I have been researching and reading flight simulator forums for many, many moons. Besides the usual simulator problems and issues, I have been seeing a common thread lately. The advances in flight simulator technology is leaping forward at a pretty good pace as is computer hardware. I thought it would be interesting to start a conversation on how we as a community are going to approach this awesome advance.

When you look at the forum section of flightsim.com you see the following sections:

FSX

FS2004

FS2002

X-Plane

Prepar3D

How is it we can keep up with the future of our hobby and/or passion? Many people are on a fixed income, low income or need their resources for other necessities of life. I suppose if your career is a pilot for a major airline you can afford to upgrade on a regular basis. (Rig and simulator software.) Some folks have gone so far to build elaborate cockpit simulators in their homes! I find this absolutely awesome in my humble opinion.

I have seen where folks in the forum are very happy with the simulator version they have and use freeware to update and make theirs more interesting. I have also seen extremely creative folks using pay ware and upgrading their rigs to max out performance as much as they can. Of course the ultimate is a total upgrade of everything.

Dealing with the CTDs, bad freeware, editing aircraft.cfg and other files to tweak a simulator is sometimes fairly easy to a person having to be an aerodynamic engineer to get the simulator to do what you want. I have personally cleared out and reinstalled FSX three times to get a clean version after I mucked it up with some foolish add-on screw up.

So what do we do? I guess it would be like any activity. Look at your limits (technologically and financially) and tweak your simulator to what makes you happy. Research carefully into what you are going to purchase to make your “immersion†into the flight what you want. Pay ware usually gets you good support, freeware, not so much.

So blue horizons and smooth air to you until next time.