Don,

What is your impression of the water color? Down south ( GA) our water is
not that color of blue. I double checked against FS2K2 and the water color
was much closer in that version. Good Flying!
"Don Parker" wrote in message
...
Anyone sitting on the fence waiting to buy FS2004 is missing out on the
best
EVER (except for the bridges...)!!! After finally getting some bugs out
of
my system, I settled down for a little local sightseeing, having already
been impressed by the urban areas and mountains, and I was amazed how
accurate the new scenery is here in the boondocks of NW AR! Our little
town
of Harrison, pop. 12k, has highways where they're supposed to be, a
reasonable facsimile of town (beats the bloob shown before), airport KHRO
and buildings are very close. It has to be coincidence, but we just
extended the south end of the runway, and the ground texture in FS looks
like new dirt around that area. (:-)) Now THAT would be as "Real As It
Gets"!
Flew on over to Bull Shoals lake dam (east end), fed by the White River,
and
on the river there's a world famous trout fishing resort, "Gastons", with
it's own grass strip for the well heeled angler, 3M0, and it shows the
resort cabins along the river (real ones have fireplaces!), gourmet
resturant/lounge with huge picture windows overlooking the river. Don't
have FS2k2 on the HD anymore, but I don't remember the detail being
anywhere
near as good. Didn't see anyone out fishing though - maybe in
FS2006.......
Image quality or fps really doesn't seem much different in full screen or
window mode, just have a couple of blue borders in window mode, and can
use
multi monitors no problem (I park a large GPS display there - and that's
another GREAT improvement, along with the new map!!). Kept a uniform fps
of
hight teens to lock at 20 no matter what I did, even stayed around 15 with
a
down map view, using Radeon 9800 128 & P4-3GHz @ 1600 x 1200 on 19" Sony
CRT, sliders maxed (but didn't have any special weather cranked in so that
would knock it down, will have to compare later)...
LOTS of little improvements like being able to adjust your seat (I know
how
Mini Me would feel with the default seat positon), switch views and not
have
to readjust everytime, etc,. etc........
I AM impressed, and at the price, it's a steal! Well done MS. Now,
when's
the patch for the bridges due???
Cheers'n beers.
Don