Best Flight simulator

Can anyone recommend what is the best flightsim available? I mean graphics planes etc. Thank

Syd

Nobody can decide what is best for you. Go to the various flight sim publishers sites, read their spiel and watch their videos. Look on YouTube for videos. Check your PC's capabilities against the requirements of each sim. I have FSX-SE, X-Plane 10, Prepar3Dv2.4 and the free Flight Gear.

All have their good points and their bad points relative to what I want in a sim. Good luck in your research and I hope you find what suits YOU best.

 

 

Sent from my tablet thingy!

Best for doing what? To play with? To learn with? Being realistic or being immersive?

Best based on your PC specs?

 

There are as many opinions as there are members of these forums.

We all have our choices, based on our experiences, so, as they say in the classics...

"one man's meat is another man's poison!"

 

Cheers,

Robin

FS2004 is the best. ;)

Yup, you can fly without fiddling. Always works!

There is no "best" flight sim.

 

It's like saying "What's the best car?"

 

You might think a Mercedes is better than a Ford, but I couldn't afford to run a Merc and it certainly wouldn't fit in my garage so, for me, the Ford is the better choice.

Saying what are the bad points is easier, along with some generalisation. P3d I cannot comment on. In Xplane when you get to where you are going there is often nothng there. With at least three versions of FSX it is hard to see if it can now be improved at all, plus when you get to where you are going there is often nothing from real life there. In FS9 the scenery is not as realistic as any of the others but when you get to where you are going there might be real life buildings.

No brainer. FSX Steam Edition, and anything from A2A with Accusim.

I'm bemused that this question is posted in the FS2004 forum...

What answer were you hoping for? Flight Unlimited III perhaps?

It's hard too say indeed what the best sim is. For me personal it's still FS2004. I tried P3D once at my friends place but just like FSX it's not my platform. I have friends who are enthusiastic about FSX, and some of them swear on P3D. So like other members told you before, you have to try it by your self.

 

Good luck

Thanks everyone for replying. I guess my question comes from the fact that I've been getting e-mails about Pro Flight Simulator, with what seems to be unbelievable scenery. Is this fake? So if I am looking to move to the next level, meaning scenery, realistic flight or weather, what would be my best buy? Btw I tried FSX and didn't like it.

For the weather I use HiFi Active skies, but then again there's another great tool named FSRealWX. It's all about making a choice just like the sim you want to use. I don't think that anyone could give you a 100% advice because we all have different needs. Realistic flying is what you make of it. FS9 and FSX does have realistic settings like in a real flight. For example: Try to start up the freeware airplane 747-200 from Ready for Pushback. It's a really good plane and you need severall skills for it. The startup itself is difficult all ready.

FSX isn't my sim either but with the right tunning and tweaking it can be real, but you need a good computer. For myself and many others FS9 is the thing and we tweaked it just the way we liked it. Go out and try you will find what you need

Thanks everyone for replying. I guess my question comes from the fact that I've been getting e-mails about Pro Flight Simulator, with what seems to be unbelievable scenery. Is this fake? So if I am looking to move to the next level, meaning scenery, realistic flight or weather, what would be my best buy? Btw I tried FSX and didn't like it.

 

All flight sims currently available are still what I deem to be in the same generation. Not a great deal of difference between any of them in any area. However, they all do push modern hardware to the limits of what is currently available. The reason I stay with FS2004 is it's stable, features and graphics are not miles behind other sims, has masses of content and runs reliably. As far as I'm concerned, for flight simming you want decent fps and a relaxed environment where you are not waiting on the next software crash to occur.

Yep, it's a scam.

 

https://www.flightsim.com/vbfs/content.php?12915-Op-Ed-Buyer-Beware

Yup, its an older version of the freeware FlightGear from http://www.flightgear.org.

 

FlightGear is actaully very nice, with great scenery. It's free, & worth a try. They have some great planes, including an amazing Shuttle.

 

See here...http://www.flightgear.org/tours/an-experience-like-no-other/

For the most part, the best flight sim is the one that's running on your system and not crashing. :pilot:

 

I think Mark/Skywatcher said it best. It just feels so much better not having to worry or even think about having a system crash.

 

The single biggest gripe for any flight sim is when you get your flight planned, check the weather, make your take-off preps, nail your take off, cruise along, get ready for your approach to an airport, then suddenly find you're staring at a frozen screen or your computer desk top. Its the FS equivalent of getting mugged and we've all dealt with it in the past, a lot. :pilot: To put this in perspective, I've been playing Flight Sim titles since the mid 1990's and this is the first time I've been able to run hardware that is fundamentally more advanced than the FS software, and I'm running FS2002. :D

 

FSX and its derivatives (FSX Steam and P3D) are the newest but have had their fair share of issues over the years. FS9/FS2004 is popular (at least in THIS forum) for reasons already stated in the thread. While there are huge numbers of download files available, FS9 is getting long in the tooth and new downloads are few and far between.

 

To make things complicated, I enjoy FS2002. Older yet, but many of the FS9 downloads can work in FS2002 and there are no CD issues to deal with after install. Just IMO, but no MS flight sim handles dawn or dusk better than FS2002. Views out the window at sunrise or sunset are jaw dropping. :pilot: FS2002's problem is that its kinda like the step child in the MSFS line of software. MS/Aces tried some new things in FS2002 (think early auto-gen scenery and traffic) but then dropped the ball and didn't follow up with support (there have NEVER been patch files or updates for FS2002's core program). Part of this was, IMO, due to timing. FS2000 was a VERY popular release at the time and FS2002 was followed up by FS2004/FS9 after a relatively short period.

 

XPlane is one of those titles that has been around for a while but hasn't enjoyed the same level of popularity as the MSFS (Microsoft Flight Sim) titles. Flight modelling in XPlane is a whole 'nother animal than in MSFS. Just read about what makes XPlane different and you may find that you'll want to try it. The downside is that things can look fairly simple in XPlane's world out-of-the-box and you'll need to invest a fair chunk of time to get the graphics up to MSFS levels. But that kinda misses the point with XPlane. Let me put it this way, if you're looking forward to your sophomore year at Embry-Riddle and you can appreciate things like slugs and parasitic drag on wing assemblies in cross wind domains , XPlane may be your steak and baked potato.

 

There are other flight sims out there. The problem is that they end up falling into the Oddball category of games. Not throwing flames, I'm basing this on experience going back to Terminal Reality's Fly! (or, as I used to call it Why??! ) and Sierra's Pro Pilot titles.

 

Now, before anyone gets chuffed at me, I'm not talking about combat flight sims. Titles like DFS look great and I've been very tempted to try it out (except for the download time). The only thing is that combat flight sims are almost a different mind set. The goals are different (do NOT get shot down by that 13 year old kid!!) and it seems to me that tactics are a lot more important than learning the basics of flight. Yeah, I know its a gray area but I've always thought of this part of the community as being more laid back.

You want to fly online? Great, just don't bug me about it. You want to fly for a VA? Great, just don't bug me about it. You want to ride thermals in a glider? Great, well you get the idea. :) If you're having problems getting something to load or understanding how to navigate from point A to point B or how to flare over the numbers (its called an airPLANE, not an airDART), I'll do my best to help you out. Do I care where you fly or how you fly or what you fly? No, not really.

I'm not being snooty, I just have my hands full with my own flight plans. :cool: