By 2011, FSX was established, and the first rumblings of a “Flight Simulator 2015” (which would eventually die and become MSFS 2020’s ancestor) were in the air. Team Top’s releases slowed. Their final major project, TopLegacy: 1940s World, a historical scenery and aircraft pack, dropped in December 2013 to near-silence.
The team never officially disbanded. They simply… stopped posting.
Rumors swirled. Some said Mathers had taken a real-world pilot job. Others claimed Volkov moved into professional game texturing (her work allegedly appears in Star Citizen’s cockpit instruments). Fournier’s last known post was a single line in 2015: “FS9 is not dead. It is just waiting.”
By: Senior Flight Sim Contributor
Published: April 22, 2026
Two decades after Microsoft Flight Simulator 2004: A Century of Flight (FS9) first graced our CRT monitors, its community remains one of the most stubbornly alive in all of PC gaming. While MSFS 2020 and X-Plane 12 dominate modern hangars, a quiet, dedicated legion of virtual aviators still swears by the 20-year-old sim. At the heart of that enduring loyalty, hovering between legend and lore, sits a development collective known simply as FS2004 Team Top.
If you have ever downloaded a freeware Boeing 737 that felt eerily real, or installed a scenery pack that transformed generic terrain into a living, breathing international airport, you have almost certainly touched their work — likely without even knowing their name.
Team Top’s output was staggering. Over seven years, they released over 140 freeware packages, ranging from individual liveries to total overhauls of the FS9 engine’s internal logic.
Unlike the sprawling, corporate-backed studios of today, Team Top was a ghost in the machine. Formed in late 2003, just months after FS9’s release, the group coalesced on a now-defunct PHPBB forum. The founding members — Sid “Piston” Mathers (aircraft dynamics), Elena “Trim” Volkov (texturing and lighting), Jean-Luc “Radar” Fournier (gauge coding), and Miguel “Tower” Reyes (scenery architecture) — shared one radical belief: The default FS2004 was merely a canvas.
“Microsoft gave us a brilliant engine,” Volkov told me in a rare 2019 interview, archived from a now-closed Discord server. “But they stopped at 80%. Team Top existed to find the other 20% — and then another 20% after that.”
Their name was a quiet boast. “Top” referred not to ego, but to altitude — the belief that their modifications would take users higher, faster, and deeper into flight simulation than Microsoft ever intended.
The term "FS2004 Team Top" could refer to a group of elite players or a team within the FS2004 community that excels in various challenges or competitions held within the game. These teams often consist of players who are highly skilled in flying different types of aircraft, navigating through challenging weather conditions, and completing complex missions.
Top competitors load their entire FS2004 installation (scenery, textures, aircraft) into a RAM Disk. With 64GB of DDR5 RAM, you allocate 32GB to a virtual drive. Loading times drop from 90 seconds to 5 seconds, and texture pop-ups vanish.
You cannot fly a default 737 and call yourself "Top." You need: