Best Flight simulator?

[mapuc]

What is the best flight simulator when it comes to:

Civilian flight simulator?
Here I'm thinking of airplanes from the beginning to now

Military flight simulator in:
WWI?
WWII?
1945- to now?

Markus

[Red October1984]

For Civilian Flight, I hear that FSX is among the best. I haven't played it. I play FS2004

For Combat,

IL-2 Sturmovik 1946 has mods that allow it to do WW1, Korea, Vietnam, and fictional battles along with WW2.

For Modern Combat, I hear Falcon 4.0 and DCS are both among the best.


Hope this answers your question.

[mapuc]

Thank you Red.

I had a few flight simulator games to my old computer(XP)

one of them was civilian I think it was Microsoft Flight Simulator 2007/8

I also had one from WWII in the pacific

One that I could chose from F-16 or F-18

Had also a very old games from my Win98
F-15
IDF(not sure if it's the correct name.)

I miss my flight simulator, That's why I'm asking you

Markus

[Red October1984]

Originally Posted by mapuc

I miss my flight simulator, That's why I'm asking you

What I personally recommend for you:

Civilian- Microsoft Flight Simulator 2004 or X. X is an updated version of 2004 basically

Combat- IL-2 Sturmovik 1946. This game (with mods) covers the 20th century all the way up to the 70's. You can't go wrong with it.

[Sailor Steve]

For WW1 it's probably Over Flanders Fields or Rise Of Flight. I haven't played either one yet because of my dreadfully old computer, but I've read all the literature and seen the videos.

ROF is by all accounts the better "flying" experience, being capable of full flight dynamics including torque and wind problems. Just keeping the plane in the air can be a challenge, so you'd better have a good stick and pedal setup. The bad news is that it's designed for online play, so there is no real campaign system, or so I've heard.

OFF is supposed to be simpler and easier. It's a complete rewrite of Microsoft's Combat Flight Sim 3, so you'll have to get a copy of that first. The good news is that they're very cheap these days. The other asset of OFF is a complete campaign system, similar to but improving on the one in Red Baron.

[Red October1984]

Originally Posted by Sailor Steve

OFF is supposed to be simpler and easier. It's a complete rewrite of Microsoft's Combat Flight Sim 3, so you'll have to get a copy of that first. The good news is that they're very cheap these days. The other asset of OFF is a complete campaign system, similar to but improving on the one in Red Baron.

I forgot about CFS 3. That's another good one but in my experience modding is complicated and frustrating.

It's not to be overlooked but if you can figure out how to install the mods it makes for a good game.

[Father Goose]

Falcon 4.0 has my vote for the best. Very realistic.
FSX is a good sim as well if you have a fast processor.

I need to fly Falcon more. "So many sims...so little time."

[Oberon]

H'okay.

Civilian:
FSX - Xplane is very good and up and coming, but doesn't quite have the legacy backing that FSX does, however I'd definitely keep an eye on it. FSX has the upper hand with the PMDG series and Accusim series which put the 'sim' in simulator as Skybird will attest to.

WWI:
Rise of Flight/Over Flanders Fields - I'd put both ROF and OFF at level pegging. I haven't played OFF since phase 2 (it's one phase 4 now IIRC) but it was quite compelling back then. What OFF lacks in graphics it makes up for in immersion. Rise of Flight is stunning, but the campaign is a bit stiff and there's just something not quite there. It's hard to explain, but it's a critique which has been levelled at quite a few simulators that have come out from the East of Europe over the past few years.
The primary advantage that ROF has over OFF aside from graphics is the price, OFF is quite expensive and (possibly) requires Combat Flight Simulator 3 (you'd have to check on that to be sure, they might have weaned it from it by now) whereas Rise of Flight can be downloaded for free with two aircraft and you just pay for whatever aircraft you fancy to fly. The AI aircraft are all there to battle against from the start.

WWII:
Battle of Britain II: Wings of Victory - Without question the best simulation of the Battle of Britain ever made. It's primary drawback is that it lacks multiplayer and the graphics are a little dated, but it makes up for it in leaps and bounds in every other area. The primary draw is the ability for the sim to model hundreds of aircraft in the sky at the same time, something that most simulators struggle with. When you come out of cloud at Angels 15 to see a whole box of He-111s in front of you with Spitfires and Bf-109s swirling around like mosquitos above it, then you get an idea of the scale of the battle in 1940. There's also a very in-depth campaign that you can fly in. Highly recommended and still being updated by a dedicated mod community that have done terrific things to it (including putting in every single squadron and staffels individual paint scheme, so if you recognise Adolf Gallands paint scheme on a 109, chances are that's the sim's Adolf Galland that you're running away from).

IL-2 1946 - Dated, the vanilla has some very questionable flight models and the AI is a cheating bastard, BUT, it's a very capable online engine and the scale of the theatres and aircraft in the 'sim' is unrivalled. If you want to fly in the Pacific for one mission and over Berlin the next, you can do that. If you want to do it with friends from all over the world, you can do that too. The TD patches are essential and you'll really want to get one of the modpacks, we currently use HSFX, and I recommend that.

