Microsoft Flight Simulator 2000

Microsoft have dominated the serious flight sim market ever since their best-selling Flight Simulator first appeared in the '80s, but despite the recent facelift in Flight Sim 98 they're not throttling back on development. Perhaps that's because they might not have things their own way for too long.

With touchdown for its next version, Flight Sim 2000, now pencilled in for November, there are more ultra-realistic flight sims lined up on the same approach: July sees Terminal Reality's Fly!, later we'll see Flight Unlimited III, and Sierra have just announced Pro Pilot 2000. The recently announced FS2000 lets you clamber into the virtual cockpits of two more aircraft - Concorde and the Boeing 777-300 - and includes further updates for existing aircraft. Most of the planned improvements, however, are to do with graphics. Support for Pentium III instructions and 16-bit colour video displays should speed things up, while extra 3D objects such as vehicles, ships and towers, and enhanced weather effects will boost realism still further. You can even download current weather information over the Internet and see it simulated on screen.

For navigators, FS2000 features moving maps, GPS references, a graphical flight planner, and digitised NavData charts. Other improvements include 17,000 more airports and around 50 cities in detail. Six of the cities - New York, Paris, London, Los Angeles, Chicago and San Francisco - are fully rendered in 3D.

As if that wasn't enough, there'll even be a Flight Sim 2000 Pro. Yes, incurable prop-heads will have still more aircraft - the unlikely sounding Mooney Bravao, and the King Air 350 - and another six cities in hi-res to fly around, including Berlin, Tokyo and Rome. The Pro package will also have some really complicated, completely over-the-top stuff like high-resolution Instrument Flight Rules (IFR) instruction panels and mountains of extra manuals. It will also have totally pointless stuff like a cockpit editor and a flight dynamics editor. In fact, it will be so realistic that you'll have to lean out of the window and kick-start your own propeller.