Best VFR Sim?

Ages ago someone, probably on this forum, commented "MS FlightSim is more about navigating than actual flying". I have come to realize more than a grain of truth in that. Want to take a winged sardine can to 40k ft and fly to an airport 5000 miles away, it is great; want to fly a small GA aircraft at 4k ft on a sightseeing flight along a river, it is miserable.

 

I have spent years tweaking and tweaking and tweaking. Want accurate mesh? Then none of your scenery works; so hours and hours of editing airports on mesas or in pits, rivers running up mountains, highways across lakes, cities in rivers or offshore. And those inexplicable large flat areas in the middle of a mountain range; lakes with two completely different textures and a sharp line of demarcation; an aircraft carrier suspended above the water such that you can actually fly under it (carefully, lol). And you cannot go into an editor and just grab an airport and move it to the correct altitude, it often seems simpler to rebuild the airport at the proper altitude. Numerous mesh files, landclass, UT, GePro, ActiveSky, REX ... and I felt for every hour I flew I tweaked eight hours. And still at anything below 5k ft the ground resembled a washed out watercolor, rivers meandered all around their banks (if indeed you could discern banks), forests worldwide were identical, farmlands were identical, deserts were identical, cities were identical. (Aerosoft Manhattan was nice, but why no more? Why no Chicago or Berlin or Singapore or .....?)

 

So, with numerous flightsims now available, which is best for low level VFR flight over realistic terrain? And not feel you need a pair of next generation liquid cooled Crays in the basement to operate. (1920x1080 @ 30fps is fine for me)

Each to his own. Many years ago I upgraded from FSX to P3D v2.4, added pretty much all of ORBX for North America, including southern Alaska and a chunk of Canada. P3D has progressed way beyond that, but a friend and I found it was wonderful for VFR flying within the ORBX areas, often being almost photographically real from 500 AGL (and mighty good even lower) looking off in the distance, or just crossing a ridge and seeing a gorgeous panorama. And that was on my 2010 Digital Storm machine, with decent frame rates. And it was great sometimes seeing some farm machinery in the farm fields, maybe some horses or cows near a few small airports, birds flying around many areas, especially some of the harbor areas. And there are some detailed airports where there are people on the field, even kids on bikes, and some back yards that might have a swing set or people grilling burgers, along with some other surprises.

 

No, it's not perfect, nor is any other sim that can run on a desktop PC going to be perfect, and you'll probably need at least a smidgen of imagination in some areas, so do a bit of research and figure out what appeals to you- not all folks agree on which is best at low level VFR in a Cub, but P3D V2.4 has worked fine for me for years.

Most difficult part in any Sim, convincing the brain that you are flying an airplane.........

I think Fs2004 suits that perfectly! The built in scenery gives an example of good VFR flying! Flight Gear lacks scenery as I can tell so I have never compared it! :pilot: People who work for Democrats can't afford Cray's! :cool:

 

Christopher Tarana

For me, the more important question is what is more realistic. And here of course I can't choose to be honest and always think between Microsoft Flight Simulator and Falcon 4.0 BMS

Thanks for the input.

 

FS2004 is what I've been using, for nearly 18 years. Default ground in lower left, not impressed.

 

 

Turn west and fly up the valley. Oh boy, back to scenery editor and play with more mesa lakes. (Base terrain here is GEPro, not bad except entire world looks like this.)

 

(I could post dozens of these; spikes of land around an airport, checkerboard ocean textures... which I've been fighting 15 years, clouds cut in half, trees on runways, waves on shore, odd splotches of incorrect textures. But you've probably all seen these.)

 

Of course if you're ferrying people around at 35k ft none of this is an issue, just have nice airports for departure and destination. Not knocking that, I occasionally go for a jaunt in a Citation X, B-17, Lancaster, C-5, XB-70, SR-71, or air-launched X-15; but my preference is sightseeing in anything from a Bleriot to a WWI Staaken bomber to a Bonanza V35.

 

Apparently P3D 2.4 is NLA, and it's doubtful my old system will run a newer version... the newest "requires" W10 (once Win7 is no longer viable I switch to Linux). My major complaint with download software - you can no longer buy "used" or "second hand".

A modern sim is going to require modern hardware and modern software. If you are unable/unwilling to move to those modern things, then you will be stuck with what you have. And sorry guys, but FS2004 is not the answer nor the solution, no matter what you throw into it. It works for many, but it doesn't work for what you are attempting to do.

Apparently P3D 2.4 is NLA, and it's doubtful my old system will run a newer version... the newest "requires" W10 (once Win7 is no longer viable I switch to Linux). My major complaint with download software - you can no longer buy "used" or "second hand".

 

If you're moving to Linux, then you're options are basically X-Plane or Flightgear, and you will still need some decent hardware to get the most out of X-Plane in particular.