RRP £19.99 Lowest New Price £11.79

John Wiley & Sons Number of pages: 744 Language: English (Original Language) Language: English (Unknown) Language: English (Published)

RRP: £19.99
Flying high
Review date: 2008-05-21 Rating: 8 out of 10

This is a mighty book that can take you from complete novice through to professional airline pilot without leaving your computer chair.

The premise behind the book is that microsoft FSX is so realistic now that it can be used as a real training aid to a training pilot. this book takes you step by step, chapter by chapter through a 'real' training course using FSX. The book is a vital companion to focus and direct your learning, it provides exercises (including some downloadable missions) to illustrate and re-enforce what you have read. Don't be fooled though, despite the serious content the book takes a generally light-hearted approach which stops it ever becoming too academic or dry.

The book take a well balanced approach to teaching you flying, avoiding overloading the reader with detail early on, as if you were learning for real. The book regularly highlights differences between the real world and the flightsim world, so that those using FSX as a true training tool will know where reality departs from simulation.

The main audience for this book then is someone wishing to train as a pilot in the real world with FSX as a supporting training tool, but the book also caters for those who just want to fly the computer in a more 'real' way. Amazingly the authors manages to balance these two aims very well, furthermore it makes the whole thing fun. I must say that I certainly learnt an amazing amount about flying within the first few chapters despite having flown real planes and gliders with the RAF cadets when I was younger.

I can heartily recommend this book to anyone who wishes to use FSX more as a simulator and less as a game. It also works as a users guide for FSX, which sadly is not officially available from Microsoft.

Why not 5 stars? Because it is all in B&W which causes some problems with some of the illustrations, possibly because the authors originally intended a colour print, but the publisher demurred later on. Generally this is OK, but occasionally the text refers to things which are difficult to make out in the fuzzy B&W reproductions. Personally I would have prefered to pay slightly more for full colour with higher quality paper because this would also brighten the overall look of the book. However this is only a slight issue and does not detract from the central value of the book which is the great writing.

File your flight plan now and prepare for take off!