With the latest incarnation of Microsoft's acclaimed Flight Simulator, Sim Pilots have never had it so good! Choose your destination, plan your route, decide on your preferred plane, make your checks and start your engines, set take off flaps, perhaps speaking to ground control for taxi clearance, and you are ready to go. There is, however, a problem with this scenario. Where are the passengers and crew? The planes are there, the scenery is there, even the flight dynamics may be "as real as can be," but have you ever questioned the purpose of your flight simming exploits when you are flying around? If like me, you long for ultra realism, then you need FsPassengers 2004!

This small piece of software is available to buy online as a download, interfaces directly and even controls many aspects of your flight. As expected, installation is fully automatic and unusually the demo version available as a free download comes fully functional, the only compromise being a restriction on departures to San Francisco (why randomly San Francisco is unclear), enabling all to try before they buy. If you decide to unlock FsPassengers to enable worldwide departures, an automated website takes your card details, sends you a serial number and user name via email and welcomes you to the thousands of other happy simmers who use this little gem! Updates are free, as this is still a developing piece of software, with new features and bug fixes being regularly addressed via the forums, by the programmer himself.

Back in the early half of 2005, this piece of software was one of the most anticipated add-ons for FS2004 ever. At no time before, or in my mind after, has one add-on so transformed an already excellent product. Okay, you will always have your planes, scenery and other essential add-ons, but FsPassengers goes the extra mile and adds the key to unlocking the full potential of FS2004. To this end, a massive fan base was already waiting to snap up FsP long before its developer made his first release available for download. All this anticipation and excitement, I am delighted to say, is not unfounded, as FsP has surely been worth waiting for!

Without exaggerating, your flight simulator experience will never be the same without FsP. It gives the avid aviation enthusiast the ability to make a career out of sim flying. To help create this illusion, you are able to create virtual airlines and even build up a vast fleet of virtual planes in all their diversity; long haul 747s A330s to commuter short domestic 737s, A319s and turbo props. You name it - you can have it, provided you have the money and the income to support them! In order to maintain your growing fleet, you must generate income from your flights and build up your airline not just with more planes, but with an excellent reputation for safety and customer service. And a plane cannot fly itself (yet!), so you must also create pilots and train them to fly progressively larger planes and longer routes to enable your airline to grow.

FsPassengers does not provide visual effects, alter or provide any fancy graphics, it simply interfaces with the user and does this rather well with a simple menu that slots into your FS2004 toolbar as a module. From this point of reference, in a simple, logical way FsPassengers presents all its functions and features. You can start by creating a company, a pilot and buying a plane. It is here that you can set the difficulty level in which you wish to play FsP. To help you in this regard, you can choose the default scenarios where you have to reach a certain condition, like becoming an international airline, or buying a jet, and dictating this difficulty depends largely on how much starting cash you are endowed with. Add the fact that you also have to set the service quality level that your virtual passengers will enjoy, or endure, on your fare paying flights and you have a broad range of control over the destiny of your new virtual airline. To further customise your airline look you can design a logo for yourself and then import it into your company manager (available from the drop down menu), repaint your aircraft and include your logo too! (Please note: no repaint software is provided - although many simple third party packages are available).

To begin your exploits in the virtual airline industry, you need passengers! These are loaded at the gate, along with ambient gate and loading sounds, and numbers will depend on your company reputation and how many flights your company has made from the airport you are departing from, as well as service level and price setting. If you opt for realism over practicality, you can load passengers in real time and there are good sound effects in the cabin as your passengers board. When all have boarded, the doors are closed and cross checked, handing over your passengers' comfort to your flight crew, who welcome them to the flight and make the safety checks and relevant announcements, all heard in fine quality in the cockpit! A nice addition too is the extra sounds also heard in the cockpit; co-pilot sound effects are included, as are fine new engine, flap, slat and gear sounds.

Although you can set these to automatic, it is your responsibility to set the seatbelt signs and you can play music while taxiing to keep your passengers calm. Once you are cleared for takeoff, make sure you know the flight rules and know you can confidently handle your chosen aircraft, since all of your actions are being recorded by FsP. Your passengers' satisfaction has never been of more importance. Once you are at your cruising altitude, you can authorise the seat belt sign to be switched off, serve drinks, sandwiches, hot food and play in-flight movies. All these are absolutely essential in ensuring maximum customer satisfaction.

