Oh there are worse mate, just search youtube. If you only want carrier ops and no sorties, perhaps you should try Superbug X. Check here;

https://www.vrsimulations.com/FA18EFSX.htm

It is a MS Flightsim X addon, and therefore a separate purchase. It just might float your boat, excuse the pun. :03:

Best regards.

Fubar2Niner

Indeed. The big downside (for some of us) of this Microsoft Flight Simulator series (and I don't mean the Microsoft Combat Flight Simulator series) is that you can't dogfight or blow things up, although some third party add-on aircraft have gun flashes and sounds as special effects; the sim environment is not 'destructible'.

You can bring down AI aircraft by ramming them with the 'Detect Crashes' option turned on, but then the flight just abruptly stops and where's the fun in that? I don't know what happens if you crash in one of the carrier add-ons since I've never tried one... maybe there are some flashes and bangs in those?

There is a simple software patch called "Flight Recorder" for fs9 and fsx, which does what it says on the tin, but all that does is allow you fly another aircraft in a recording of a previous flight you made, and chase the "ghost" of the plane you were flying previously. Again, you can't shoot that down, and all the computer is doing here is re-showing the earlier recorded plane over a separate 're-run' of the scenery, so you have to be running the Flight Simulator to see it: it's not recorded as a video which you can store and then play elsewhere after leaving the simulator.