Microsoft's brand new Flight game has been released as a free-to-play game. The game has a beautifully realized island of Hawai'i and many more new features that pilots of the Flight Simulator have been asking for. Unfortunately there is a deliberate omission from the name of the game, the word "Simulator."

The omission has gotten a lot of people in an uproar and turned away a large percentage of the users of the aging Flight Simulator series. The decision to steer the series away from the simulation roots may or may not have hurt the potential of the game, but I'd like to start a series of post that look at Flight in a different spotlight. While Flight gives you a simple and fun look at flying, there is the whole world to explore in Flight Simulator X, also referred to as FSX. I'd like to help introduce FSX to those who like to fly and flip switches. FSX is not perfect software, but as time has passed hardware has caught up and developers are expanding the code to greater levels of simulation.

The series of post that I'm going to attempt to make, I'll start off with a walk around your PC and a recommended set of software and tools that I feel will increase your experience in FSX. I'm going to look at free and pay-ware add-ons for the game. There is some great free add-ons, but sometimes you can't beat the quality or deal of a paid product. At the end, I hope that you will have a good understanding of how to get the best out of your FSX, a good setup of settings and software, and a desire to get deeper into the world you can make for yourself in Microsoft Flight Simulator X.