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[Flight Sims] DCS open-beta approaches something modern: Using more than one CPU core!
GnomeTank
What the what?Portland, OregonRegistered User regular
What the what?Portland, OregonRegistered User regular
I feel the need. The need for speed. (And sometimes a nice jaunt through the serene afternoon sky)
If you're looking for War Thunder, go here. War Thunder is popular enough to have it's own thread!
Whether it's dropping bombs and firing missiles or landing a super jumbo in a busy pattern at Heathrow that lights your fire, flight sims are for you.
Flight sims are a genre that has been neglected over the years, but seems to be making a modest comeback with new display technology (Oculus Rift), and the resurgence of flight sim's sibling genre, the space sim. This has ignited interest in peripherals and titles, and both flight and space sims seem posed to enter a new healthier era. If you've already spent all that money on a fancy stick for Star Citizen or Elite: Dangerous, why not check out some flight sims?
This can be a daunting genre to approach. They aren't known for user friendly interfaces, or pulling any punches for the new user. You're going to hear more about bogey dopes, hot flankers, angles, vectors, foxes, splashes, IFR, VFR, approaches and flaring than your poor head will know what to do with. Push through the initial confusion and there's a world of game play depth to be explored.
Current / Active Sims
DCS World
DCS World and it's modules are some of the most up to date pure combat flight sims we have today. Eagle Dynamics and it's various plane modeling contractors are still adding new modules, new planes and updating old planes. The simulations here aren't always perfect, and the graphics engine is two generations behind, but DCS is probably the easiest of the combat sims to simply boot up and play. DCS World is available on Steam for free!. This only gets you a couple of aircraft (the Su-25 and the TP-51D trainer), but it's a great way to get started. Recommended first purchase is the Flaming Cliffs 3 addon which adds a ton of new aircraft, specifically the A-10A and the F-15C, both some of the most interesting and exciting planes in DCS.
Website | Steam Page
Falcon 4.0 / BMS
Falcon 4.0 is the crown jewel of the Falcon series, and probably one of the best consumer simulators ever written. Unfortunately, it was released in 1998. Lucky for us, there is a dedicated and awesome fan community which has kept the game alive through the BMS addon, which is effectively a total overhaul of Falcon 4.0 with new Block 50/52 F-16's (yay Helmet Mounted Cuing System!). You'll need to legally procure a copy of Falcon 4.0 and do some setup before you can play this, but it's worth it if you're in to sims.
Website
IL-2 Sturmovik
A World War II flight simulator, IL-2 is a highly regarded simulation if you're flight preferences lean toward the piston and propeller persuasion. It's had several updates over the years and still has an active and dedicated community. A new iteration of the game, IL-2 Sturmovik: Battle of Stalingrad was released in October of last year. It's had some mixed reviews, but the developers seem committed to getting it up to speed.
Update: According to our own @TOGSolid, Cliffs of Dover is the new hotness in IL-2. It has a thriving mod community and seems to be where the community has congregated.
Website | Cliffs of Dover Steam Page | Team Fusion Cliffs of Dover Mods | Steam Page for Older IL-2: 1946 | Steam Page for Lastest IL-2: BoS
FSX - Flight Simulator X
One of the most highly regarded flight simulators ever made, by a company you'd never expect. If leisurely cross country flights, and landing at busy commercial airports are more your thing, FSX is considered one of the best. It's available at a reasonable price on Steam and has a beautifully mapped terrain representation. In addition it's incredibly active and supported by the community, with tons and tons of mods that add new planes (including military and aerobatic...the best F/A-18E Super Hornet model in the world right now is an FSX mod).
Get Started Website | Steam Page
X Plane 10
I haven't personally gotten to suit up in X Plane, but everyone I know who has loves it. It's probably the most graphically impressive of the flight sims available today, with incredibly realistic representations of cities and terrain. It's available for home use at the regular 60 dollar price point, and seems like a neat step up in technology if you want to go the ultra realistic route. It, much like FSX, is also supported by a robust mod community that offers both free and paid content.
