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An ambitious effort by the wizards of Redmond and Ace Studios, with mostly positive results.

Unless you’ve been hunkered down in a Tibetan retreat for the last twenty-five years, you’ve probably owned or played some version of Microsoft’s Flight Simulator series. You’ve at least seen the box on the shelves at your local retailer.



This newest version, frequently referred to as FSX, is both old and new. Each version in the series seems to increase the number of airports around the world where you can take off or land, ratchet up the graphical eye candy, change out the aircraft selection to include some new ones with the same old same old, and introduce a new feature or two, all in an effort to convince current FS addicts to crack their wallets open one more time.

However, the same question is posed by hardcore FS fanatics around the world with the release of each new version: “I’ve sunk hundreds of dollars into the current version to get it just the way I like it, is the new version really that much better?” As one of those people who have hundreds of dollars of enhancements sunk into FS9, I wanted an answer to that question. So I gave Flight Simulator X Deluxe Edition a spin.



OMG, Two Versions?

Let’s get this out of the way right now. FSX comes in both Standard and Deluxe Editions. Microsoft had moved away from this dichotomy with their last two releases in the series. Why they returned to it is guesswork, and my guess is rubles, yen, lire, pounds, baht, dollars, pesos and so on. No flight sim enthusiast is going to go for a slimmed down version of the full meal unless their wallet is on a major diet, but Ma and Pa discount retail shopper won’t know the difference except the price tag, and that is a big difference not only for the shopper but for Microsoft.



Think about it. Without a standard version, it’s not possible to have a deluxe version. Either way, I’m sure Microsoft didn’t get fat (and phat) by not knowing what they were doing. But consider this: Right now Santa’s elves, also known as third party developers, are grinding away to create add-ons for FSX. It is likely that most of these add-ons will require the Deluxe Edition. And, from what I saw online, you should probably get the Deluxe Edition if you want to play with the other boys and girls in the neighborhood.