Colins Flight simulator 2002 Web Page

Getting the most from flight sim 2002

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Introduction

Flight sim 2002 uses up all lot of space, for all that space you get all lot of features. Many of these features are not that well known. Until now f14_bigmountains_2.JPG (66064 bytes) that is!

Full screen

To get full screen in flight sim 2002, hold down alt & Enter. It uses up your whole screen, rather than having the task bar at the bottom. The picture you get is some what near to amazing!

Reversing

Its easy enough to reverse away from a gate at an airport just by using a jets reverse thrusters. In real life however they dont use reverse thrusters to back away from a gate, they taxi backwards. You can taxi backwards by holding down "shift p" together.

Flight school

Embarrassingly enough when I started flight sim 2002 I couldn't find these pages which I needed to read for the flight school. Eventually I found a libary of text. Its located in flight sim 2002 at the start-up menu, go to "libary/Help", from there there are lots of things to read on flight sim, if like I was some time ago taking the flight sim lessons, read rod Machados ground school. Rod_machado1.jpg (226214 bytes)

I have read all of that, yes every single friggin page. I was amazed by the fact that the flight sim team expected the ordinary gamer to read a manual 100 pages long! I am not the ordinary gamer, I read it. It took me hours. That is why I made this page, I know that most people would take one look at that book and laugh. That's when I decided how good it would be if there was a web page which taught quickly. Overall most people buy flight sim 2002 and just want to fly as much as possible, not read, but really trust me being able to fly fully on flight sim is so much better than flying like a lunatic at 100 feet above the ground with simulation rate at 16 speed.

Flight plan

I was amazed by this feature. The best way to learn how to use it is to experiment with it, but I will just say a few things.

	Most flights have been planed before they begin in real life. All it is a plan (dur) of what the aeroplane will be doing in the flight. For example, a plan for a flight from say Heathrow to Stansted would include flying to a vor station and then flying to Stansted at 4000 feet.
	One of the best things about flight planning is that you get your path marked on your GPS (just a green line from point to point). You also don't have to tune into vor stations, or NBD stations, you click on the knob which allows you get information via the GPS system or the radio. Once you have chosen GPS it automatically tunes into the station for you (well it doesn't actually work like that, but think of it like that for now any way). That way there is no more of them irritating times where you have to tune into a station.
	If you choose ifr rules you get ATC talking to you guiding you to the airport, even helping you to line you up with the runway.

Flight_planner_2.jpg (67661 bytes) By now you may want to know, where is this flight planner? Easy as peas. From the main menu go to create new flight, from there select flight planner. Its quite straight foreward how to use, the only other thing I want to mention is the box with the 4 on top. If you choose direct GPS, that's the quickest way, but after a while you will get board. Low altitude airways is just low altitude airways. High altitude airways (I seems to be clear). Vor to Vor, means that when you navigate you will only use vor stations, not NBD and other.

Trim (aka Pitch control).

Flying a plane can be easy, but the hardest thing to do well is fly straight and level with out descending or increasing your altitude. The problem with this is after a while your wrist gets in pain after holding down the joystick, to combat this planes have the trim. All trim does is finely tune your pitch (up or downwards movement), and therefore you dont need to hold down the stick, it does it for you. Change your trim with the following keys, 7 on the numeric keypad (make sure numlock is off) and 1. 7 makes your aeroplane tilt downwards more, and 1 aims it higher up in the sky. Alternatively you can use the trim control found on the cockpit panel on most planes.