Website
Rise of Flight
Rise of flight is a World War 1 combat simulator featuring a wide range of classic WW1 era biplanes, triplanes, and even a couple very early monoplanes. If you're used to flying modern jets or even classic WW2 fighters this simulator is going to be a very different animal to get used to but ultimately very rewarding since everything is much more hands on with these planes and the lower horsepower but higher lift will force you to alter your tactics. To put it simply, this is a game where you can get a pistol for your pilot and actually use the damn thing.
Website | Steam Page
Gear (Or how flight sim fans are poor)
I won't lie, flight sim gear is hilariously expensive. This is because the equipment itself isn't produced in massive quantities due to low demand, and the demanding nature of flight sim fans. Generally speaking you're going to be looking at two types of gear. In either case, you're going to want decent rudder pedals. From there you're looking at two distinct types of controls: HOTAS (hands on throttle and stick, military), and yoke + throttle (civilian/commercial). The classifications are general of course, there are military aircraft that use yokes and civilian aircraft that use variations of HOTAS. Unfortunately I know little about yokes, so I'll be leaving that section for someone else to fill in. For the rest of this section I'll be talking about HOTAS and pedals. I'm also only going to list items here that are generally considered good kit and worth buying for semi-serious simulation. You can certainly get by with a basic Logitech 3D Pro, but that's not what most people come to sims for.
HOTAS
Entry Level - The venerable Saitek X-52
This has long been the standard for My First Hotas buyers, and it remains today a great value buy if you're aware of it's limitations and issues. It's a perfectly capable setup, and with some basic modding can even be great. At the 130-150 dollar price point, it's obviously a value winner. If you can't step up one price point to the CH pairing or the X-55, this will get you going quite nicely. It also has rudder twist on the stick, allowing you to forgo buying pedals for a bit.
X-52 on Amazon
X-52 on Amazon
Value - CH Combatstick + CH Pro Throttle
They aren't real lookers, but CH makes a solid set of stick and throttle in the Combatstick and Pro Throttle. The pairing will cost you around 200 bucks, and you have to buy them seperately, but they are quality kit that is highly reviewed.
Combatstick on Amazon | Pro Throttle on Amazon
Combatstick on Amazon | Pro Throttle on Amazon
Value - HOTAS in a box - Saitek X-55
If you're looking for a HOTAS in a box, and something that looks a touch nicer than the CH kit, the Saitek X-55 Rhino has solid reviews. It seems to have fixed some of the serious manufacturing problems that plagued it's younger brother the X-52. There are still occasionally problems reported with it, but overall owners seem happy with it. It will run you the same 200'ish price tag that the CH set will run you.
X-55 on Amazon
X-55 on Amazon
Money Is No Object - Thrustmaster Warthog
Currently this is the crown jewel of mass produced HOTAS kit available Stateside. European customers have a couple of other high end options, but for us dirty Yanks, the Warthog is the top of the heap without getting in to crazy expensive custom gear and cockpit setups. The Warthog is a near 1:1 replication of the A-10C Warthog's HOTAS setup. It's absolutely covered in buttons and switches and allows you to map nearly everything you need. This is the option I can talk the most about, as it's the HOTAS I personally own. It's heavy, all metal, built to last and incredibly nice. As with all flight sim gear, it's not without it's issues though. There is a known, and relatively common, "stiction" (where the stick doesn't have a smooth pull and feels like it sticks) issue. It's fixable, but many people rightly feel that a 400 dollar piece of kit shouldn't have issues like that.
Warthog on Amazon
Warthog on Amazon
Pedals
Value - CH Pro Pedals
Maybe the best reasonably priced pedals you can get, CH's pedals are widely loved by all sim pilots who own them. At around 110-120 dollars, you can get these plus a Rhino or CH HOTAS setup and be fully kitted to fly for 320 dollars, give or take. I highly, highly recommend these over the Saitek Pro Flight Rudder Pedals.
