Flight Simulator addicts. [img heavy]

I just took off from Londow Heathrow, winds fair. Some nasty turbulence however.
Plane is filled with tourists. Landing will be on the new Polderbaan in my own country: the Netherlands.
Of course the plane is a 737. :)





Here you can see that my TAS (True Air Speed) is only 204 Knots.. slightly too slow. (I had to make some screenshots, oh well..)
Climbing to a comfortable Altitude of 24000 feet. Everything is go.

I was a pretty big flight sim addict as a kid (mind you it was mostly space flight, but I liked planes too). I just read a review for that Thrustmaster HOTAS Cougar Joystick and throttle the other day, and I'm pretty sure when I get a couple dollars together the Cougar is going to rekindle that obsession in a BIG way.

I was in to Flight Sim's a while back, and got back into them recently. I knew I shouldn't have sold my flight stick [sad].

When I was a kid I used to play a game called F-15 alot ;) It ran well on my badass 386 DX with 4 MBs of RAM. The only problem is that I could never figure out how to land the fighter plane, and I had a poor understanding of English at the time (my main language is French).

waxes nostalgic

Ahhhh... I can still hear the system-speaker-created buzz of the engines to my Cessna as I sat on the vector-drawn runway at Meigs, ready to take off and hop to O'Hare. Yep, I would indeed be talking about subLOGIC's A2-FS2 - Flight Simulator II. Wow, that was like, back when I was seven. Check it out, I still have the operator's manual [grin]



So yea, I've been a flight sim fan since I was a kid. I've wanted to be a real pilot for years but just don't have the money... yet. I haven't touched MS Flight Sim though since FS2000 cause the sim advanced faster than I could upgrade my comp [smile] Now I'm waiting for FS2006 to jump back in

Finally on Cruise level. Thank you, Flight Attendant for the Coffee I need.



Note the comfortable speed of 292 Knots,and the flight level I was assigned to. FL 240

I've played the XWing series of games ever since I was a little kid, starting with XWing -> Tie Fighter -> XWing Vs Tie Fighter -> XWing Alliance. I was addicted to the Skirmish mode in Alliance for a long time. Lucasarts needs to make some more of those games.

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Original post by Gaiiden waxes nostalgic Ahhhh... I can still hear the system-speaker-created buzz of the engines to my Cessna as I sat on the vector-drawn runway at Meigs, ready to take off and hop to O'Hare. Yep, I would indeed be talking about subLOGIC's A2-FS2 - Flight Simulator II. Wow, that was like, back when I was seven. Check it out, I still have the operator's manual [grin] So yea, I've been a flight sim fan since I was a kid. I've wanted to be a real pilot for years but just don't have the money... yet. I haven't touched MS Flight Sim though since FS2000 cause the sim advanced faster than I could upgrade my comp [smile] Now I'm waiting for FS2006 to jump back in

ahh.. is that SubLogic Flight Simulator? SubLogic was taken over by.. erm..

MicroSoft.

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I just took off from Londow Heathrow, winds fair. Some nasty turbulence however. Plane is filled with tourists. Landing will be on the new Polderbaan in my own country: the Netherlands. Of course the plane is a 737. :)

How is this fun?

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Original post by Perfunction Quote: I just took off from Londow Heathrow, winds fair. Some nasty turbulence however. Plane is filled with tourists. Landing will be on the new Polderbaan in my own country: the Netherlands. Of course the plane is a 737. :) How is this fun?

I did not say it was fun.

It 's hard work.

With Orbiter you can fly space ships realistically across the entire solar system. It even runs smoothly on my terrible computer with 1.4Ghz, 384MB ram, and a 4MB integrated graphics chipset (10-20 FPS, but still looks smooth).

I'm attracted to combat flight sims, because I feel there is a purpose. You know, shoot down bad guys. I hate normal flight sims, because it feels boring... checking altitude, pressure, etc, without performing extreme aerial manuevers to evade bad guys.

Oh, and good games have tons of bad guys.

I've never been in to flight sims, but I haven't played any recently.
The learning curve for most actual flight sims is high, and there's a lot of taking off and landing (I can't land or park anything) for the little bit of dogfighting you get to do. And dogfighting is always hampered by such senseless things like odometers, or whatever those things are. I mean, some dude's hitting me with missiles and I've got to watch my altitude and pressure and stuff? Meh. Maybe I should just stick to Starfox.

At this time , ATC instructed me to descend, to a lower Flight Level.



See my True Air Speed reduced to 229 , according to ATC instructions.
(I am flying now above the nice coast of Belgium. I like Belgium very much. Nice coast).

Note, that the Flight Level 240 is now reduced.

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Original post by Perfunction Quote: I just took off from Londow Heathrow, winds fair. Some nasty turbulence however. Plane is filled with tourists. Landing will be on the new Polderbaan in my own country: the Netherlands. Of course the plane is a 737. :) How is this fun?

About as much fun as watching paint dry. You can get a complete experience by having someone dictate headings and altitudes to you while watching said paint dry.

This is assuming that you're taking a 747-400 from New York to Heathrow. Seven hours of pure boredom. It even takes forever using time compression.

The most fun I've had in MS Flight Sim is trying to pull of crazy stunts in the oddest ways. Trying landing a 737 on the Aircraft Carrier out near Los Angeles. Or landing a Cesna on top of the Sears tower. A Beach King Air through the Arc Du Triomph in France.

The flight modelling in the game is some of the best I've ever seen. Its the only game where my buddies and I have been able to do close formation flying without worrying about an odd warp or packet skip sending us all crashing into each other.

Performing a Snowbird routine with nine other guys in Tutors is a heck of a challenge.

I got FS2004 because I love exploring, I'm not to shabby at flying the planes, but its scoping out areas I want to visit in real life that I enjoy the most. This actually became worthwhile when I got Flight Simulator Global 2005.. Which is a 14Gb expansion, which basically height maps the entire planet in far more detail them microsofts packaged data.

The alps were once big round white hills, now they are beautiful accurate jagged mountains.

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Original post by reaptide Quote: Original post by Perfunction Quote: I just took off from Londow Heathrow, winds fair. Some nasty turbulence however. Plane is filled with tourists. Landing will be on the new Polderbaan in my own country: the Netherlands. Of course the plane is a 737. :) How is this fun? About as much fun as watching paint dry. You can get a complete experience by having someone dictate headings and altitudes to you while watching said paint dry. This is assuming that you're taking a 747-400 from New York to Heathrow. Seven hours of pure boredom. It even takes forever using time compression. The most fun I've had in MS Flight Sim is trying to pull of crazy stunts in the oddest ways. Trying landing a 737 on the Aircraft Carrier out near Los Angeles. Or landing a Cesna on top of the Sears tower. A Beach King Air through the Arc Du Triomph in France. The flight modelling in the game is some of the best I've ever seen. Its the only game where my buddies and I have been able to do close formation flying without worrying about an odd warp or packet skip sending us all crashing into each other. Performing a Snowbird routine with nine other guys in Tutors is a heck of a challenge.

That's the kind of stuff I would be doing. Are there other planes at the airports in the sim? If so I would spend hours doing some unauthorized landings.

i agree totally.

A long haul flight can be boring. But, as i've stated before, a medium distance flight can be interesting for any one. Just don't make a flight from Brisbane to John F. Kennedy. Without some companion. imho.

This is just my opinion. Taking off and landing is very cool.

Try a high cross wind landing at the new Hong Kong airport in a 747-400. That should put some hair on your chest. See how many tries it takes you to do it without striking an engine.