Any flightsimmers out there?

B

Brendan

New member
After years of not picking one up I've gone bewild and thrown away my old, useless Logitec Wingman joystick and ordered a Saitek X52 HOTAS along with Wings Over Europe, Wings Over Vietnam, Falcon 4.0, : Allied Forces Lock On:Modern Air Combat, Enemy Engaged Apache vs. Hokum and Battle of Britain (Yeah, it was one moment of madness on Take 2.)

Everything should be arriving at the end of this month if I am lucky.

So I'm wondering if anyone else out there wants to talk flightsims and advise me on what I should try first.
 
Brendan said:
After years of not picking one up I've gone bewild and thrown away my old, useless Logitec Wingman joystick and ordered a Saitek X52 HOTAS along with Wings Over Europe, Wings Over Vietnam, Falcon 4.0, : Allied Forces Lock On:Modern Air Combat, Enemy Engaged Apache vs. Hokum and Battle of Britain (Yeah, it was one moment of madness on Take 2.)

Everything should be arriving at the end of this month if I am lucky.

So I'm wondering if anyone else out there wants to talk flightsims and advise me on what I should try first.
Click to expand...

*jealous*

I was wanting to do the same thing a few months ago but got sidetracked. Couldn't find a decent joystick at a reasonable price though

RoosTa said:
How could you miss IL-2 Sturmovik :P
Click to expand...

lol
 
I used to dabble in some IL-2 Sturmovik a few years back. Really enjoyed the realism of it all but I hardly have time anymore for this type of game.
 
IL-2 was actually the last flightsim I tried with that piece of trash, dodgy Logitec which caused me to give up on flightsimming. The X52 is going for just over a grand on Take2's US Amazon service so I bit the bullet and bought it since I haven't purchased any PC upgrades for a year. I still don't know how I'm going to sneak it past the missus though.
 
Sneak it into the house and see how quickly it takes her to notice it next to your PC, I've not played a flight sim for over a year since my house was robbed, haven't bitten the bullet on a new joystick yet :-(
 
Why struggle with a joystick? A gamepad is more versitile, but thats besides the point.

For a flightsim lover, H.A.W.X. is deffenatly a good buy, and I've been looking to play online a bit, but can't find a local crowd.
 
Raven Gold said:
Why struggle with a joystick? A gamepad is more versitile, but thats besides the point.

For a flightsim lover, H.A.W.X. is deffenatly a good buy, and I've been looking to play online a bit, but can't find a local crowd.
Click to expand...

I'm sorry, but HAWX hardly qualifies as a flightsim. It's far too arcade-y and lacks any semblance of complexity.
 
Isengard said:
I'm sorry, but HAWX hardly qualifies as a flightsim. It's far too arcade-y and lacks any semblance of complexity.
Click to expand...

Yeah, HAWX is great if you just want to blow stuff up (Which can be fun too.) but if you want the approximation of flying an aircraft you need to look somewhere else.

I'm particularly looking forward to the new DCS : Warthog A-10 simulator that is in development. The F-16 and A-10 are my favourite aircraft.

Here are some screenshots from SimHQ. (I hope they don't mind hot linking.)

air_425a_001.jpg


air_425a_003.jpg


air_425a_005.jpg


If this doesn't get you excited you are dead inside.
 
If you don't want to spend R1,200+ on a joystick the Force Feedback SPEEDLINK Black Widow Flightstick is a very cool little joystick with a seperate throttle lever which goes for about R750.00 here

It's not very well known outside Europe but I've only heard good things about it.
 
Yay! I'm sorry I only saw this thread now!

I just recently bought X-Plane 9 and some add-ons for it. I bought Real-environments Extreme for it as well as a forest texture enhancement pack. What I like about X-Plane is that it seems to look better than FSX and also doesn't need a monster machine to run either. The downside is that the planes are not as detailed as FSX's, but a lot of critics have said that X-Plane 9 has more realistic flight modeling than FSX making for a more accurate "sim".