If the weather at you destination is foggy, then take extra care, as a rough landing will frighten your passengers (see the adrenaline and fear meter rising!), as well as potentially damage your plane! Any damage must be fixed before you can fly that plane again to minimise potential failures and crashes, and that will cost you money, which can never be good for your profits - less profits, less investment in new planes!

While you are in flight, a small dialog box sits inconspicuously in a place of your choice and lets you know if your passengers are happy, hungry, and what your crew are doing at the time. Via the drop down menu you also have access to a more comprehensive in-flight report, which details much more information about your plane and useful statistics about your flight, like fuel burn and flight time.

After you have landed and unloaded your passengers, a more detailed end-of-flight report is displayed based on the same format as the in-flight report. Here points are awarded or deducted for your successes or failures. Negative points will be given for a poor flight and a rough landing, and fickle passengers will even mark you down for things out of your control like turbulence! Positive points will be granted for arriving on time, a nice landing, or even playing music on the ground! Accruing these points, along with flying time, progress your pilot to the next stage in their aviation career. In addition, the report tells you how much revenue you generated on the flight and nicely outlines all the costs, clearly displaying them for future tweaking of your service costs and ticket prices - maximising your profits. For future reference in checking your progress, all these logs are saved and allow you access to all the data of your previous flights. Another nice feature worth a mention is that you can upload these flight reports onto the FsPassengers website for others to admire, or laugh at, as the case may be.

Another great improvement to FS2004 is FsP's take on random failures. This feature offers more than FS does by default and if you fly badly then vulnerable and sensitive parts of your plane will start to fail. For instance, if you forget to retract your flaps on takeoff, your co-pilot will inform you that, "We've exceeded max flap air speed and they are frozen." If you rotate too much on takeoff and flare too much on landing he will also inform you with, "Did you hear that? I think we struck our tail." In the case of the frozen flaps, you will not be able to use them to land, which will mean a difficult landing, possible breakage and collapse of landing gear and an expensive repair, resulting in negative marks from your passengers and a points fine! A good addition too, is that poor flying can also make your passengers literally scream, and yes, you can hear them! If you have to declare an emergency because of a genuine failure, a successful emergency landing will also get you a round of applause!

As with all developing software, there are flaws. At present - if you are impatient -like me - and use time acceleration, switched up to 16X speed will result in FS 2004 crashing (usually when you are 10 hours into a 12-hour flight). Another thing that spoiled my enjoyment of this add-on was the over excitable co-pilot. Sometimes he gets just a little too worried for no reason and this detracts somewhat from the intended boost on realism that FsP is otherwise so proficient at. To illustrate, even on a perfectly acceptable landing (on the end of flight report listed as a 'very nice landing' and 'perfect') the co-pilot says random things like, "What are you doing?" and, "We're gonna crash!" in an urgent and overdramatic way! The other complaint I have is about the repetitive cabin announcements - there could have been a few more variations recorded and this would have made the illusion generated by FsPassengers feel even more real. There are other small bugs and irritations too, like the constant visits to the cockpit by the stewardess to deliver coffee to the captain, but these are being fixed and will be made available for free download on new releases as the software is added to.

Don't let these minor problems cloud your judgement though. This tiny piece of software (only 26Mb) adds so much to FS 2004 that you positively cannot ignore it; anyone who uses FS2004 should try this out! It is a must buy for all those who are serious about their Flight Simulator. But, it is up to you to discover the capabilities and all the features that this add-on has to offer, as it can be tuned to your requirements, so you can get exactly what you want out of the FsPassengers experience. Once you have installed FsPassengers, you don't have to use it either. The way it operates means that you can use FS 2004 on its own, adding the realism of FsP when you feel like it.

Support for the software is excellent and uses a forum based enquiry system, enabling users to exchange useful tips, tricks and even answer each other's technical queries and compatibility issues. This does not mean the developers take a back seat. Dan, the programmer, often helps personally and adds valuable support to the forum, as do the beta testers and moderators, and they rarely miss a trick.

For a very small outlay, you can use FsPassengers 2004 to transform Flight Simulator into a purposeful, realistic and rewarding Airline Simulator and even progress your own career to toward the goal of Flying Legend. This program deserves an award simply for introducing the concept of passengers to FS 2004. For all this groundbreaking ability, I must recommend this add-on! If you support this excellent product, not only will the developer be a happy man, but you will help to prove that there is more to simulator than raw simulation - people's feelings are at stake (virtually, of course)!

Reviewed by Reuben Glossop for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).