Review of FSDiscover! from Flight1

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There are a lot of interesting geographical areas and 3d objects within the FS2004 and FSX worlds. The problem is actually finding them! You could spend literally hours flying around and perhaps not once come across any of these interesting areas.

FSDiscover! from Flight1 helps to rectify this problem. The basic idea is very simple. The program displays a map, showing all loaded POI’s (Points Of Interest). Hover the mouse pointer over a POI and you’ll see a small pop-up window with some basic information about it. Right-click the POI and you have the option of moving your aircraft there. If it’s an airport, you’ll be at the runway, otherwise you’ll start in mid-air. You also have the option of adding the POI to a flight plan so, for instance, you could add multiple POI’s and then set out on a sight-seeing tour. Another right-click option is “Start a new flight plan at the nearest airport”. This makes for a more realistic experience than simply appearing in mid-air!

This is a very easy to use program. You start up Flight Simulator, then select Open FSDiscover! from the menu in the simulator. The first time you select it after installing, the program scans the internal Flight Simulator scenery files. This is a fairly quick process, taking around 3 minutes on my system. Once the scan is complete, you’re presented with a map of the world showing the POI’s. De-cluttering is on by default, so at first glance, there don’t appear to be a tremendous number of POI’s . However, start to zoom in (by using the keyboard, on-screen buttons or your mouse wheel) and more pop into view. You can then select the POI’s you’d like to visit. There is a search facility to make it a little easier to find what you’re looking for. Closing the map moves your aircraft to the designated location ready for you to explore.

Navigating in the 3D world

To make it easier to find the POI’s when flying, you can switch on POI highlighting from the FSDiscover! menu. You will then see a label within the 3D view which you can navigate to. If you’ve elected to add the POI to a flight plan, you will see a series of chevrons in the 3D view for you to follow to reach the POI’s. As well as showing POI’s in the 3D view, you can also elect to show airport and geographic name labels.

If you wish, you can select “Enable autopilot” from the FSDiscover! menu to automatically follow the flight plan. This function only controls heading, so you need to make sure you’re at the correct altitude before enabling it.

Options

There are numerous options that can be set within the program, including the useful facility of enabling hot-keys for the most often used functions. You can also change fonts and colours, maximum distance that labels should be displayed for (useful so your 3D view doesn’t fill with labels!), clutter reduction options etc.

FSDiscover! also usefully comes with a Points Of Interest editor, allowing you to alter existing POI’s or add your own. This is useful for the usual “This is my house!” addition You add the POI by using the slew mode of Flight Simulator. I would have liked the ability to just enter latitude and longitude here, but it’s not a major shortcoming.

FSDiscover! works on both Flight Simulator 2004 and Flight Simulator X, but the FSX version contains many more POI’s -1900 compared to 600 for FS2004.

Installation

Installation was by Flight1’s usual “Flight Wrapper” method. This is very straightforward. Simply enter your credit card details in the set-up program, ensure you are connected to the Internet and proceed with installation.

Conclusion

I had a lot of fun with FSDiscover! I found it particularly useful for those times when I don’t have a lot of time I can spend with the sim, and just want a quick flight with something of interest to fly to and explore.

You can visit the FSDiscover! showcase web site for more information and screen shots.

FSDiscover! is available from the Flight1 web site at a very reasonable $29.95.