Olive Garden Money - Saitek Pro Flight COMBAT Rudder Pedals
These are a different and more pricey product than the roundly frowned upon Saitek Pro Flight Rudder Pedals. These feature some metal construction and look and feel more like combat pedals. They are running in the 190 dollar price range currently. Even as someone who owns these, I question whether the step up from the CH Products is worth it, but these are available if you want to spend a touch more.
I'm Really Crazy - Slaw Device BF-109's
These are stupidly expensive and have a really shady buying process requiring you to deposit money in to the Polish makers bank account...but man, what pedals these are. The maker is currently working on a set of Slaw Device F-16C pedals that may actually tempt me. So how much are we talking here? 500 bucks, plus about 65 dollars for US shipping. In addition, you basically have to wire transfer the guy money as he has no web store, or even a website. Each set is hand built for to order.
Extras
TrackIR / FreeTrack
TrackIR / FreeTrack are head tracking solutions that are generally used to slave the view in game to your head movement. The more horizontal and vertical screen space you have (spanning multiple monitors in some cases), the more realistic head tracking will feel, but it can be used with a single screen fine. You'll just have significantly more sensitive inputs. For serious dog fighting in combat sims, I consider some kind of head tracking or tracked view essential. You tend to spend more time looking around you than looking at your hud/instruments and the tracking is invaluable.
Oculus Rift / VR
Even better than TrackIR is an Oculus Rift or another good VR head set. Frankly if the current Crystal Bay prototype was released as a dev kit, I'd have already ordered one. I truly believe these are the future of flight (and space) sims and will revolutionize the genre. The current crop of flight sims has varying support for Oculus, but fans for most of the games have made it work. Some duck tape and tech savvy helpful.
Flight School - First Lesson: Don't meet your shadow
General
XPlane.org Flight School - Tailored to XPlane, it has a lot of general flight stuff as well.
Falcon 4.0 BMS
Nice tutorial about getting BMS setup.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uU3pmXvnc0k
Two hour tutorial that takes you from end of the runway to flying basic formation. Tons of info, but worth keeping bookmarked.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RWPEGNZB09Y
Playlist of 20 odd in-depth tutorials from YouTuber Krouse. Ignore his mispronunciation of AAMRAM, his tutorials are great.
Direct link to Krouse's ramp (or cold) start tutorial. Great to keep handy if you want to memorize F-16 startup.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eUtpZQNt-Tg&list=PL3E09AA94FF0EACEC&index=20
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uU3pmXvnc0kTwo hour tutorial that takes you from end of the runway to flying basic formation. Tons of info, but worth keeping bookmarked.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RWPEGNZB09YPlaylist of 20 odd in-depth tutorials from YouTuber Krouse. Ignore his mispronunciation of AAMRAM, his tutorials are great.
Direct link to Krouse's ramp (or cold) start tutorial. Great to keep handy if you want to memorize F-16 startup.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eUtpZQNt-Tg&list=PL3E09AA94FF0EACEC&index=20DCS World
First part of a four part series on the F-15C's air-to-air systems.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WhWeVETFPN0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WhWeVETFPN0Control Setups
Coming Soon
OP Information
This is truly a living OP, and is always open for updating. Flight sims are complicated and I can't possibly know everything about them. If there is a game, peripheral, setup or tutorial you don't see listed here you think it should have, please let me know! Let's get it added.
Steam: Brainling, XBL / PSN: GnomeTank, NintendoID: Brainling, FF14: Zillius Rosh SFV: BrainlingOh c'mon FyreWulff, no one's gonna pay to visit Uranus.
GnomeTank on
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Posts
XPlane.org's Flight School series has been really informative as well and has great flight techniques and practices regardless of the sim you fly.
Currently I'm mostly flying a lot of Falcon 4 BMS. The terrain engine in Falcon is terrible looking, but the F-16 cockpit looks amazing thanks to BMS, and I'm really enjoying the Israel Theatre and flying the F-16-40I that they modeled for that. The F-16 has always been my dream jet, so I'm very partial to Falcon. There's nothing quite like getting the call of bandit tally hot, emergency dropping your entire A/G load and turning in to a lethal hunter killer. Falcon 4 actually models it all so when you drop the A/G, you actually feel the plane get lighter (and it goes in to CAP 1 so it turns the governor off so you can really fly).
