Slitherine

quote:

ORIGINAL: JudgeDredd

Too true.

However, I bought 98, A Century of Flight and FSX and was deeply disappointed with each release. tbh, there wasn't alot there, and what was there was empty gaming. FSX was a diabolical resource hog. For some very crappy graphics, you got some very hefty cpu and memory usage. On top of that, the games had NO progression...the only drive was to fly from A to B. Add to that some very suspect flight models and what you have is a game a adored by millions but crap.

A nice "progression" model through from the smallest of props to the biggest of jets was desperately needed...as was a good flight model....unfortunately, the die hards stopped that from happening. It was left to third party devs.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Banquet

quote:

ORIGINAL: JudgeDredd

Too true.

However, I bought 98, A Century of Flight and FSX and was deeply disappointed with each release. tbh, there wasn't alot there, and what was there was empty gaming. FSX was a diabolical resource hog. For some very crappy graphics, you got some very hefty cpu and memory usage. On top of that, the games had NO progression...the only drive was to fly from A to B. Add to that some very suspect flight models and what you have is a game a adored by millions but crap.

A nice "progression" model through from the smallest of props to the biggest of jets was desperately needed...as was a good flight model....unfortunately, the die hards stopped that from happening. It was left to third party devs.

What absolute rubbish!

I used earlier versions of FSX to cut 10 hours off my PPL training time, not to mention the time it could save off IFR training. The 'diabolical resource hog' runs very well on my 2.4 c2d laptop at 25fps.. and if you think it's got crappy graphics then please feel free to post up a screenshot that's better than this hunter over alaska- which was nothing more than a random pic in FSX. No doubt you can find another flight sim that can do better!

FSX doesn't need a progression model, because anyone remotely interested in flying will enjoy doing just that..

quote:

ORIGINAL: Kung Karl

I think it is a fun game but I must say if flying airplanes is as easy as in FSX i guess they can close down all pilot education.

I have very little exeperience with flight sims but still manage to fly a commercial airliner jet from rome to napoli on the hard settings with no problems at all. This after trying the game out for about 20 min. It is dead easy to take-of, fly and land. Since I never have piloted a real airplane or played other sims very much I can't say if you are supposed to be able to fly a big jet without any previous experience at all?

IL2 on the other hand, that is a hard game. Sure, I can take-of and fly but landing and doing manouvers are very hard in IL2 compared to FSX.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Hard Sarge

Karl

IL2 on the other hand, that is a hard game. Sure, I can take-of and fly but landing and doing manouvers are very hard in IL2 compared to FSX.

yea, but...

in Il-2 you are flying combat planes, that are not easy to fly, most are made to be unstable to begin with, which is what makes them good combat planes, in the other game you are flying a plane made to be stable

now for me, I never got into those sims, I don't like the idea of flying from A to B, I want to do something along the way (bombs, guns, what nots) but I never thought they were bad sims, just not for me

quote:

ORIGINAL: Kung Karl

About the F-16 being easy. Doesn't modern aircraft have computers etc to help stabilize the plane thus making them more easy to fly?

quote:

ORIGINAL: Lützow

Best Flightsim ever was Falcon 4 btw.

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in Il-2 you are flying combat planes, that are not easy to fly, most are made to be unstable to begin with, which is what makes them good combat planes, in the other game you are flying a plane made to be stable

quote:

ORIGINAL: RyanCrierie

quote:

in Il-2 you are flying combat planes, that are not easy to fly, most are made to be unstable to begin with, which is what makes them good combat planes, in the other game you are flying a plane made to be stable

Actually, combat aircraft have to be (relatively) stable; so that the pilot can concentrate more on fighting the battle, rather than fighting the aircraft. Flying straight and level with a few shallow turns there and there aren't going to be hard in any aircraft, unless you're trying to fly a flying wing before computer fly by wire.

It's when you go to the bleeding edge of the flight envelope that things become really hard; like taking a B-29 that's in overload condition off a (too) short runway on Tinian, on a hot day; knowing that if you fail to achieve lift, there's a cliff at the end of the runway. And then battling your way up to a reasonable cruising altitude after takeoff. It's not until you're tucked in at 15,000 feet and cruise climbing that you can relax.

