Flight Sims...

xlex

My brother asked me for a flight sim for christmas... I have never had an experiance of them but even from graphics displays on boxes they vary... I've promised him one for the new year until Microsoft Flight Sim2002 is out...

What experiance does anyone have of these Sims... Is not like you can really rent them to get a test run...

Cheers for any advice...

I should mention that I'd prefer a Sim which has a modern theme...

DiscoStu

Flight Sim 2k2 has been out for over a year. 2004 is due for some time around sept.

There are piles of combat flight sims, non combat are a little bit rarer. As far as modern ones go there are only 3 real choices Flight Smulator 2002, Fly II or X-Plane with X-Plane being the most accurate with its physics but seriously lacking in the eye candy department. A classic one i would go for is Flight Unlimited 2. you can fly over the greater san fransisco area and the graphics are a step above more modern ones due to the small area. it also has working ATC with a very very crowded airspace.

For combat you could go for the best which is Falcon4 it came out in 98 and still aint benn surpassed. other choices would be Microsoft Combat Flight Simulator 2(3 is ****), IL-2 Sturmovik or B-17 the mighty eighth(there is a compilation called totally flying that has Falcon4, B-17 The mighty eight and european air war all of which are great games)

hmm most of those combat ones are ww2 sorry

embraer170

Sadly there aren’t really many civil aviation options these days:

Flight Unlimited I, II and III. Excellent games (the best at the time) but very limited. Sadly there won’t be another in the series.
Fly! II: A game with huge potential but you must have the patience to download hundreds of megs of add ons etc. Picked up my copy in France for €5. Last patch was just released days ago. There won’t be another in the series (or another patch for the current one) since the main developer and promoter of the Fly! series is terminally ill with cancer.

That just leaves the Microsoft Flight Simulator 2002. Excellent but much better if you download aircraft and add-ons such as Project AI (most are freeware). When I bought it last Christmas, was over €30 cheaper in Compustore (!) than any other shop including Game. Not sure where the best place to buy it is nowadays. Two different editions are available, the normal and the pro (latter being considerably more expensive).

For more information, there are a few good websites including http://www.flightsim.com and http://www.avsim.com

Jer

DiscoStu

Originally posted by embraer170
Sadly there aren’t really many civil aviation options these days

yep sad but true.

there is quite a lot to be said doing a medium haul flight across europe in real time(B767 or A320 are my favourites). first one i done was a flight from athens into gatwick. take off from athens was a 4am EET and landing was 6am GMT. there is nothing quite as satisfying as watching the virtual sun rise over the snow capped alps or hearing the tower saying your on final appraoch and then taxiing to the gate.

there is not that many irish pilots on vatsim.

personaly i think project opensky make the best freeware addons. the B767, B777 and A330 are amazing. i also have a fantastic A300/310 set for air iran but i cant remember the developer.

Mutz

IL2 Sturmovik is seriously a great game ww2.

and Lock On, Modern Air Combat is great too