Flight Sims X/2004/lockon etc..

[lone.wolf 80]

Hi flying guyz,

I am considering getting me some flight sim and start being a Top Gun Wannabe , i want a simulator not arcade, but also with combat missions and possibility to make missions myself, without a technical degree...!

So what do you recommend me to get, i am willing to use around 200-400 us$ for this little project, thats included flight stick and throttle..

Thanx in advance.  

[ingram 258]

I can recommend you than Lock On Modern Air Combat and Flaming Cliffs Expansion Pack.

Or if you would like to take some dogfight in WWII fighters the best sim is for me "Il-2 Sturmovik 1946" because it includes already the original sim and each expansion pack released in the past years so You have got than IL-2 Sturmovik, Forgotten Battles, Ace Expansion Pack, Pacific fighters and Sturmovik 1946.

Both sim's are including quick and full mission editors.

Here you can watch a video made from my mission in IL-2

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I7S-NoVOu3o&feature=channel_page

[scruffy 21]

http://i164.photobucket.com/albums....4-1.jpg

The Section F8 F-86 is a really great addon and freeware, too. Anyone flying FSX or FS04 should definitely try it out: Homepage.

REX is also looking very good and I finally got the Acceleration Expansion pack pretty cheap from the UK (~20 instead of 40€). My Vista 64 partition is also ready but I still haven't tried FSX with DX10 and my full 4GB of RAM. I think I'll buy FS Global 2008, as that is only a better mesh, but still resort to Tileproxy for textures. It's just that the FSX alone is easily too much for my CPU, and a quad will have to wait at least until ArmA 2 arrives

[ingram 258]

I am working on repaint for IRIS Pro Series F-14B Tomcat.

My first repaint will be a VF-33 squadron colors so if you like I would need some pictures with VF-33.

Here are 2 screens from the early version, right now I have a lot of work to do.

[Snake Man 402]

If someone wants actual gameplay instead of combat photography whoring, check out the just released Falcon 4 addon/patch/version of:

<span style='font-size:12pt;line-height:100%'>Free Falcon 5.</span>

[sanctuary 19]

Not as pretty as either Falcon4 mods or Flying sim X/2004/Lockon, , but for a free software it is real fun and features very interesting gameplay and is really feature packed :

YSFlight

Author website

Half a billion of addons, planes, sceneries are available by the community for YSFlight.

YSFlight community

Additionnally, while talking flying, not a game but a true free simulator that will take you all around the world, to the sky and beyond. Exceptionnally fun and interesting, full of features.

Orbiter

Again half a billions of addons are created for it ultra realistic or sci-fi.

Author website

Community boards

Addons and more

[scruffy 21]

I finally got around to reinstalling FSX under Vista64. I haven't really checked for differences so far, but are these new DX10 shadows in the VC always looking this ugly or is something wrong on my end?

[ingram 258]

I am not using the DX10 preview even when I have the FSX installed on Vista 64 because it doesn't change nothing and even makes this sim ugly.

[Snake Man 402]

Falcon 4 with FreeFalcon 5.0 patch/addon.

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And some that fit for 100kb limit.

[Thunderbird 0]

You can't deny that Falcon 4.0 graphics are kind of outdated, despite the amount of community made MODs/Scene textures upgrades... etc, but the 'Realism/Simulation' factor is way above all I have seen so far.

F/A-18 Korea was a good simulator as well, but unfortunately it wasn't that known, therefore the lack of interest killed it on the long run.

------------

LockOn is nowadays 'Jet Fighters' simulation reference, but there is a hell of things missing in terms of realism (Limited MFDs screens, Too Friendly Soviet Radar systems...)

Unfortunately, due to real life occupations, I somehow missed all of what has been carried out in terms of Jet Fighters Simulators, If someone knows a better reference than Lockon, then feel free to submit it, that would even be greatly appreciated.

------------

Regards,

TB

[MehMan 0]

I wonder how Blackshark plays out. I found LockOn really complicated at first, but once you print out the keyboard layout and look around it's easy. Too easy, heh.

[Thunderbird 0]

DCS : Black Shark seems rather interesting...

And give a look at this video:

A lot of buttons to recall... now that's what I call a "simulator" ;]

Regards,

TB

[Snake Man 402]

Same has been the Ramp Start in Falcon for years. Nothing new there.

.

Btw, how many guys here comprehend how large those F4 theaters are? For example this:

Its all real world DEM data, real distances and the works.

[Spetz 0]

could you do a mid-air refueling, while your doing a air-strike on falcon?

[sparks50 0]

We are more into Hawx

[shadow 6]

I finally got around to reinstalling FSX under Vista64. I haven't really checked for differences so far, but are these new DX10 shadows in the VC always looking this ugly or is something wrong on my end?

img]http://www.abload.de/thumb/2009-2-28_19-26-17-294qqn7.jpg[/img]

I just installed Vista x64 5 days ago. FSX with DX10 enabled looks the same as without DX10 except some triangle texture flickering on the taxi-ways at the crossroads. However, performance is close to 300% over DX9. That could very well be that the DX10-portion is better optimized towards multi-cores though. I see FSX use 8 threads simultaneously all the time when DX10 is enabled.

I see the biggest performance differences between DX9 and 10 is with Autogen. When I push Autogen above normal the framrate can jump between 5 and 40 fps in DX9 while the same settings in DX10 would give me framerates between 50 and 60.