Same thing occurs with fighter aircraft; I've found in IL-2 Sturmovik that the Bf-109 is actually much more forgiving to fly; you can fly it to the edge of it's envelope, and it stalls and recovers very gently; while the FW-190 is a bear; it rolls fast, turns fast, and flies fast; but if you push it too hard, you go into a flat spin which is very, very very hard to recover from.

From what I've read, this was also the case with the P-40 and P-51; a good pilot in the P-40 could beat a good pilot in the P-51 in a turning battle, because the P-40 was much more stable and docile throughout it's entire flight envelope; especially at the bleeding edge; while the P-51 become dangerous at that position.

EDIT: There's also the fact to consider that most flight simulators have a very simplified engine/whatever throttle control system; where in real life, you'd have to check your engine gauges, correct the mixture, etc. Fine in level flight; but a problem when you're turning and burning in a tumble with a FW-190...

quote:

ORIGINAL: Kung Karl

quote:

ORIGINAL: RyanCrierie

quote:

in Il-2 you are flying combat planes, that are not easy to fly, most are made to be unstable to begin with, which is what makes them good combat planes, in the other game you are flying a plane made to be stable

Actually, combat aircraft have to be (relatively) stable; so that the pilot can concentrate more on fighting the battle, rather than fighting the aircraft. Flying straight and level with a few shallow turns there and there aren't going to be hard in any aircraft, unless you're trying to fly a flying wing before computer fly by wire.

It's when you go to the bleeding edge of the flight envelope that things become really hard; like taking a B-29 that's in overload condition off a (too) short runway on Tinian, on a hot day; knowing that if you fail to achieve lift, there's a cliff at the end of the runway. And then battling your way up to a reasonable cruising altitude after takeoff. It's not until you're tucked in at 15,000 feet and cruise climbing that you can relax.

Same thing occurs with fighter aircraft; I've found in IL-2 Sturmovik that the Bf-109 is actually much more forgiving to fly; you can fly it to the edge of it's envelope, and it stalls and recovers very gently; while the FW-190 is a bear; it rolls fast, turns fast, and flies fast; but if you push it too hard, you go into a flat spin which is very, very very hard to recover from.

From what I've read, this was also the case with the P-40 and P-51; a good pilot in the P-40 could beat a good pilot in the P-51 in a turning battle, because the P-40 was much more stable and docile throughout it's entire flight envelope; especially at the bleeding edge; while the P-51 become dangerous at that position.

EDIT: There's also the fact to consider that most flight simulators have a very simplified engine/whatever throttle control system; where in real life, you'd have to check your engine gauges, correct the mixture, etc. Fine in level flight; but a problem when you're turning and burning in a tumble with a FW-190...

Of course real world flying is a lot harder with all the little things to control and check all the time.

I managed to land a boeing in monsoon weather on hard in FSX with very little exeperince, maybe an hour or two just trying the game out before. Hardly realistic at all.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Unicornman


When I was learning to fly back in the 80's, Flight Simulator 2.0 was a big help, and took many hours off of my flight training. It is a valuable tool to learn navigation, instrument flight, getting use to checklists, etc.... Actually, in some regards, it is harder to fly a Cessan on FS than in real life! Especially when it comes to simple things like turning your head to look out of the window.

quote:

ORIGINAL: noxious

In Flight Gear Flight Simulator, you can always use METAR for the weather.
You have a choice of two stable Flight Dynamics Model, taking two different approaches, or even use matlab.
You can land on a moving carrier, controlled by another player or AI.
The multiplayer system is distributed computing in its nature.
It uses shaders, but has an MP compatible pre-shader version.

Incidentally, it's also Open Source, and built on Open Scene Graph.
In real life, it's used for a wide ranging of applications, ranging from training F-16 pilots in combat (the default flight model, JSBsim is used for that) to controlling experimental UAVs in real life, gathering CFD data...

Neither a game, neither strictly an engineer's tool.

Something to look into (and yes, like any flight sim community, there is an important segment that cares more about doing nice models, and textures, without any regard for true to life performance, or not killing framerate on modern machines ;))