I fly FS9 so even though I dont get to experience the orbital flight and see the plasma trail during re-entry I absolutely love this addon. I have even rushed off and bought Aerosofts Cape Canaveral, adds to the full immersive experience.  I also have saved flights for emergence landings into Whitesands New Mexico, if you want a nice realistic desert try checking out the freeware download from avsim called
Filename: whtsds.zip
License: Freeware
Added: 6th October 2005
Downloads: 998
Author: Per Kruuse
Size: 132kb
Really nice scenery for a smooth white desert for shuttle landings. If any hard core shuttle pilots like to fly the NASA T-38 by DSB I would also like to reccomend the freeware scenery by simnasa.com called Ellington Field, which is where Nasa flies its KC-135 Vomit Comet, RB-57, Super Gupy, ant there Shuttle Landing trainer Gulfstream. I would like to see a nice Edwards to land the shuttle at. I have also set up flights for the emergency landing in Zaragoza Spain, they have a pretty nice long runway there. This is truely an experience unlike anything that has come before, I never thought I could crawl around the inside of a space shuttle and yet thanks to Captainsim I can now do that. My Shuttle landing stat is at about 200 and counting, if only I could hear that double sonci boom!!! 

Yes the orange glow on the shuttle is awsome, but I would love to see the effects of the plasma trail from inside the cabin and then see the long orange plasma trail comming off the space shuttle making a scar in the upper atmosphere.