Flight-simulator Discussion and Comparison thread

[willitstimothy]

This place is for talking about Flight Simulator programs of various makes and vintages. Programs that attempt realistic representations of flight are appreciated.

[Kreuzung]

I started playing FS2002 when my grandpa gave me his laptop where it was installed on, later he gave me FS2004:ACOF and I installed a load of free add-on stuff, it ended this january with me talking to carriers because they waved me off

[Kosmo-not]

If you want as much aerodynamic realism as possible, I would suggest X-Plane. However, if you are looking for atmosphere, lessons on how to fly, and fun multiplayer, Flight Simulator X is a good one.

[Cthulufaic]

Does IL-2 Sturmovik: 1946 count as a Flight-Simulator?

[sal_vager]

As I mentioned I am playing Flight unlimited 3 again, I have tried X-plane 5 (yeah it\'s old) and would be playing FSX but my windows partition is fubar, I have 2 C:\ drives and everything in the recycle bin is invisible.

I find FU3 is still really well made and has stood the ravages of time pretty well, even if the game area is the size of a postage stamp.

There\'s really good lessons in FU3 as well, with a instructor who will show you the flight so you know exactly what to do.

[willitstimothy]

Does IL-2 Sturmovik: 1946 count as a Flight-Simulator?

I'm not sure, I haven't played it at all, but basically what I mean is that the game uses at least semi-realistic physics simulation and does not simply behave like some arcade 'simulator.'

Edited August 18, 2012 by willitstimothy

[willitstimothy]

My personal experience is with

Microsoft flight simulators 5, 95, 98, 2002, 2004, X

some X-plane 9 and 10

Janes Combat flight simulator

Bob-Hoover's air-racing (and Combat)

In addition, and partially because of all that, I am also a real world pilot. I got my license at age 17, and have been a pilot for over three years, but have been flying for the last 7 years.

Edited August 18, 2012 by willitstimothy

[Kreuzung]

Does IL-2 Sturmovik: 1946 count as a Flight-Simulator?

Never played it but read that it is more realistic sim than other war sims (wikipedia example was that you have to press multiple keys to deploy a non-automatic gear)

[Cthulufaic]

Never played it but read that it is more realistic sim than other war sims (wikipedia example was that you have to press multiple keys to deploy a non-automatic gear)

Close enough, you have to mash the key you set to manually lower the gear as if you are turning a crank.

And it\'s pretty realistic, it includes all sorts of Magnetos and superchargers, the simulated drag is very accurate, it even accounts for if your radiatior is open or not. Flaps can get jammed, engines can overheat, fuel can leak, Arresting hooks can snap, and lots of other nifty

tidbits to make it that much more realistic. Of course you can just turn all that off so it is an Arcade game, but what\'s the fun in that?

[sal_vager]

Sounds good, I have IL2 - Forgotten battles on the shelf, I might try it again.

[Guest GroundHOG-2010]

Finaly, something I know something about. IL2 1946 is classified as a simulator along with the others in the Il-2 series. I have also been looking at getting X-plane, but I will wait for now. List of flight sims I have played:

MSFS 95-X

Microsoft Combat Flight Sim 3

Il-2 orignial and 1946

real life (I know its not a flight sim, but you can\'t beat flying the real thing).

[GOOMH]

The only sim I played was the open source Flight gear. I installed tons of planes each one with various levels of authenticity and now know that flying with a mouse and keyboard is a pain and I need a joy stick.

[Ydoow]

What do you do in Sims? Joyride? or are there missions?

Joy ride sounds...boring...

I\'d like to get into a Sim, but I don\'t know any good ones

[willitstimothy]

What do you do in Sims? Joyride? or are there missions?

Joy ride sounds...boring...

I'd like to get into a Sim, but I don't know any good ones

Chances are that if you do not like flying in real life, you won't like it much on a computer. Some sims do have missions or, by nature of being combat sims, are thrilling to play, but most of the real flight simulators such as the Microsoft FS series and the X-plane series are really only entertaining if you enjoy going to terrestrial destinations such as mountains, desert isles, big airports, tall buildings, or anywhere on earth that you can imagine in an aircraft of your choice. You can fly fast or slow, high or low, correctly or incorrectly. You can land (and try to takeoff again) on buildings and ships, bridges and highways, lakes rivers and oceans, deserts and mountain peaks, and with good simulators you can challenge yourself to learn to fly properly, thus gaining experience that could save your life someday (or you can just fool around all the time and fly low, takeoff without clearance, fly between building, and terrorize imaginary people). There is a ton of stuff to do but you have to appreciate it.

