You don't need to be an 'investor' to invest in Singletrack: 6 days left: 95% of target - Find out more
It seems there's a few PC gamers on here.
My boys really seem to like the flight simulator games at a couple of the local air force museums (both using the old Microsoft Flight Simulator software I believe) and eldest seems to be showing a lot of patience and interest for this kind of thinking/careful game.
We don't have any other gaming devices so thinking about a relatively budget gaming PC and a flight sim that would allow them to fly a variety of aircraft. (Other games to follow, not just for this!)
Is there such a thing as a basic simulator game that can offer a range of aircraft and challenges that might include a mix of vintage, commercial, combat aircraft like the old MS product and a range of difficulty?
I use x plane, it cost around £40, I bought a joystick at the same time, internet reviews said the one I bought was the best budget one (can't remember the name of it).
Both work well, im on a mac but windows version available too i believe.
[url= http://www.x-plane.com/desktop/system-requirements/ ]Linky[/url]
Big forum too, loads of free user created planes, ive tried a few and they mostly work very well.
Flight Simulator X is available on Steam, bought it last week. Absolutely needs a decent flight stick, but not hugely resource intensive, I'm using it on my laptop with settings turned up and it's fine.
There's epic amounts of downloadable content including every plane ever, scenery, weather etc.
Could try FlightGear, its free, can do a lot of stuff. http://www.flightgear.org/
Sorry silly question
STEAM ?
Does it just mean older games still available?
I think I've found flight sim x stream edition on Amazon for about £15 and our laptop would run it , maybe with a monitor attached for better picture.
Will check out others. Thanks
[img] 
[/img]
Captain slow that video is stunning. I'll check out the other from klunk when it's not bed time!
Flight Sims - the very reason I got into computers 😆 😳 😥
A genre that was at the leading edge (pun intended) of gaming 20 or so years ago, but has become a niche market abandoned by most publishers and gamers...
IMHO the ability and desire to replicate every button and function killed it off. If it takes x years to train a real F16 pilot, then the clue is there that mist armchair drivers aren't going to have the time / inclination to learn the systems...
Anyway, I've always found Microsoft FS to be boring, despite having flow som excellent add one from the likes of Just Flight (Mosquito, Hawk, Lancaster, Vulcan) and A2A Simulations (various US warbirds)
Personally, combat sims are more "engaging", but not everyone want that...
As above ^^^, the Il-2 franchise is worth a look (Battle of Britain, Stalingrad). IIRC thes can be relatively accessible for new players
Beware, a joystick is a must, then you'll find a throttle would be good, and possibly even rudder pedals 😯 (WW2 aircraft need a fair bit of rudder input 😉 )
And then, if you / your kids really get into it, there are the so called "study sims"
Have a look at videos posted by Eagle Dynamics, DCS World, Razbam, VEAO Simulations etc. Jaw dropping attention to detail 😮
Microsoft "Flight" (Not Flight Simulator) X" is free, and quite accessible as a starter. The inital download gives you Hawaii to fly aroumd, and there are certain tasks/things to do.
I think it was supposed to be the replacement for FSx but got canned shortly after release, and so free to download. Well, it was, I've not played it for a couple of years...
Isozone
http://www.theisozone.com/downloads/pc/windows-games/
Retro pc stuff..... combat flight sim 2 or 3.
Abandonware.
njee20 - Member
Flight Simulator X is available on Steam, bought it last week
Nearly bought it myself as it went down to £6 but back up to £20 at the moment. It's the 'Steam' Edition so while X is technically old now being from 2006, it's been patched up a bit. It keeps dropping in price though.
Last MS Flight Sim I played was back in 2000 I think!
I've only skim read the above, but it looks like no-ones mentioned DCS World (Digital Combat Simulator World).
Free to play with a civilian P-51 mustang (wheeeeeeee!) and a modern russian tankbuster.
Largely clickable cockpits, and you can use "game" or "simulation" modes.
Unlike the MS Flight Simularor, its still in devlopment.
You can then buy more aircraft which is where they make money.
Pays to get a decent hotas setup, but also to get a headtracker, (facetracknoir or opentrack).
Flight sims can be pretty difficult to learn. 100 page manuals and hours of tutorial and so on.
Have you tried Google Earth in flight sim mode? Good for a laugh.
Whilst we're here, I had a joystick that I recently binned due to a fault - can someone recommend me something cheap or flog me one s/h?
e_t_p, those vids ^^^ are DCS 🙂
As are these...
Cliffs of Dover was terrible unless modded.
Il2: Battle for Moscow/Stalingrad/Kursk is where it is at.
DCS World for modern stuff
Rise of Flight for WW1 hilarity.
