Flight Simulator

[Skeletor]

For some reason I wanted to get MS Flight Simulator and fly some virtual planes. Anyone ever try this? What joystick would you recommend?

Any other simulator games you recommend?

[RestlessRodent]

FlightGear

[Nomad]

Not really a "simulator", but I played the Hawx demo when it came out and it seems like a pretty decent game. You might check that one out.

[Snarboo]

Have there been any good flight sims released in the last few years? Most of the games I've seen are arcade flight games, such as Hawx and Ace Combat. I always liked the more realistic stuff, such as Janes.

I've heard good things about the IL-2 Sturmovik games, but I've never played them.

[Zaldron]

Snarboo said:

Have there been any good flight sims released in the last few years? Most of the games I've seen are arcade flight games, such as Hawx and Ace Combat. I always liked the more realistic stuff, such as Janes.

I've heard good things about the IL-2 Sturmovik games, but I've never played them.

IL-2 (+expansions) is extremely good/fun. There's a new one from the same developer coming soonish (Storm War). Completely impossible to play without a proper joystick.

I don't think you'll be disappointed by its realism. It even simulates a random obscure HUD circuitry problem in one of the plane models.

[chungy]

FlightGear is the most realistic simulator I've ever used; and best of all, it's free (in every sense of the word) :-)

[Aliotroph?]

You mean I spent all of $40 for X-Plane for my pilor friend for nothing??? ;)

He bought some expensive Saitek controls to practice procedures with. We found the MS Flight Simulator had horrible handling with these controls and when we did research we found most pilots had exactly the same thing to say. So I bought him a copy of X-Plane because we found the demo worked really well with said controls.

Never heard of that FlightGear thing. Must check it out now.

[RestlessRodent]

Aliotroph? said:

Never heard of that FlightGear thing. Must check it out now.

It's awesome! I can't fly Cessnas, but I can fly F16s, 757s and 787s! I can even do flips in a 787, although there's like -2gs (red out) to 15gs (black out) so you'd die in real life. But what you do is you go to 30,000 feet then you nose dive a bit to gain speed then pull up and just keep it there and eventually you will do a flip. Also, you will be able to get to 40,000 and 50,000 feet (you can keep nose diving to gain speed and going to up). Also if you get the F16 to 50,000 feet and above it just keeps going "Warning!" constantly.

Have fun!