(most of that stuff is only really worthwhile in newer sims, older ones are not nearly as feature rich, but again they can still be cool if you appreciate their features properly)

Real, and good sims, would either be X-plane 9 or 10 or Micrsoft Flight Simulator X (get it with the Acceleration Expansion if you want better scenery, 'missions,' and aircraft (like the F-18 or P-51).

Edited August 18, 2012 by willitstimothy

[socket7]

I have been hooked on DCS: A-10C lately.

I like that the buttons and switches actually do things in the plane. I\'ve worked out flying for the most part, now i just need to learn to target and drop bombs (A smart bomb is only as smart as the guy programming it. I might as well be using dumb bombs with my failures lately LOL)

I\'d love to do some multiplayer hijinks if anyone else is up for some not so serious fun.

I\'ve never actually flown a plane, but the aerodynamic model seems quite accurate. They even simulate hypoxia.

[Tiberion]

FS 98 was the first game I bought with my computer - used graduation money to get it and a sidewinder joystick. I loved MS Combat Flight Sim and the old Jane\'s games too. Heck even the old Pilotwings games on the SNES and N64 were swell. Heck, you could even go back to the NES days with

and the Top Gun game (though the carrier landing parts of the missions were more fun than the combat, to me Call the ball!)

I actually tried out Microsoft Flight (the new one) recently. It\'s sad they cut out the SDK and decided to monetize the content so much. Its doubly offensive because the new engine and the new persistence/mission content they added is quite well done and could be a lot of fun, if you weren\'t being held at gunpoint via your credit card. Its probably worth downloading and looking at the free to play part of it, just to see what could have been.

[Kosmo-not]

I\'ve never actually flown a plane, but the aerodynamic model seems quite accurate. They even simulate hypoxia.

They simulate hypoxia now?

[Guest GroundHOG-2010]

What do you do in Sims? Joyride? or are there missions?

Joy ride sounds...boring...

I\'d like to get into a Sim, but I don\'t know any good ones

Basicly, Joyriding is fun if you know how to get into it. Like with me and FSX. I would literally it on to the most realistic settings, and reanact on of my prevous flights (like the last real flight I did (which was 5 days ago, I went low level (if you count 500ft above the ground low level, which I do) up a river, flew over the watercourse and landed the aircraft back at the airbase (which is actually an international airport, so the controler was busy). It was amazing)). Using the ATC, weather and the different charateristics of your aircraft is fun.

If thats not your style and perfer mission based flight sims, I would point you to IL-2 if you want something realistic or MS Flight (which gets alot of hate for being the sequel to FSX).

I have been hooked on DCS: A-10C lately.

I like that the buttons and switches actually do things in the plane. I\'ve worked out flying for the most part, now i just need to learn to target and drop bombs (A smart bomb is only as smart as the guy programming it. I might as well be using dumb bombs with my failures lately LOL)

I\'d love to do some multiplayer hijinks if anyone else is up for some not so serious fun.

I\'ve never actually flown a plane, but the aerodynamic model seems quite accurate. They even simulate hypoxia.

Anything by Eagle Dynamics is great. I have been thinking about getting one of the DCS range, but haven\'t yet.

[Amram]

What do you do in Sims? Joyride? or are there missions?

Joy ride sounds...boring...

I\'d like to get into a Sim, but I don\'t know any good ones

it depends entirely. Hardcore sims, such as Lomac, or A-10C, of Falcon 4.0 are a bit insane to the average person. You start and your given a parked, powered down fighter. Spin it up, and your start sequence needs to be right, or it\'ll fail. Usually there are difficulty settings to get into it much faster. But one thing hardcore sims almost never do, even through difficulty settings, is compress time or distance. if its 600nm away, your going to take an hour just to get there, oh well. Combat pilots spend 95% of their time bored, 4.5% of their time busy with soemthing, and 0.5% of their time shitting bricks.

.youtube.com/watch?v=Bvi3utr_Vug

A-10C, devils cross mission, 52 min video. im at 6:30 as I type this, and he still hasn\'t started to taxi yet, just prepping the aircraft for the mission.

of course, when its busy, its busy

.youtube.com/watch?v=ifoKXOag6uY

.youtube.com/watch?v=FG2BRSP87dI

Alot of people who get into such sims use TrackIr. it makes one hell of a difference in games that fully support it.