And topically, seeing as Kuznetsov was down our way
Microsoft "Flight" (Not Flight Simulator) X" is free
Google does not seem to be able to find such a thing?
Rise of Flight is partly free, two planes and 1 map.
MS Flight Simulator 98 was my first real experience of "realistic" sims, and that coupled with the photo-realistic scenery, a good airport add-on bundle and the original traffic gave a decent understanding of the mechanics of cheap sims, and it was tailored to the UK.
Back then it cost a lot of money for the scenery for the UK, but I'd imagine that you could find it fairly cheaply now. With the original FS Traffic you could record flight between airports, doing circuits etc and the recording would then play themselves giving a more realistic feel to the airport environments. There are loads of freeware aircraft to pick from, ranging from very poor characteristics to all singing replicas, but the bog standard Cessna 182 was a good trainer.
You should be able to put something together which on a modern PC will run brilliantly with all of the settings turned up for very little outlay. A decent throttle and stick/yoke would enhance it further.
Sorry silly question
STEAM ?
Does it just mean older games still available?
I think I've found flight sim x stream edition on Amazon for about £15 and our laptop would run it , maybe with a monitor attached for better picture.
Will check out others. Thanks
Steam are an online game host, who sell a lot of games and downloadable content for them. Not all old, they've got current stuff too. As DK noted, Flight Simulator X was £6 last week, so I took a punt. Even for £20 it's not bad as a 'base purchase', because the catalogue of DLC is colossal. I immediately downloaded (for free) Concorde, a Eurofighter and an A380, as well as new skins for existing aircraft, plus enhanced scenery for Heathrow and Gatwick. Trying to use the keyboard is a total disaster though, but I fear the wife will think I'm a complete moron if I buy a joystick for it. Not quite so "playing slyly on the sofa of an evening" friendly either.
Thanks all. I've got sucked into checking out gaming pc's...
If I suddenly stop posting Mrs G-D has caught me and decided to lay a new pa.............[digging sounds]......[cement mixer].....[slabs being laid]....[silence]
Sorry can I just check is this "Steam" that's been referenced above?[url= http://store.steampowered.com/app/314160/ ][/url]
http://store.steampowered.com/app/314160/
Looks like the laptop won't quite take the requirements (low video memory) so I think a cheap gaming box to attach to the telly through HDMI is going to be on the cards.
Falcon 4.0 the pinnacle of flight sims
117A stealth fighter - Microprose stuff was class.
The last flight sim game I played was this:
[img] 
[/img]
Looks like the laptop won't quite take the requirements (low video memory) so I think a cheap gaming box to attach to the telly through HDMI is going to be on the cards.
That's the one, but why not get it first and find out? It's quite an old game, buying a PC speculatively seems a bit daft. I'd expect any laptop in the last 10 years to be fine. If you need a new PC you can download it on multiple machines.
If you're on a really crap-spec PC, I'd recommend [url= https://www.dosbox.com/download.php?main=1 ]DOSBox[/url] and a copy of [url= http://www.lucas-abandonware.fr/r.html ]Reach For The Skies[/url].
I think you're
Imagine IL2 but with 320x200 EGA graphics and digitised sound out of the crap built-in PC speaker cos you can't afford an AdLib soundcard.
Both my lads use fsx. One has a Saitek AV8R stick and the other has a Speedlink Black Widow. Both do the job well but the AV8R is probably the better option, if you can find one. As for your PC, if you're planning on playing other games, get the best spec for your budget, as ever.
thrustmaster is a decent hotas joystick for the money IMO.
seems to work pretty well for elite.
think of steam as the itunes of gaming.
If the pcs a bit dated get IL2 1946 - hundreds of planes....dozens of theatres....passable graphics....decent flight model. pretty much set the bar for ww2 combat flight sims.
I keep dipping into World of Warplanes - free to play.
Arcadey even in comparison to the older 1946 though, and probably doesn't run as well on a low end machine.
Ms Flightsim X exist as Lockheed Martins Prepar3d and there is some really nicely detailed terrain out for this.
I have got UK, Norway and the Pacific Northwest and have got a tour going airport hopping my way round Norway.
And love flying out of Seattle/Vancouver Island Island hopping to San Juan island etc
Cheers all. There's a budget flight stick option for about £30 somewhere I can buy at the weekend so I'll probably grab one of them and try a download of MS Flight Sim X steam edition and see how it goes. Will be popping back to the you tube stuff i haven't seen later.
Has anyone ever done anything half decent for console? Seems like a gap in the market there, be well happy with a WW2 air combat sim on PS3.
There's a version of Il-2 Battle of Btitain / Stalingrad on the PS
IL2 Birds of Prey i think there is a newer as well.
