I may finally put aside money for a Sport Pilot license someday now that the regulations are even less strict and there's a whole class of UL aircraft, but I've always found simming to be more enjoyable. You can recreate a lot of the realism involved in actual flying, from VFR scenery to ATC in addition to the actual dynamics of flight of course. You also have control over the weather. You can also do it pretty much whenever you want and for free past the initial investment in software/hardware. I've been simming in Flight Simulator since the late 80's when I was only like 8-9 years old. I still have the original FS II manual [smile] It's been an off and on thing over the years - I had MSFS 5.1, 95, 98 and 2000 - skipped over 2004 and now am flying FSX. Lately I've gotten back into it again, finally adding a flight yoke and throttle quadrant to my HOTAS combo and started blogging about my flights. Anyone else flying the virtual skies and blogging about it? Wouldn't mind reading about other people's travels!

I enjoy simming, but have yet to invest enough in hardware to really make it interesting. I lean more toward combat flight sims, like IL-2. But only the older WWI and WWII planes. I don't care for all the extra things to manage, like radar, and weapons locks. The pure, you, some wood and metal, an engine, a gun, and a stick in your hand. Your skill, wit, and reflexes against your opponent.

Sadly I never really got into it all that much. The few friends I knew that were into playing it ditched the game shortly after I got it, so I never developed a group to fly with. And flying on your own sucks in that game.

I used to be into orbiter... not so much anymore, though. I'm waiting for the next version to come out which probably won't be until next year.

I cut my gaming teeth on sims! But I haven't played in years, unfortunately. I started with MS Flight Simulator and F-15 back when they had wireframe graphics (jeez, break out the Depends). Never got as hardcore as the pedals and yoke, but I had some wickedly complicated multifunction flight sticks. But by the time textured terrains were starting to become real memory hogs I'd moved on to 4X games. Don't know if it still has it but MS Flight Sim had an aircraft design mode where you could experiment with different fuselage configurations (adjust the angle of attack, create polyhedral wings, try out props or jets-- it was really fun).

I was always more partial to air combat sims. I loved trying to do crazy stuff like Lomcevaks and trying to land without ILS. But sadly I think the genre tanked just after I quit and what did come out was really, really dumbed down.

Just thinking about flying and dogfighting makes me want to do it again. I miss being able to terrorize friends in any multiplayer air combat game that had a halfway decent flight model simply because I knew how to do an immelmann or split-S. It's hilarious to me that in an air combat game so many people are afraid of flying upside down!

Quote: Original post by Wavinator
Just thinking about flying and dogfighting makes me want to do it again. I miss being able to terrorize friends in any multiplayer air combat game that had a halfway decent flight model simply because I knew how to do an immelmann or split-S. It's hilarious to me that in an air combat game so many people are afraid of flying upside down!

I was never very good against most of the pilots in IL-2, but I do know I've managed to annoy the hell out of several of them because I wasn't afraid to push the craft to the very limit and keep going,... Just to claw onto a few more seconds of life and hope a teammate shot them down.

I couldn't count the number of times that I went into some crazy dive/spin and then 30 seconds later hear players on vent asking "Wait, why didn't I see that guy's death message?"

You might want to take a look at x-plane; the flight dynamics model is way more realistic than FS; and I've heard FS is discontinued, x-plane really feels different when flying than FS if you don't mind sacrificing a little user -friendlyness.

Quote: Original post by Marmin
You might want to take a look at x-plane; the flight dynamics model is way more realistic than FS; and I've heard FS is discontinued, x-plane really feels different when flying than FS if you don't mind sacrificing a little user -friendlyness.

I've thought a lot about realism and decided that I really don't need too much of it in terms of flight dynamics. I mean, I have FS's set to max realism of course, but it's not something I'm too nitpicky about. I certainly don't expect to step straight from a sim into a real airplane and be able to fly it with full confidence. I'll at least, however, know where all the controls are and the basics of handling it.

Yes, Flight Simulator has been "discontinued" in that Microsoft shut down the studio that was working on it. That doesn't mean they given up on the franchise, but on the plus side, FSX is a pretty damn good installment in the series and now people don't have to worry about supporting a newer version - all add-ons and stuff can just focus on FSX.