.youtube.com/watch?v=9wXx3vMy_AQ

Il-2 series is pretty much the premier series for WW2 combat sims. Its beginning to look a little dated, but the flight model is fine, its far FAR better than MS\'s combat flight sim.

Sturmovik is the original in the set, 1946 is fairly recent, and cliffs of dover is the newest im aware of, I might be out of touch there. their replay system is capable enough, and with a few of the right mods and the right missions, it can bring a modern system to its knees still.

.youtube.com/watch?v=H0uYH0W_U7E

.youtube.com/watch?v=zOSj7QcMqTM

.youtube.com/watch?v=PlbP0KbJxgk -gets good at about 5 minutes in.

Flight sims that don\'t focus on combat are at the other end of things. your challenge comes from either doing something you haven\'t done, or from failures and/or weather. Full realism flight from Heathrow to Kai Tak, well, thats gonna take a while. Yes, you can accelerate time, but if an engine fails and time is accelerated too far, you might lose it. maybe the elevators will hard-over and your swandive before you get time under control. Of course its flown by autopilot, your mostly just there in case, unless you really want to fly that.

Collect some scenery packages and mods and things can look VERY impressive in these sims. it can be quite worth seeing the sights just to see the sights.

.youtube.com/watch?v=OcnqAt5E2yw

.youtube.com/watch?v=MKNw4Ii-uVM

.youtube.com/watch?v=IGTc8oGxUbg

.youtube.com/watch?v=OVNzSOVSl-k

.youtube.com/watch?v=3ZUq5Ti47Ys

I think FSX has better terrain, but X-plane has much better environments, such as road traffic, which you don\'t get in FSX. Simple touch, huge impact on the atmoshere. A collaboration mixing their strengths would be ridiculous.

I think that about sums it up. Simmers play them for the simulation more than anything. If all you want is flight, then go for FSX or X-plane. They aren\'t just airliners. Cessna\'s, heli\'s, and more. If you want combat, take your pick, Modern or WW2. If modern, are you a mudslinger(A-10), or a fighter(LOMAC), or both(Falcon 4.0)? They can get pretty intense, and even the hardcore sims have a quick and dirty start that leaves you seconds from the action.

Unfortunately, none of the above are all that forgiving of a newcomer. Flight is difficult, and they will punish you for your mistakes, lol. IL-2 will let you go close to arcadish flight on easy settings, but you lack power to really fix big mistakes. LOMAC, A-10, and Falcon put you in aircraft that generally have a thrust to weight better than 1-1, so you can fix most flight screwups just by applying yet more power. Unfortunately they also involve missiles which are rather faster than you. lose too much speed and you can\'t evade effectively.

This became ALOT bigger than i first intended, but I can\'t imagine you won\'t understand the genre after it, whether or not you see anything of interest is another matter entirely.

[Kreuzung]

I\'m waiting for this one to come out:

http://www.indiedb.com/games/vector-thrust

[socket7]

They simulate hypoxia now?

DCS does. If you forget to turn on your oxygen mask and pressurize your cockpit, then fly around at about 25k feet. You get tunnel vision, the plane gets hard to control, and you start seeing double/triple/quadruple. Eventually you just kinda fall from the sky due to being unable to see and 'wake up' at about 10k feet heading straight down. good times. ;P

[sal_vager]

Whether it\'s in FU3 or the FS series or X-plane, my favorite thing to do is just the landing.

Taking off and flying is easy enough but every landing is exciting, can I make it? will I stall and crash?

One of my favorite landings was in FS9 with a huge Vulcan bomber, unfortunately I have lost the file and can\'t find it again.

I was trying it out and wasn\'t planning to land at this time, but thought what the hell, and spotted what I thought was a large runway.

I brought the plane down by eye and was far too close before I realized it was a tiny concrete strip, suddenly it was a full flaps nose up oh god I\'m gonna die panic.

The Vulcan is heavy so I had a lot of power on just to stay aloft, and I just didn\'t know how to land this thing, it was all roaring and smoke and speed, all aiming for a strip I\'d never landed at before.

The trees, huts and dirt taxiway were just a blur, the rear wheels touched tarmac and I hit everything I could to slow down, throttle to zero, flaps up to put weight on the tires, spoilers out, front wheel only inches from the ground as I lost speed, cessna\'s lazily taxi\'ing alongside as if all this was normal.

Finally I got the nose down and hit the brakes, they didn\'t do a whole lot, and the end of the runway just got closer.