Ooo, thank you both! Gonna grab me one of them. 🙂
Yup, Falcon4.0, still playing it after nearly 20 years, with the BMS addon. available on Steam. It has the best dynamic campaign in a combat sim which makes it endlessly replayable
[url= http://store.steampowered.com/app/429530/ ]Steam linky[/url]
BMS stuff....
Heh Falcon 4, I had an F18 pilot once tell me in my teens that if I could wrap my head around that I could probably just go and steal an actual F16.
Didnt it used to come with something like a 600 page textbook as a manual?
pondo - Member
Ooo, thank you both! Gonna grab me one of them.
Tom is correct "Birds of Prey" is the correct name...!
[img] 
[/img]
Didnt it used to come with something like a 600 page textbook as a manual?
Nah it's only about 200. You can be done with the tutorials in about 6 months.
The original Falcon 4.0 manual is indeed almost 600 pages.
The Falcon collection is available on Good Old Games for less than £8 and includes all the original manuals as PDF's. Theres quite a few other old sims on gog.com and as most of them have DOSBox integrated they can be downloaded for Mac/Linux as well as Windows. (Falcon 4.0 needs proper Windows or WINE though).
https://www.gog.com/game/falcon_collection
Simpleplanes is well worth a look. Also on gog.com for Windows/Mac
Frankly it's all been downhill since this
ZOMFG the BMS mod has F14s.
Want.
It's ancient now but I never found anything with a better flight model for a WW2 combat sim than Microprose's European Air War. Just managed to make it work on W10 too
Best flight sim ever
[url= http://bbcmicro.co.uk/gameimg/screenshots/Aviator-Acornsoft.pn g" target="_blank">http://bbcmicro.co.uk/gameimg/screenshots/Aviator-Acornsoft.pn g"/> [/img][/url]
Deadkenny
From zx spectrum? Graphics look a bit too good.
BBC Micro 😀 . Early Acornsoft game from Geoff Crammond, of Sentinel, Revs and later on the PC, F1 Grand Prix series fame.
There was a colour version too though never saw it.
Ah Aviator
My little bro wrote a game for the BBC B and he got to chose two games from the vault at Acornsoft, one was Aviator the other was some crappy text based adventure game. He did nearly wee himself with excitement when they opened the door of the vault tho 🙂
It's ancient now but I never found anything with a better flight model for a WW2 combat sim than Microprose's European Air War. Just managed to make it work on W10 too
Dude, are you high? 😀 IL2 Strumovik back in 2001, utterly wiped the flaw with EAW's flight model and both DCS World and the IL2: Battle over Moscow totally wipe the floor with the original IL2.
Might try those then, I only ever tried Janes WW2 Fighters and MS Combat Flight Sim.
Chocks away on acorn was pretty good IIRC.
Hamish! Those really are oldschool and agricultural! Il2 was a bar setter.
Dude, are you high? IL2 Strumovik back in 2001, utterly wiped the flaw with EAW's flight model and both DCS World and the IL2: Battle over Moscow totally wipe the floor with the original IL2.
See, I just do not agree...
(Not necessarily re EAW / CFS vs IL-2 / DCS, but "in general")
Yes, the detailed modelling "wipes the floor" - systems, buttons, functions, and yes, parts of the flight model are more complex and more detailed (buffet & stall, departures etc)
But that does not make a better flight sim...
It's also one reason my interest in flight sims remains high, but my participation is low...!
PC sims may have approached / reached the level of modelling detail that military / commercial sims can replicate, in terms of the fidelity of the flight model, but they don't have the £Millions of "supporting environment" - hydraulically activated cockpits, 360° projected visuals etc. The level of "immersion" does not match the level of modelling.
The result are aircraft in DCS, for example, that take an awful lot of practice to fly - not because their real life counterparts were difficult, but because the high fidelity flight models are not matched by the normal cues that a real pilot would have.
The universal real life pilots' verdict on the Spitfire, for example, was that it was a beauty to fly: "you put it on", "it was an extension of your arm". In the current high end sims, aircraft like the Mustang, FW190 and Bf109 are very, very difficult to fly.
To me, this misses an essential fact - young men with very little training were sent out to fly and fight in these machines.
And they were able to...
WarThunder.
Free to play
Biplanes to coldwar jets.
Pretty on a nice machine.
Online gameplay.
i was just about to post about WarThunder as well.
In historic mode or whatever they call it these days its very good.
Spot on rkk01
PC sims may have approached / reached the level of modelling detail that military / commercial sims can replicate, in terms of the fidelity of the flight model, but they don't have the £Millions of "supporting environment" - hydraulically activated cockpits, 360° projected visuals etc. The level of "immersion" does not match the level of modelling.The result are aircraft in DCS, for example, that take an awful lot of practice to fly - not because their real life counterparts were difficult, but because the high fidelity flight models are not matched by the normal cues that a real pilot would have.
