Help please! Totally New To Flight Sim - where / what

[mikebarden1 0]

I want to TRY a flight sim - just purchased new fast pc

I like Lancaster, B17 , Spitfire etc

Do I have to start with Microsoft X Flight Sim (2006) and add different packs OR shall can anybody recommend....a Spitfire sim or a Lancaster or a B17 sim etc

I purchased PC Pilot Mag - that did not help as it semed to want Microsoft Flight X

Sorry for such a daft e-mail that many probably get all the time.

If tthere is a paper or arcticle to help me...let me know

Thanks

MIke

[The red barron 41]

Hi Mike,

First off welcome to Mutley's I am sure you'll enjoy your time here.

As a response, If you are looking at getting a foot in the door with Flight Sim then yes you will need Flight Simulator X (FSX)

Think of Flight sim as a pizza, FSX is the dough base and then separate add-on pack can be brought and these will be the 'toppings'

As a great starter pack I would recommend getting this one as it seems to suit your need for classic WW2 planes:

http://justflight.com/product/flight-sim-starter-pack-military-edition

This will net you a copy of Flight simulator, a joystick and an add on that will give you some classics of the Battle of Britain.

Hope you find this helpful

TRB

[mutley 4,498]

Hi Mike,

Welcome to Mutley's! Not a daft message at all.

You say flight simulation so I assume you do not mean combat simulation?

For the aircraft you mention, I would say you need a base flight simulator like FSX and addon aircraft. I don't think there are standalone simulations available.

At this moment in time I would recommend the Microsoft FSX Gold pack which is a duo of FSX Deluxe and FSX Acceleration which brings the product up to date.

There are many add-ons to flight simulator and the Flying Fortress, Spitfire and Lanc are all available. Depending on how experienced you are at flying the real thing, or flying any aircraft will determine the enjoyment and choice of supplier.

For the B17 and Spitfire look up A2A Simulations Accusim aircraft for a real challenge.

B17 - http://www.a2asimulations.com/store/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=9&products_id=39

Spitfire - http://www.a2asimulations.com/store/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=9&products_id=42

Less demanding versions are also made by A2A simulations but also like developers such As Just Flight and RealAIr

Lancaster - http://www.justflight.com/product/lancaster-download a good likeness but not so involved or complicated as the A2A models.

Don't forget, these all need FSX to work.

There is a demo available of FSX here http://www.microsoft.com/games/flightsimulatorx/ but this is the original release version which has had 2 service pack upgrades since so has improved immensely.

Hope this helps in some way.

Cheers,

Joe

[mutley 4,498]

@ Edward, nice idea about the JF military pack, I didn't see it until after my post

[The red barron 41]

Yes Joe JF strike once again!

Also the Just Flight version of aircraft will be much more simple to operate in terms of procedures then the A2A planes so I would recommend the Just Flight version first just so you can get a really good idea of how FSX works and what these old war birds are like to fly on a PC screen.

[Andrew Godden 943]

Mike,

Welcome to Mutley's Hangar, the addiction of MSFS and what will turn into an obsession (if you are anything like us).

In addition to what Edward and Joe said, and before you start emptying your pocket any further, have a look at www.flightsim.com for a huge range of freeware for FSX. They have a pretty good search engine to be able to narrow down what you are looking for.

Cheers

Andrew

[brett 2,315]

Welcome Mike,

These sites might help

Explains the different versions of FSX and whats included http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Flight_Simulator_X

Installation guide http://www.simforums.com/forums/topic29041.html

I would also suggest to learn to fly the default Cessna C172 first before diving in with the older combat aircraft which can be a bit more difficult to control(IMO). FSX has a great Learning Center and tutorial style missions for starting on the basics.

Half the fun is learning new things,

Brett

[Sabre 28]

Welcome to the forum

This is a copy of a document I did for a friend and is quite long - it's a personal account and there will be other opinions but it may help. If it's too long or any admins wish to remove/shorten or amend please feel free, no worries.

Essential

FSX – buy the Gold Edition which includes the Deluxe version and Acceleration Expansion Pack and doesn’t need Service Packs as they are included.

Hints and Tips

Install FSX in its own specific location do not install in the default location on Win7 64 bit set-ups, it causes problems with UAC. Try C:\FSX or alternative drive, mines in D:\FSX

Set FSX to run as Administrator. There are lots of settings as you can imagine so just ask how to change set-up to fit your hardware. Some are simply a case of trial and error and see how your rig holds up.

General

The more I have thought about FSX and trying to categorise essential and nice to have addons the more difficult it got. I’ve pretty much decided that the only thing which is essential is FSX. After that it boils down to looks (eye candy) and in the case of some aircraft flight dynamics. In the looks department there are different schools of thought and these break down into a choice between Photographic Scenery and software that improves textures. As you have seen from some of my screenshots the photo scenery suffers a little at very low altitudes as it flattens out. The textures don’t suffer from this flattening but don’t look as good. This of course is a matter of opinion and you will find many arguments for and against the different types. I have chosen the Horizon photo scenery for UK and ORBX for the rest others have a different mix. Be warned Photo Scenery is ridiculously expensive and therefore I have concentrated on the UK and Ireland (not Northern Ireland) but by way of example I have spent just under £250 on UK photo scenery and this doesn’t include mainland Scotland!!!!!!!

Highly recommended

REX Essentials – it’s a 3GB download but worth it. Check main site forum for details.

