Flightsimmers, how many of you here and how do you interact it with real flying?
 

Ok flightsimmers. I know you are out there, just wondered how many of you use MS flight sim or X-Plane or whatever, and does it help you with your flying, lessons etc?.

Also, if you have a sim, what add-ons do you have for it, what kind of stick, pedals etc?

Did you have a flight sim then go and do the real thing, or, do the real thing first then got hold of a flight sim?

Your thoughts please regarding "As good as it gets" V's the real thing..........

I know its off topic ...... BUT
I just have to ask BRL --- how come your number of postings only reads 9 :confused:

Has someone stolen your identity?

I think we should be told - or is this something that I should report to the moderator? ;)

Hi BRL,

I a a PPL student (have 10 hours) and use Microsoft Flight Sim 2002. I find FS a very useful tool to my training and a lot of fun. I have purchased an excellent model of the C152, my training mount, and it is a very good representation of the real thing from the handling point of view. I find it very useful to be able to practice running through checklists both on the ground and the air using FS and the plane I use repsonds as Id expect! Furthermore the wealth of excellent add on scenery makes it possible to simulate very accurately the airfields, local scenery and terrain you regularly fly around in for real. Products like Just Flight's VFR Scenery, VFR Terrain and British Airports series all greatly enhance the FS experience and make it much more fun and realistic for me from a learning and practice point of view. There is also many free addons from sites like www.avsim.com that enhance the realism and fun of FS.

I personally have not used X Flight but i hear the flight dynamics are excellent but the "overall" package from user friendliness, scenery, graphics etc ae not the same as FS.Both xplane and FS have strong supporters and it all depends on what you want from your flight sim and personal preference to what you prefer.

Overall, I find FS really good fun to play with and use and personally find it a useful tool to aid my real world learning. Its also a great fall back when you are desparate to fly but the weather and/or money get in the way but obviously is not a patch on the real thing!:D

Hope this helps!

Fingers

DB, I made the fatal mistake of posting on the Post Count thread in JetBlast. Everyone who posts on that gets zeroed......:uhoh:

*Stands up gingerly*

"My name is C-Bert and I am a flight simmer."

*Applause from assembled*

I fly FS2004 in a Piper Warrior. I have 39 hours TT (in real life) and I have to admit that FS is severly lacking. Great for instruments but it just doesn't cut it in terms of 'feel'.

I have an X45 joystick/throttle (not very warrior-like I know but its great for combat sims) and rudder pedals. I have downloaded the UK2000 scenery for pretty much every airfield in the UK which is very good and thoroughly recommended.

X Plane is very good in terms of flight dynamics (we used it at Uni to model our final year project albeit unofficially) but I prefer the friendly menus and such like provided my Micro$oft.

There, that's better. I feel a great weight has been lifted from my shoulders. Admitting you are a simmer really is the first step....

:)

and i for those who fancy some combat, my personal favourite is Il2 Sturmovik and its addones like Forgotten Battles!

Would it not be better, on several levels, to fly FS2004 on a PC?

P

Those contributing to Mazzy's diary will know that I have already 'acknowledged openly' that I am a flight simmer.

It was a very old version of MS Flight Sim that started my interest in flying. Then I did a trial lesson and it scared the life out of me! Then got some jump-seat rides in airliners, when you could still do that.

More flight simming and finally plucked up the courage to do more lessons. That got me hooked on the real thing. Thing is, it doesn't hurt if you crash the sim (or the computer):E

I agree with much of what has been said. Flight dynamics on FS 2004 smaller planes is poor. Useful for instruments and practising checklists though. Scenery add-ons - especially British Airports help (Airports are good for learning taxiways etc!). I've flown a real 737 simulator, but never tried the real thing so can't really comment on the airliner accuracy (although the add-ons are getting more and more complex). I use the keyboard for rudder (because I'd rather spend my money on real flying than expensive bits for the PC) and a Logitech joystick - not the best, but does the job.

I also use 'Fly ll' on the Apple Mac. Better flight dynamics, but difficult to use and the scenery/maps are abysmal. Weather generation is quite good though.

I'm interested in X-Plane - because it works on the Mac and there are scenery add-ons available.

C-Bert, where did you get the Warrior for FS?

HH

Australian Simulation. Its £14 (through official channels ;) ) and quite good really.

Use FS2004 regularly for (a) practising instrument routes; (b) pretending to be an airline pilot...

Tim

I took a different tack. I could not get X-plane and FS work properly to help me with my IMC and now for my IR. I found them just too...quirky. I also resented having to spend hours constantly fliddling, downloadig, etc, etc. Basically they have now been shelved in favour of ELITE which I am very pleased with.

c-bert

Thanks for that. I've sent you a personal message for more info:D

HH

Has anyone used VATSIM for realtime on-line flying with 'virtual' on-line controllers?