The universal real life pilots' verdict on the Spitfire, for example, was that it was a beauty to fly: "you put it on", "it was an extension of your arm". In the current high end sims, aircraft like the Mustang, FW190 and Bf109 are very, very difficult to fly.
The Spitfire actually has pretty dire control harmonisation and pilots that didn't grow up with it being deified are usually pretty quick to notice it. The BF109 wasn't a difficult plane to fly either, just land (Spitfire isn't loads better though) - the stall characteristics are very very good. What puts pilots off from flying it on the edge are the slats being opened.
IL2 was pretty easy to fly but it gave a much better feeling of flight, with visual and auditory cues as to what was happening - than EAW ever did.
In fact I'd say the highlight of IL2 - is your complaint. In real life, the Spitfire was easy to fly aerobatics - as it was in IL2. The issues it had in IL2 came down to the fact that the only thing it was good at was a continuous turn - a defensive manoeuvre favoured by novices. This is of course where a PC falls down, as the lack of feedback means that it can be hard to ride the stall without dipping a wing and spinning into the ground. Although if you keep this up for too long in real life, you're eventually toast as well.
But this was an issue it faced in real life as well, it was a plane suited to novices in the early stages of the war - novices whos unfortunate lack of experience meant that their best chance in combat was to enter a defensive turn. On the other hand you had the Luftwaffe pilots who were veterans of the Spanish Civil war and France who were experienced enough to ignore the slats opening so they could out turn the Spitfire in a instantaneous turn, allowing you to pull lead and make momentary snapshots on British pilots. And later on you had FW190 pilots who could exploit exceptional elevator and aileron response at speed - meaning that as long as you made sure that you had the height advantage you could swoop on targets - making passes at high closing speeds without loss of control. Even if you didn't have the height advantage and got bounced, as long as you had some height - to get away was a case of simply rolling over into a vertical dive - rolling back the other way during the dive and repeating until the aircraft behind you with crap aileron response simply couldn't keep up.
In the Spitty, all you could do was turn and hope that someone didn't do a drive by on you from above.
Hell - these are the aircraft I'd rather have gone to war in than a Spitfire -
1) P-47 (big, takes lots of damage, decent response at speed, crazy dive speeds, lots of firepower)
2) FW-190 A or D (small, great dive speed, great response at speed, great view on all models, heavy armament)
3) P51 with 25lb of boost pressure (if you're caught on the deck, jam the throttle to the wall and nothing other than an ME262 can catch you...or maybe a Tempest).
😈
Thanks again all. Been watching the squabbling quietly from the side. 😆
Im going to give MS Flight Sim X off Steam a go. My kids are still quite small so taking part in aerial combat is a bit beyond them.
At the moment they just want to fly planes and try out tricks and trying to land etc. So £20 on that and £30-50 on a stick and throttle seems a good start.
I 'need' to learn to fly too then maybe move on to IL2 or something later if I've got the time and inclination to put the practice in.
As there's a couple of flight / WWII aircrfaft nerds on here (looking at Tom amongst others) can anyone recommend a good not overly technical book on WWII aircraft tactics and flying characteristics?
I'm enough of a geek I like Airfix kits and it would be nice to have a reference book that gives the aircraft more context.
Any BFM/ACM manual https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_combat_manoeuvring
and anything by Erich Hartmann
http://www.azquotes.com/author/41538-Erich_Hartmann
Loads of books about and forum posts on performance of aircraft.
Generally my advice is
* High Yo Yo's are your basic bread and butter, go into the vertical after the merge, turn back in on your target at the optimum turn speed. This way you build up kinetic energy in the climb and don't lose too much by simply banking after your target.
* Avoid turn fights at all costs
* Make the other guy lose energy - you got the better climb rate? Carry straight on after a head on merge, let him bank after you, drag him in a climb and then zoom climb and hammerhead back down on him.
* Don't trim your plane properly during cruise, especially rudder. Rudder is hard to compensate for in a bounce - it might give you a second or two to react.
* If you're going to get engaged by an enemy with loads more height, when you're at sea level. Turn into the merge and try to drag them into high deflection shots.
I mean potential energy....grrr
PC sims may have approached / reached the level of modelling detail that military / commercial sims can replicate, in terms of the fidelity of the flight model
Not convinced this is the case. Military and commercial flight sims effectively use a model provided by the manufacturer directly from flight test data. A PC sim uses a model based entirely on (educated!) guesswork or attempts to directly simulate the airflow over the aircraft (X-Plane).
Depends, historical sims use original and new flight data.