Can you help me buy a FlightSim rig for my son?
he’s wanting to learn how to fly- seems like it’d be cheaper and more fun to have him learn some via PC gaming- i heard microsoft has a flight sim product. but i also need to get the yoke/controls,etc. want to get something really nice- not toyish.
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x-plane by laminar research seems to be highly regarded. faa grants flight time to licensed pilots who use it.
Try Lock-On
Widely regarded as one of the most realistic flight simulators ever. With high end graphics.
It is quite hard to master though, since the tutorial is lacking, to say the least.
But it is an air combat sim, so your son should have fun releasing his masculine urges.
I also hear great things about x-plane. So much so that I was excited to get it for the iPhone.
It stinks for the iPhone.
But you can fly the space shuttle, if you want!
CH Products have some good stuff as far as yoke, throttle, and rudder are concerned. I have a set of rudder pedals from them and they’ve served me well.
I’ve used X-Plane for quite a while and recommend it over MSFS for the physics involved in the simulation. X-Plane uses 6 DOF equations of motion for it’s simulation and has the most realistic experience when it comes to simulating real aircraft behavior.
As far as computers go: the great thing about X-Plane is it is multi-platform. This means you aren’t constrained to purchase Windows if you don’t want to. X-Plane is available for both Linux and Mac as well. A higher end computer is required to get the best graphics and the most realistic physics simulation, however, older computers can still handle it fairly well. Make sure you have a lot of RAM though, X-Plane has to store a lot of information on-the-fly since it’s solving fairly complicated equations the whole time.
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