Here's a link to REX for X-Plane 9 to give you an idea: http://www.realenvironmentxtreme.com/xplane.html

I'd also like to add that Lock-On Modern Air Combat is a complete waste of time. It was a promising title but it is FULL of bugs and the patches are VERY large in size, and surprisingly ended up making the game even worse. I had the title on release day and then promptly got rid of it a few months later when there was no improvement.

People should also refrain from mentioning any "action" title such as HAWX in a flight-simulator thread. It's nowhere NEAR a simulator and it's like calling Need for Speed a realistic driving game.

I find that flight simulator communities are also much more serious and go as far to say that flight simulators are not classified as "games" but rather a hobby and / or a tool for real world flying. X-Plane 9 for example comes in a professional version which can be used to train real-world pilots.
 
Last edited:
Neo said:
Yay! I'm sorry I only saw this thread now!

I just recently bought X-Plane 9 and some add-ons for it. I bought Real-environments Extreme for it as well as a forest texture enhancement pack. What I like about X-Plane is that it seems to look better than FSX and also doesn't need a monster machine to run either. The downside is that the planes are not as detailed as FSX's, but a lot of critics have said that X-Plane 9 has more realistic flight modeling than FSX making for a more accurate "sim".

Here's a link to REX for X-Plane 9 to give you an idea: http://www.realenvironmentxtreme.com/xplane.html

I'd also like to add that Lock-On Modern Air Combat is a complete waste of time. It was a promising title but it is FULL of bugs and the patches are VERY large in size, and surprisingly ended up making the game even worse. I had the title on release day and then promptly got rid of it a few months later when there was no improvement.

People should also refrain from mentioning any "action" title such as HAWX in a flight-simulator thread. It's nowhere NEAR a simulator and it's like calling Need for Speed a realistic driving game.

I find that flight simulator communities are also much more serious and go as far to say that flight simulators are not classified as "games" but rather a hobby and / or a tool for real world flying. X-Plane 9 for example comes in a professional version which can be used to train real-world pilots.
Click to expand...

If you can try to pick up a budget copy of LOMAC or LOMAC : Flaming Cliffs and patch it up. It's not a bad sim these days.

I tend to be pretty relaxed about my simming these days since I'm only getting back into it now and do approach flight sims as games. To most people it isn't serious business but a cool way to experience something awesome that we would otherwise not be able to experience.

I find the arrogant attitude of a lot of simmers towards people who aren't that serious about the hobby to be counter-productive. We should rather focus on encouraging people who enjoy action flying games like HAWX to try something like LOMAC which can be played on easy realism and enjoyed by them as well. The more people who get into simming the better for the genre. The bigger the market the more people will enter it.
 
I was rather disappointed with FSX. The planes looked very nice, but the ground textures were really not up to scratch and the building and trees looked so bad it would have been better if they had simply left that out. I find with all the flight sims these days that you need to spend hundreds of extra Rands on add-ons, just to make the game look like it should have looked from the box. It's becoming a bit of a money making racket.

Still, I think there is a definite line between a flight simulator and game featuring aircraft. Sims tend not to pay ANY attention to what a gamer wants. Instead if focuses on realism and all the pedantic details that being a real pilot is all about. If you're a gamer expecting a "game" - you'll think it's the worst "game" in the World.

FSX did one step further to approach gamers by creating "missions" and some objectives. Other than that, it's about taking off safely, flying to where your garmin is pointed at, and landing safely. There are no missles or guns.

Perhaps the issue with the genre is the fact that it's being approached by people as a game. People should know from the get-go it's NOT a game. It's a simulator. Honestly, people who do not understand the difference between a game and a simulator shouldn't play the title anyways.

The terms "game" and "simulator" are being used far too loosely these days.
 
I have to admit that I am not a fan of civilian flight sims but blowing stuff up is where the fun game aspect comes in. Most of us simmers cut our teeth on the older military sims (Dynamix Aces Over, the Microprose sims or EA's LHX.) which were great fun and managed to be fun to play while giving the best approximation of flying an aircraft possible. It's part of the problem I have with IL2. It's a good sim but it lacks personality. The rivet counters are destroying the simming genre. Flight sims need to keep a sense of fun to become popular again. Wings of Prey and games like that get bad press for not being simmy enough but they are vital to breathe life back into the genre.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top