Speaking of which, if anyone has DCS World or BMS, and is lost, I'd be happy to jump on voice comms and give you a crash course in flying the Eagle and Falcon. Those are the aircraft I have the most experience in and actually understand how to operate the various systems.
e: As a side note, the F-16 is a much easier to plane to fly than the Eagle in DCS, as it has much more modern systems. If you want to try out a combat sim, and want reasonably up to date systems that don't feel quite as 1970, BMS is great and very easy/cheap to get.
Still these days I spend more time in DCS World for military stuff. I've probably spent most of that time flying the free Mustang trainer, after the Black Shark. I've also spent a little time in the Saberjet, which is quite a plane. the TF-51 is amazingly fun to fly since it's an unarmed, and therefore lighter aircraft. It's super bouncy which makes it really fun for NOE flight. Here's a video from one of my favorite youtube pilots demonstrating this. He's a professional pilot and it really shows in his sim flying.
I also have Flaming Cliffs 3 and the P-51D module. On top of that I've got a bunch of planes in Rise of Flight and I've barely touched that too. It's pretty easy to get too many planes to fly. :rotate: I'll get to them all one day!
e: The way that guy flies paint, always keeping his partner in view unless he's lead, shows his professionalism, or at least a long dedication to sim flying.
EDIT - but that was a long time ago...so I'm not sure if that's still the case these days.
Also played a lot of FSX but haven't had the time recently. Looking forward to see what Dovetail will do with the series.
EDIT - Whoops...totally wrong on that one. Just read the Steam store page, and it looks like they just ripped the F-15C part of Flaming Cliffs and are selling it a la carte. My mistake.
Anyhoo, regarding IL-2 it sounds like the current hotness is actually Cliffs of Dover with the community updates applied. BoS isn't quite up to where CoD is. Personally, I'm holding out for the DCS WW2 era game they're working on cause I don't dig on flying modern planes. Too much computer button pushing for my tastes.
Also for the OP: Rise of Flight - World War 1 biplane badassery! Become the Red Baron!
I'm unreasonably excited to get my hands on the MiG-21Bis too. That thing is such a Cold War icon.
The prototype of the Slaw Device F-16C pedals that the maker has been teasing. If I had to guess, these would end up setting you back 5-600 USD, deposited in to a Polish mans bank account, and probably close to 70 bucks to ship. Hehe.
I had a set and haaaaaaated them. They're sloppy feeling, not very accurate, noisy, and have to be velcroed to the floor to keep em from moving. The Combat version is alright apparently but I'll be sticking to my CH pedals. They're ugly but they're built like a brick shithouse (like all CH stuff) and work great.
Yeah, but then I read other reviews where they mention the pedals sticking and all sorts of mods they do to make them sturdier and I gotta wonder.
One of these days, once I have an Oculus, I'd like to get (or build) a nice pilots chair that had a pedal mount, and side saddle mounts for my stick and throttle. I won't need the big display mounts so I'm hoping I can find something at a reasonable price in a year or two.
Yeah, when I eventually bail out of Alaska I wanna take the opportunity to ditch my computer desk for something more suitable. I may just end up dumping my whole setup for an Obutto Gaming Cockpit.
If you wanna get a good chair to build on to DX Racer makes some pretty good stuff and they sell arms for them that are meant to just be mousepads but could probably easily be made into HOTAS mounts. From there, all you'd need to do is to rig up a pedal mount.
e: Woh, X Plane comes with the F–22 Raptor as part of it's default package? Anyone know how good the flight model is? Does it model the vectored thrust and everything?
e: And interestingly, I've found the F-16's slow speed capabilities, which are fucking amazing for a jet, to work against you at times. There are times, even at 140-160 knot touch down speed, that the jet just wants to take right back off. Despite being a plane that can't fly without it's computer because it's statically unstable, the F-16 really WANTS to fly.