Combat Flight Simulator
How much does a Combat Flight Simulator costs?
There is no way to simulate g’s well enough to make a full fighter sim, so it’s generally about what computers can do.
If you have a few million dollars to pay some scientists to make a brilliantly accurate flight model, then you might have the best sim in the world within a year or two. But that’s the problem with computers, the military is not really any better than the civilian flight-sim and (partly) gaming industry at making the latest hardware, and software develops quickly in both sectors until the hardware’s obsolete. Naturally graphics don’t matter to a real sim, so the crap you see from most companies, especially Ubisoft (Lock-on, Hawx) is pure garbage with great graphics. But the model used in Microsoft’s flight sims has always been top-notch.
The expensive stuff would be building a fake plane around the computer hardware, and making it rotate and move around. Simulating g-forces is easy, simulating them quickly in the right direction isn’t. A good pc simulator will have a model that reports your g’s to you right away, makes you black out or red out for exceeding them, and makes your plane rip apart for going way above. That’s basic bottom-level simulation and is why most video games don’t measure up.
The best combat sim for pc’s right now is IL-2 Sturmovik, by Maddox Games, probably $30 plus more for mods. (Ubisoft publishes it but has nothing to do with it other than that.) Microsoft’s Flight X is hands-down still the gold-standard best simulator overall. They had a combat flight sim a few years back too. There is another, mostly civilian sim called X-Plane, which is about $60. Targetware is the most detailed ww2 and Korea sim I’ve ever seen, a great sim; you have to do everything manually down to the cooling flaps and the physics is 1st-class. Lets you see just how hard it is to take off in a p-51 or a Spitfire. It’s free in beta. YSFlight is another free one that has no graphics but a half-decent engine and is good for multiplane fights.
Avoid Lock On, Hawx, Ace Combat, Blazing Angels and anything that says Ubisoft on it, except for IL-2.
Combat Flight Simulator – Microsoft Ad
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