The nose, then the front wheel went over the runway marker, then the nose went over the grass and I was still slowing, until the behemoth finally decided this was a good place to stop.

With the nose wheel on the very lip of the tarmac and with an irate cessna on the holding position line I could finally start breathing again, my nerves were too shot after all that to try taxi\'ing over to the little wooden huts that marked the aircraft stands, not that I\'d have fit anyway.

[willitstimothy]

Whether it's in FU3 or the FS series or X-plane, my favorite thing to do is just the landing.

Taking off and flying is easy enough but every landing is exciting, can I make it? will I stall and crash?

One of my favorite landings was in FS9 with a huge Vulcan bomber, unfortunately I have lost the file and can't find it again.

I was trying it out and wasn't planning to land at this time, but thought what the hell, and spotted what I thought was a large runway.

I brought the plane down by eye and was far too close before I realized it was a tiny concrete strip, suddenly it was a full flaps nose up oh god I'm gonna die panic.

The Vulcan is heavy so I had a lot of power on just to stay aloft, and I just didn't know how to land this thing, it was all roaring and smoke and speed, all aiming for a strip I'd never landed at before.

The trees, huts and dirt taxiway were just a blur, the rear wheels touched tarmac and I hit everything I could to slow down, throttle to zero, flaps up to put weight on the tires, spoilers out, front wheel only inches from the ground as I lost speed, cessna's lazily taxi'ing alongside as if all this was normal.

Finally I got the nose down and hit the brakes, they didn't do a whole lot, and the end of the runway just got closer.

The nose, then the front wheel went over the runway marker, then the nose went over the grass and I was still slowing, until the behemoth finally decided this was a good place to stop.

With the nose wheel on the very lip of the tarmac and with an irate cessna on the holding position line I could finally start breathing again, my nerves were too shot after all that to try taxi'ing over to the little wooden huts that marked the aircraft stands, not that I'd have fit anyway.

Quite a narrative.

You should try landing a smaller plane at Paf Cannery in Alaska. The longest runway in the game there is 800 feet and the shortest is 400 feet. Either that, or you could just land on the Helicopter runway at Miramar Marine Base CA it's lighted, paved, looks like a miniature version of the runways just to the north of it, and it's only 1000 feet long.

I landed the F-18 there once.

Edited August 17, 2012 by willitstimothy

[Guest GroundHOG-2010]

Whether it\'s in FU3 or the FS series or X-plane, my favorite thing to do is just the landing.

Taking off and flying is easy enough but every landing is exciting, can I make it? will I stall and crash?

One of my favorite landings was in FS9 with a huge Vulcan bomber, unfortunately I have lost the file and can\'t find it again.

I was trying it out and wasn\'t planning to land at this time, but thought what the hell, and spotted what I thought was a large runway.

I brought the plane down by eye and was far too close before I realized it was a tiny concrete strip, suddenly it was a full flaps nose up oh god I\'m gonna die panic.

The Vulcan is heavy so I had a lot of power on just to stay aloft, and I just didn\'t know how to land this thing, it was all roaring and smoke and speed, all aiming for a strip I\'d never landed at before.

The trees, huts and dirt taxiway were just a blur, the rear wheels touched tarmac and I hit everything I could to slow down, throttle to zero, flaps up to put weight on the tires, spoilers out, front wheel only inches from the ground as I lost speed, cessna\'s lazily taxi\'ing alongside as if all this was normal.

Finally I got the nose down and hit the brakes, they didn\'t do a whole lot, and the end of the runway just got closer.

The nose, then the front wheel went over the runway marker, then the nose went over the grass and I was still slowing, until the behemoth finally decided this was a good place to stop.

With the nose wheel on the very lip of the tarmac and with an irate cessna on the holding position line I could finally start breathing again, my nerves were too shot after all that to try taxi\'ing over to the little wooden huts that marked the aircraft stands, not that I\'d have fit anyway.

Ha. Sounds like me (though I now know how to land in real life, so it shouldn\'t be too hard).

[willitstimothy]

Ha. Sounds like me (though I now know how to land in real life, so it shouldn't be too hard).

I know how to land in real life too, and I know that a big jet doesn't make it into a short GA strip. 5000 feet if you\'re good, maybe, but 2000 feet isn't a safe landing in any large transport jet. A old Vulcan bomber could do it if it had a drogue parachute, good brakes, and reverse thrust, but forget it with a big bird.

Edited August 17, 2012 by willitstimothy