So for me DX10 means a minor graphic issue on the tarmac but alot higher framerate that is alot more stable.

My specs are now: i7 920 (2.6GHz), 6GB DDR3-1066, GF 8800GTX and Vista x64 Ultimate.

[privatenoob 0]

understandably F4 might not be readily available in stores anymore (well besides F4 Allied Force maybe).

Yes did find allied force, whats the difference??

Anyhow im absolutley new to flight sims and ordered

a joystick today, my first one ever. But I am really interested

in flight sims now, I did purchase flightsimulator X and just tried it out, one of the beginner tutorials anyway.

But is falcon hard to get into? In flightsim X it was..well not a plane, it was a one of THESE and I didnt get it into the air cos the tutorial voice told me to "pull up the stick a little bit" lol.

Well Im getting my joystick soon.......but I am atleast abit exited about it, so, I just hope falcon isnt to overkill in comparsion? Yes I have TrackIR.

[Spetz 0]

How do AWACS work on the Falcon game, could you launch a AIM-120 and the AWACS can guide it to its target if its BVF or Beyond the range of your rader? do they have real radar range info for like the APG-66/79?

[scruffy 21]

I am not using the DX10 preview even when I have the FSX installed on Vista 64 because it doesn't change nothing and even makes this sim ugly.

I finally got around to reinstalling FSX under Vista64. I haven't really checked for differences so far, but are these new DX10 shadows in the VC always looking this ugly or is something wrong on my end?

img]http://www.abload.de/thumb/2009-2-28_19-26-17-294qqn7.jpg[/img]

I just installed Vista x64 5 days ago. FSX with DX10 enabled looks the same as without DX10 except some triangle texture flickering on the taxi-ways at the crossroads. However, performance is close to 300% over DX9. That could very well be that the DX10-portion is better optimized towards multi-cores though. I see FSX use 8 threads simultaneously all the time when DX10 is enabled.

I see the biggest performance differences between DX9 and 10 is with Autogen. When I push Autogen above normal the framrate can jump between 5 and 40 fps in DX9 while the same settings in DX10 would give me framerates between 50 and 60.

So for me DX10 means a minor graphic issue on the tarmac but alot higher framerate that is alot more stable.

My specs are now: i7 920 (2.6GHz), 6GB DDR3-1066, GF 8800GTX and Vista x64 Ultimate.

Thank you both for answering. I guess I'll stay away from DX10 for now, as I have autogen disabled anyway with my current setup and I haven't seen any effect of the extra RAM so far.

But I will keep this in mind when I get the next upgrade

[ingram 258]

Believe it is much better than with DX10. This sim will work faster and the quality will be better since DX10 mode offers anti aliasing only at 2 level.

Very nice polish plane for FSX but it has got one bug.

It is not native.

[privatenoob 0]

Can anyone confirm if IL-2 1946 is easier or about the same level as Falcon 4.0 allied force? Cos im too noobish for Falcon, I have no problem taking off and landing in FSX but Falcon 4 is too hardcore for me.

[ingram 258]

This is a hard question because:

1. I don't have Falcon

2. This are a different types of simulators and the difficulty of for example BF-109 is different than the electronics etc in F-16

[sanctuary 19]

It's been some times that some russian genius coder ported the whole Frontier First Encounters to Direct3D, and since that people have been making models to replace the original old ones.

So far it was not working on my system, but after a small upgrade recently i noticed that now it does, and as a long time player of both Frontier Elite 2 and Frontier First Encounters, i have been amazed by how it now looks now.

Here is a screenshot of my first ship leaving the Dublin Citadel station , early in the game without having installed any replacement yet :

in comparison with the high res version of the JJFFE (download here but you need to have installed JJFFE before)

in comparison with the OpenGL 1.2 version " GLFFE Nic Mod " (but that does some modifications on other things too, but is more stable than the OpenGL 2.0 version apparently)

You can find this awesome modification here :

Elite-Games in which you need to download and extract in your FFE directory successively :

-FFED3D_1.0b.rar

-ffed3d_patch_1.1b.rar

-ffed3d_patch_1.11b.rar

-ffed3d_patch_1.12b.rar

And start the game with ffed3d.exe

You can tweak the settings (fullscreen/resolution/etc..) in the ffewin.cfg

You have an english discussion thread on their forum too or you can look into this board additionally.

To find replacement ships etc...

You need Frontier First Encounters to use FFE3D or OpenGL or the high res JJFFE, but you can find it easily on most usual old/retro gaming websites.

Happy space trading.

If combat in newtonian environment highly frustrate you, but you really like the newtonian physics for landing/launching/docking/exploring/etc.. be sure to check Orbiter a free simulator that features billions of addons.

But be warned that Orbiter is really a simulator, this means a steep learning curve, lots of tutorial to read etc... but in the end how much satisfaction you will get from Orbiter is priceless.

[11aTony 0]

Anyone tried this Tom Clancy's H.A.W.X? Its quite a nice game. I like this targeting sistem. Maybe ArmA2 should have smt like that too instead of "tab", "fire", "tab", "fire"...

Its nice that you can stall your plane and shorten your arc.

[lee_h._oswald 0]

Thank you Sanctuary for the information.

I played Elite II for years and even today it's a fantastic game.

This Frontier D3D is absolutly great!

Thanks!

MfG Lee