Cold War/Modern:
Falcon 4.0 BMS - The original Falcon 4.0 updated for a modern era, it's graphically beautiful but has by no means been dumbed down. The campaign is very well made, one of the best in the sim world, and the AI is no slouch at all. The downside? Getting a copy of the original Falcon 4.0 became an expensive exercise as soon as BMS came out, on ebay copies can range from $40-100 which is rather steep for such an old game, but if you have a copy of the old Falcon, it's well worth getting BMS.

DCS Black Shark/A-10C - Beautiful and brutal. Like Falcon 4.0, this is something you'll spend a lot of time reading manuals for, likewise watching tutorials. The Black Shark is a little bit easier to work with than the A10C (In my opinion anyway) but be prepared to curse Kamovs twin rotor design a lot as they suddenly decide to interact with each other in a manner that you did not intend them to. DCS World is free and comes with a Frogfoot, so you can get an idea of the flight region, but the Frogfoot (like the Flaming Cliffs aircraft) is not up to the standard of the A10/Black Shark/Huey in terms of clickable equipment and detail. The downside is that like Rise of Flight, the single player is a bit...bland...compared to the likes of Falcon 4.0, but graphically it's beautiful and as a sim it's top notch. Avoid Flaming Cliffs though, the aircraft are beautiful and nice to fly online, but they have a nasty habit of rereleasing it as an updated version periodically and making the new DCS World completely incompatible with the older versions. For example, FC2 and Black Shark 1 are both outdated with the current DCS World...hopefully this is something that won't happen any more now that they've got DCS World sorted, but it's still something that caused a bit of upset in the Flightsim world (not that it takes much).

[Skybird]

What is the best flight simulator when it comes to:
Civilian flight simulator?
Here I'm thinking of airplanes from the beginning to now

* FSX or P3D (continued developement on FSX) for complex airliner addons á la PMDG, and also some small plane addons á la RealAir.

* There also is X-Plane. The airliner addpons cannpot competre so far with FSX' addon landscape, both visually and in terms of realsim, as far as I know and see. PMDG looks much better in FSX than airliners addons for X-P. FSX also has more and better-looking airport scenery addons and region scenery addons. As an example, Aerosoft's truly outstanding Balearix Islands:




* For Soaring: Condor. Old, but the best on the matter. Not as easy as you might think, physically very realistic, thermals, ridge and wave soaring - its there. Photorealistic scenery addons available.Since it is so much unknown, this:


Military flight simulator in:
WWI?

* Rise of Flight

WWII?
* Wings of Victory: Battle of Britain II (older title, but very challenging flight model, you need the latest upgrade by the mod coimmunity, IL-2 has toy-like flightmodels, compared to this)

* DCS's P-51 Mustang

* Several WWII-plane modules for FSX

1945- to now?

* Of course Falcon 4.0.
* And DCS A-10C.

I'd have to say X-Plane 10. FSX is like an fat hag with silicon. Not attractive and very slow, LOL.

[Herr-Berbunch]

X-plane are all 'were used by company X, Y, and Z' including Lockheed Martin. That confuses me a bit when LM have Prepar3d.

[Red October1984]

Originally Posted by Herr-Berbunch

X-plane are all 'were used by company X, Y, and Z' including Lockheed Martin. That confuses me a bit when LM have Prepar3d.

Seems like everything is owned by Boeing in some way anyway.

P3D is not a bad sim at all. I'd buy it.

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by Herr-Berbunch

X-plane are all 'were used by company X, Y, and Z' including Lockheed Martin. That confuses me a bit when LM have Prepar3d.

You seem to mistake it a bit. LM does not say they use it for advertiozing or just show it around - thex actively optimised the code left by MS and tweak it to make better use of more modern hardware. They actively develope the code and platform, and established a business model for the professional versions of it. It looks like FSX, but it performs much better, therefore, and also many people for whom FSx was unstable und who were unable to even run it now report that P3D gives them a stable, smooth experience - with graphics maxed out and frames as high as with FS9 on modern hardware.

That'S why I say P3D is the way to go. Aerosoft is the world'S biggest distributor of flightsim stuff now, and when they have embarked on P3D and give it special info service for their products, and new reeases explicitly advertise with being P3D compatible, this should serve as a hint for you. These days you do not buy FSX anymore, you buy P3D. On the same rig: same looks olike FSX, but much better performance, using modern hardware, optimised code, closed holes that MS did not care for.

This is especially important considering that FSX still uses only one core, and has that damn inbuilt 3.9 GB RAM limit (your 64Bit OS has nothing to do with that, the sim just cannot use more than 3.9 or 3.7 GB, it is 32 Bit hardcoded).

Considering that even latest systems can barely handle FSX with visuals maxed out and many addons running, these improvements are vital, I'd say. With PMDG and weather and airport addons, I do not even bother install a decent traffic addon oin my FSX, for example. With P3D, I would be very optimistic that my rig could handle thzat additionally, too. When running FSX now, halöf of my RAM stays unused (8GB), and two of four cores are almost idle), the third runs Windows and other stuff, the foruth runs FSX plus addons. Should not be like that. But you can solve that only with P3D.

[Herr-Berbunch]

If I didn't have FSX it'd be higher on my list, not that I use FSX much nowadays.

[Red October1984]

Originally Posted by Herr-Berbunch

If I didn't have FSX it'd be higher on my list, not that I use FSX much nowadays.

I should look at getting FSX.

I was able to run the demo just fine. I'm currently a FS2004 man. And my childhood was full of playing that, FS2002, CFS3, and various Star Wars games.