded up three of the most popular add-ons from the past month. The three-year-old sim still looks quite stunning, and with thousands of add-on planes, scenery files and utilities currently choking the Net (and more arriving every day), there's a lot of life yet in the old bird.įlightSim X will no doubt usurp its predecessor one day - especially when Windows Vista and DirectX 10 debut next year - but for the time being, FS2004 still delivers the smoothest frame rates and the most turbulent-free flying on the market. If you're not ready to plunk down a chunk of cash on a new video card, CPU or extra RAM, then maybe it's time to give Flight Simulator 2004 another look-see. The new version promises a lot of CPU-hungry graphics and features, but for many PC gamers, that software upgrade will require a proportionate investment in hardware. Microsoft has cornered the general flight simulation market for quite some time now with its flagship Flight Simulator series, and with the pending release of Flight Simulator X, that trend looks to continue unabated.
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