Main site http://www.realenvir...m/products.html

Plan-G this is a free flight planner piece of software but it’s that good I would have paid money for it so “just get it”.

http://www.tasoftware.co.uk/

Orbx Simulations this scenery is absolutely brilliant and regarded by many as the ultimate scenery for FSX, it is however extremely expensive so in this section I suggest the free (full) demo of Tasmania. You will see other areas but these are payware and simply down to personal choice, trouble is when you fly over this stuff you don’t want to go back to base scenery. Check out the screenshot and videos – awesome. http://fullterrain.com/

A2A Simulations in my opinion the best aircraft available (certainly in the warbirds category). These are expensive especially with the Accusim addon but worth every penny and if there is one company which deserves support it’s this one. The lengths they go to make the simulation experience as real as possible are second to none. They do a neat Piper Cub also. The B17 is also brilliant.

Other Aircraft

Just Flight do some very nice aircraft including the DC3 and DC6 http://www.justflight.com/default.asp

Also for GA aircraft Carenado do some excellent stuff on their site (you can get Carenado aircraft from Just Flight also) http://www.carenado....ortal/index.php

Nice to have stuff

Orbx Simulations as mentioned above the payware scenery is fab – down to money really.

http://fullterrain.com/

Horizon Photographic Scenery this is the scenery I have for the UK. It does transform the flying experience but as mentioned it isn’t cheap. http://www.playhorizon.co.uk/store/

This scenery is often cheaper elsewhere so check some of the sites above.

UK2000 fabulous airfields which bring the default airfields to life with building and static aircraft/vehicles http://www.uk2000scenery.com/ some free demos

Earth Simulations not the best web site in the world but they do have some nice products http://www.earthsimu....com/index.html I have the Treescapes stuff which adds 3D trees across Britain. They also have some very detailed scenery of some of the Channel Islands. It is very detailed but expensive though.

Free stuff

Britsim some nice free aircraft here http://www.britsim.com/

Ozx some nice free scenery which actually work with ORBX scenery, also some aircraft and lots and lots of skins for various payware aircraft. http://aussiex.org/f...dex.php?/files/

There’s probably loads of other stuff I’ve just clean forgotten about. It fundamentally comes down to budget and how much you want or don’t want to invest. It satisfies my flying needs and given how much I’ve invested I’ll be sticking to FSX for the foreseeable future. I’d basically see whether it’s for you or not.

[PanzerFodder 0]

Mike.

Here's a nice video of a lancaster being flown in FSX, hope that it gives you some idea of what you can do with the sim .

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zsz1rK8WYEw

Cheer's...Graham...

[allardjd 1,853]

Mike,

Welcome to Mutley's Hangar. This is the best and friendliest flight sim site in this part of the Milky Way Galaxy.

Where to start...?

Though there are "dedicated" or "stand-alone" simulations out there, they are generally not terribly satisfying. Most are geared toward combat and though they do that fairly well, the rest, compared to Microsoft FSX, is not as well done. Often their geographic scope is limited and they ordinarily don't do the ancillary things like weather and geography as well as something of a more general nature like FSX.

FSX is far from perfect - we bitch about it all the time - but it's very, very good and its emphasis is on an accurate flight environment and accurate flight dynamics. Aircraft, airports, traffic, weather, air traffic control, radio navigation aids, scenery, terrain and a number of other facets of the aviation world are modeled quite well. FSX is a sandbox, in which you can play to your heart's content. Thought it comes with a good assortment of aircraft of various types and vintages, there are literally thousands more available, some as payware, but a great many as freeware as well. You'd be hard pressed to think of an aircraft that hasn't been modeled for FSX at some level. The whole world is modeled as well, including some 32,000 airports world wide, with reasonably accurate (circa 2006) depiction of runways, taxiways, buildings, ramps, aprons, signage, communication frequencies, navaids, etc.

In addition, there is add-on scenery, terrain, weather enhancers, traffic programs, ATC add-ons and a lot more. Like the aircraft, some are payware but there is also a lot of freeware availabe. One other unparalleled facet of FSX is it's somewhat open architecture that allows tweaking or wholesale modifications of all sorts of things in FS. It's a rich environment that will support most anything you want to do short of head-to-head combat.

Microsoft has recently released something called MS Flight. The general consencus in the FS community is that MSF is not really a flight simulator at all, but more of a game environment. It has wonderful looking, smooth graphics and great eye candy but its world consists of Hawaii and, for a few dollars more, Alaska - that's all. There are a few rather pitiful airplanes for it, some of which don't even have a cockpit - you fly them from an outside view. I don't recommend that one unless you're looking for an arcade-like experience.

A newcomer is something called Prepar3D (pronounced Prepared, abbreviated P3D) which is being marketed by Lockheed-Martin. They began with FSX source code, under license from Microsoft, and are using that as a basis for expanding and improving what was formerly FSX. It's early days, but their future looks bright and they may well be the Next Great Flight Simulator, particularly if they are able to keep it compatible with the large libraries of FSX add-ons that most dedicated flight simmers accumulate. I don't recommend jumping into that one just yet, but that's an outfit to keep an eye on.

So, bottom line, my personal recommendation is FSX. I don't think you'll regret it. For a final selling point, if you have questions or difficulty, MH is an excellent resource. There are some world-class users here and they are almost always willing to jump through hoops to help newbies out with whatever is needed.

Come on in - the water's fine...

John

[hurricanemk1c 195]

Hi Mike and welcome to the forums!

All I can say is to get FSX for 'civil' stuff and world-wide flights, and IL-2 1946 (or Cliffs of Dover - not too sure how good/bad it is) for combat stuff.

Just to point something out, FSX Deluxe doesn't include the Accerelation pack (a racing Mustang, an F/A-18 Hornet and an EH-101 helicopter),but FSX Gold does. FSX Deluxe includes some aircraft that the 'standard' FSX doesn't have