Grumpygamer

I wanted to join the Royal Air Force and be a fighter pilot. But at the age of fifteen I discovered my eyesight wasn't up the job. That was a pretty demoralising discovery.

But my love of blasting through the skies remains and I've been messing around with flight simulators and flight games since my very first computer gaming experience.

Alas this is not a popular genre within gaming anymore, yet one title remains hugely popular - Microsoft Flight Simulator. Not only does the simulator allow you to fly many different planes and helicopters right out of the box, it also models the whole world.

But in many cases that modelling of the world isn't very detailed. The reason for that is obvious - there's only so much detail you can put on a planet that has to be squeezed on a couple of DVDs.

However help is at hand from third-party developers. There are thousands of add-ons available for Flight Simulator, both free and payware.

I've been fiddling around with some of the very best of these add-ons this year and I've written an article about these over at Boomtown.net.