Anyone else do flight sims?

I've been out of them for a while after having spent significant amounts of my 20's working on Falcon 4.0, Jane's USAF, etc., etc. Up until recently, I just wasn't anything other than "arcade quality" crap. On the other hand, I no longer have the time to spend a month figuring out how to navigate, taxi and land an F-16 (Falcon 4.0).

I recently found this: http://birdsofsteel.com/ for my PS3. Nice balance of a sim without a HUGE learning curve and decent, often historically based, single player missions and campaigns and a reasonably active multiplayer online community. (Although getting blown out of the sky by someone you know is likely a pimple-faced 13 year old does get frustrating.) On realistic mode, its actually a pretty decent details built in to it, like a really quick ground loop if you just throw open the throttle on an ME-109 to take off. Pretty reasonably priced too at roughly $40. I know there are a few military aviation buffs on here, and I had heard nothing about this until I stumbled on the trailer on Youtube, so thought I'd share.

So, if you need a break from GT5 . . .

I like the Strike Fighters 2 series. It's very reminiscent of Jane's Fighters Anthology, in that it's not as arcadey as Ace Combat but not an uber-hardcore sim like Falcon 4.0. The modding community is HUGE so just about every jet fighter you can think of is covered. The stock Soviet planes aren't flyable but fan-made mods make them flyable and add cockpits and more realistic flight engines. Many military folks say the stock playable planes "fly" very closely to the real things.

It's not perfect- The game leans heavily towards the late 1950s-early 1980 era so more modern jets, missiles, and all helicopters aren't covered. Fan-made modern fighters like the Raptor and Super Hornet have some bodges to make do. The latest edition with the Tomcat was said to have updated the avionics and enemy AI to accommodate more advanced radars and missiles, but haven't tried it yet. All that being said, it's a lot of fun and I recommend it for a zoomie fix.

Maybe you should build one of these.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7APOJDJM2iM

EvanB wrote: Maybe you should build one of these. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7APOJDJM2iM

I've already got a decent start. I have one of the two the ejection seats from an Air Force F-4C (serial (6)40679) in my basement. Its been test assembled, refinished and is now awaiting re-assembly. Its been that way for a while because until recently I didn't have any place to display it. Its looking like that might be my "winter project".

Birds of Steel looks awesome! I picked up the prior version, Il Sturmovik, for 360, and it's ok, but missing a lot of WW2 aircraft I like.

My girlfriend's dad is a huge WW2 buff, and enjoys watching the game. He says it's as good as those dogfight shows they had on the History channel.

You might also like the old F22 Lightning series. Realistic flight physics and it gives you plenty of controls but you don't have to be flipping fuel pumps on and off etc, easy to pick up and play.

Just picked up Birds of Steel on Amazon.com for around 15 bucks, and I thought I remembered a topic on here about it.

It's pretty darn good! Nearly all your favorite WW2 aircraft are on here and available to fly!

I haven't earned my lions to buy those extra planes in the hangar, but if you don't feel like grinding through the game to get them you can buy lions and get access to a lot of stuff pretty quick.

I'll give it till around Christmas before I consider buying points though.

Not yet, I'm asking Santa for one of these:

http://www.condorsoaring.com/

Over the last couple of weeks I pulled down the demo of Birds of Steel and Damage Inc. BoS seems better but the other is not bad at all either.

X-Plane is pretty good.

In reply to Racer1ab: I've had it for a few months now. My only gripe is not only do you need $/Lions to buy the planes, but for some of the high level stuff, you need major experience points, which take way longer than the money to accumulate. My dreams of buying a 262 and raining death on the pimple-faced 13 year old online sim community have taken longer to realize than I anticipated. Still a great game, though.

I think I'm buying this friday at gamestop for the 360.....they had it new for $20.

There's no telling how many hours I put on the Graphsim F/A-18 Hornet series when I was a bit younger. I also enjoyed A-10 Attack!, Chuck Yeager's Air Combat, and Warbirds. I had a pretty decent HOTAS setup for them, too.

I really want to get back into PC flying sims (mainly combat) as i want to start working on a pilot license. I loved the old Microsoft Combat Flight Simulators and put many hours into those as a child.

Andy Hollis knows a bit about flight sims: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andy_Hollis

Will wrote: There's no telling how many hours I put on the Graphsim F/A-18 Hornet series when I was a bit younger. I also enjoyed A-10 Attack!, Chuck Yeager's Air Combat, and Warbirds. I had a pretty decent HOTAS setup for them, too.

Oh, lord, Chuck Yeager's Air Combat! I was obsessed with that. Along with other early 90s sims like Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe, Red Baron, Falcon 3.0, Aces of the Pacific, even Strike Commander (once it finally came out).

I cannot believe this thread has gone this long without mentioning IL2 Sturmovik. Nothing I can remember has offered so many planes and maps, and with the mods now available it just gets bigger and better. I haven't flown much in a while, but I have kept up with developments in the community.

A few random shots from my more active days:

David S. Wallens wrote: Andy Hollis knows a bit about flight sims: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andy_Hollis

Aw man, and I thought he was cool BEFORE I knew all of this^^^^^. (Almost calls for the "We're not worthy" hotlink)

BTW - as for the retro sims, I devoted WAAAAAY too much of my life to Janes Anthology.

i was like microprose, why is that so familiar? then i remembered how many hours i sat in front of this game https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ROwe52FqFI