Commercial product review:

F.S. Action

Product name and company

F.S. Action by Abacus. Released september 1998.

Product objectives

Scenery design tool to make dynamic scenery

  • Allows multiple vehicle paths to be loaded and compiled into one dynamic scenery file.
  • User-controllable optimization of motion paths generated by FS Action! Scenery.
  • Creates scenery files directly! No need to use a separate compiler.
  • Create looping paths with a button click!
  • Edit vehicle paths by dragging sample points with the mouse.
  • Load scenery files to see your flight paths overlaid over existing scenery.
  • Vehicles can interact with each other.
  • Supports FS98's new helicopter object and third-party custom objects (FS98 only.)"
  • Includes pre-recorded paths you can 'plug in' to existing scenery.
  • Animate your vehicle paths to preview vehicle motion and interaction.

Is it good or is it bad?

When you want to add dynamic scenery to your FS world you need to find the coordinates where the dynamic object need to show up. This is very time consuming. FS Action you only need to make a flight video in FS95/FS98 import this video in FS Action, add a plane to it and save it in a *bgl format. This is simple. But this is also all you can do with this product and I am affraid some people will expect more features. To add new objects you will also need the free Dynkit by Konstantin Kukushkin. This is also a usefull tool for people who want to change objects in excisting dynamic scenery without FS Action.

My conclusion is that it is a usefull tool for scenery designers. If you are only interested in flying you don't need it.

Can it be improved?

It would be great if this product gets some more features like modifying object colors or shape.