I've tried a couple of times. Makes for a very realistic flying experience, especially if you're flying airways. My first attempt was EMA - LHR at night and was quite scary.

You have to be careful that you set the right aircraft 'type' into the controller software (NavBox). I decided to do some VFR tootling around in a 172. So headed down to Andrewsfield from EMA. After skirting around the (active) Standsted zone I made my approach to Andrewfield and landed quite successfully. There was another guy on the ground who watched my approach. He send a text message to the guy in stansted tower telling him that he'd just seen a 737 land at Andrewsfield! (Yes it was me.... forgot to change the a/c type in NavBox - so I saw and flew a 172 and the rest of the world saw a 737 going very slowly!).

I gave up after that... :uhoh:

Definately stimulated an interest for the "real thing."

Was told in the vey ealy stages of PPL training that they would "get me into bad habits."

Initially, I didn't listen, and I did find that my flying suffered when I'd been "simming" so eventually sacked it. It just didn't have the same feel as real flying.

Did revert back to it for basic instrument training- good for learning how to use the VOR and thinking out of the box whilst "flying". (Intersecting radials etc).

Can't be bovered anymore

Stopped simming
 

Stopped simming, my instructor commented it was affecting my lookout in the real thing.

I must admit I was instrument flying on the sim and sometimes I still find I'm looking inside when I should be looking at horizon.

Trying to sort out the flare at the moment, still loving every minute of it.

Hi all I am not a pilot but a have and have had a very keen interest in GA going back many years also a keen airband user, I would have loved to take ppl lessons but it is out of my league money wise, I noticed in some of the flying mags some years back articles about flt sims and they got my interest, but I did not have a pc and that dont help, anyway got around to getting a pc mainly to try out this flt sims stuff I had been reading about and I must admit it was indeed an up hill struggle, getting to grips with the pc but I got there with help from my friends, as for the flt sims I was thrilled with them, I could do all the stuff I had dreamed about over the years, took all the flt sim lessons and passed the checkride, sad I know but I was quite pleased with myself, I then got to know about VATSIM the online ATC flying group with full 2 way voice atc comms, and now I never fly off line, they are a very keen group of guys who take there simming very seriously manning lots of airfields online around the uk/world, all my flying is vfr with the help of vfr scenery and FS2002, I use the realair cessna 172 developed for a flying school in australia, which many folk say has quite very good flying characteristics and you can download it for free, since then I have got to know and become a good friend of a ppl and fly with him on a cost share basis about once a month, and even get to do some of the navigating for him, as for joysticks bog std one for me no peddles unfortunately, so all in all flt simming has opened up a whole new world for me.

Nick in cheshire.

I stopped using FS when I was in the circuit part of my PPL as I felt it was causing my real landings to be bad and hampering me getting solo. I will probably start using it again once I start my IMC course but I will discuss the pros and cons with an instructor first.

Hi Helen,

What was actually happening to your landings?

Cheers

Fingers

I learnt all the basics on MS flight sim, but soon found navigation (visually) quite impossible as everything looked the same so once i got into the real thing i gave up on simming.

but before starting on the IMC course i tried some IMC stuff in flight sim and infact continued doing so during the course, i found it very useful for all the proceedural stuff, like holds and approaches, as well as little things like remembering morse code and remembering to start the stopwatch.

more recently i've been attempting aerobatics on flight sim (as i dont have the money to do much for real) but since its almost impossible to spin any of microsofts aircraft i've had to download a few, my favorite being the super decathalon which i would love to fly in reality now, if only i had money.

Owen

So there are actually some spinable aircraft for FS2004 then? I thought the limitation was in the way FS2004 calculated flight dynamics, rather that limitations in any particular aircraft.

I heard that X-Plane does the flight dynamics calcs in a different way, thus you can take the a/c out of the envelope.

I've been using Fs2004 for IMC practise. My default weather is set much lower than real life IMC minima, so I practise ILS approaches down to 100ft. That's fun! And quite sobering if you screw it up.

What's excellent fun is the way you can replay the approach with the weather lifted. Try flying an ILS in pea-soup and then replay in good vis. No - you really were not drunk!!!

My instructor is an 'old-skool' guy. He's realistic about using the sim. He understood how I used it to practise nav for the PPL and thought that was good, and now he thinks it good that I'm using it for my IMC rating.

The only thing he warned me about was the way that the ADF responds too accuraly, in real life things such as ground contour, hills, valleys, weather and other factors affect the direction of the ADF indicator. VOR's also suffer from errors in the real word that are not correctly modeled in flight sim. A radial is rarely straight is reality, more likely to bend and twist due to reflections, etc... This is called scalloping.