flight sim X

Anyone else play this? I like to mess around from time to time, but I just bought the acceleration expansion pack, which is cool, it includes a TT P-51 and an F-18. There's missions with carrier landings and everything. Only thing that I think is retarded is the F-18 over-speeds (Vne) at 700some knots, when in real life it's more around 1,350knots...almost twice.

I've wanted to get a flight sim, but only have a laptop. What else does someone need to play this, a joystick? What about the rudder, do you need pedals?

I've spent way too much time flying the Red Bull Air Races. Those things are freakin' hard.

I just use a joystick and the keyboard. Rudder pedals would be nice, but unnecessary. Those fake airplanes stay pretty well coordinated all on their own.

That's a good "game". Ok, it's not really a game at all. There are some missions, but they get old after a short time. Then there are the missions that are nearly impossible. What it works very well for is flight training. I'm in the middle of my instrument flight training, and real time in a real plane is VERY expensive. I can't log my FSX time, but it sure does help a ton with my training. The best feature of this "game" is its adherence to real life. the airplane flight dynamics aren't perfectly accurate, they are close enough. But the navigation systems, terrain, air routes, approaches, and airports are flawlessly accurate. I wouldn't reccomend FSX for anyone that doesn't have a fairly new computer with really nice graphics card and a TON of RAM. For a laptop, you should stick to an older version of Microsoft Flight Sim as this newest version will be WAY too slow on any laptop. A USB Joystick is all that is needed, but like all things, the more money you have the more fun it becomes. I have a yoke and pedal set (about $250) and two computer screens to seperate the guages and forward view. Some people go overboard by building an entire simulator with hydraulic motion simulating motors run by seperate computers and homemade interfaces. Do some google searching and you'll be amazed by what some people have come up with. If either of you have anymore questions, feel free to ask, I've been using Microsoft's flight sims for many many years.

I had fsx and went back fs2004. fsx is a memory hog Didn't like the graphic either ( unless you like desert landscape ). Got FSpassengers to go with fs2004 to add realism to it. FSpassengers rates you flight by having you earn "money" by having a good flight and taking care of your passengers. They also scream if you scare them too much. They have a free download at www.fspassengers.com. Until you buy, you can only use it for flight originating from KSFO. You don't need rudder pedals. If you want, you can make your own. There's plans on how to do it all over the flight sim community. But they're not required. I've used MSFS for many years back with version 2 on the Mac. It inspired me to get my private license in 2002. I have a cheap joystick for about $15 from Frys Electronics. Some people go nuts making their "flight deck". I'm studying for my IFR license and use it to practice approaches and to have fun. You can check out a couple sites I visit that have lots of addons: www.avsim.com and www.flightsim.com

I prefer x-plane I love designing my own planes and trying them out!

Flyin' Lion said:

I've wanted to get a flight sim, but only have a laptop. What else does someone need to play this, a joystick? What about the rudder, do you need pedals?

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I use mine on a Dell Inspiron 6000 laptop. Works fine. Frame rates are between 12-15 frames a second. Not as nice as my desktop (30+ frames a second) but very respectable. And useable.

I'm an instrument pilot working on commercial and I have never found it too useful for real life training, I could do approaches for Illinois, Indiana, Ohio and Wisconsin as those are the approach plates that I actually have, but other than that I'd just a guess as to what your DH or MDA is on an appraoch. I also wish they had an Piper Arrow in there, as that's what I'm flying now.

I use a logitech joystick that has rudder build in, and MTpilot, you need to turn off the autorudder. With the extra 300 and the new p-51 you need a lot of rudder to make a coordinated turn, and just to climb out full power.. especially the p-51 I think they listed it like 2000hp with the twin turbo setup. It's crazy, flying along ~150in Hg and 2500rpm.

So it's large shortcomings to me are, it needs the approach plates for all of the airports, it allready gives jeppesen charts for the missions so why not any other airports? Next it needs power charts and such for all the aircraft, heck some don't even have a reference for Vy, V1,R,2 etc. How do you push the limits without Vspeeds and performace charts.

Finally on the F-18, I know these stats are true: Climg rate: 45,000ft/min, service ceiling ~50,000, top speed Mach 1.8. The F-18 in the game can do none of those.

My computer is a Core2duo 4400 running 2.67Ghz with a Nvidia 6600OC and 1.5Gb DDR400. Runs ~30fps on mostly high settings.

z987k said:

I'm an instrument pilot working on commercial and I have never found it too useful for real life training, I could do approaches for Illinois, Indiana, Ohio and Wisconsin as those are the approach plates that I actually have, but other than that I'd just a guess as to what your DH or MDA is on an appraoch. I also wish they had an Piper Arrow in there, as that's what I'm flying now.

I use a logitech joystick that has rudder build in, and MTpilot, you need to turn off the autorudder. With the extra 300 and the new p-51 you need a lot of rudder to make a coordinated turn, and just to climb out full power.. especially the p-51 I think they listed it like 2000hp with the twin turbo setup. It's crazy, flying along ~150in Hg and 2500rpm.

So it's large shortcomings to me are, it needs the approach plates for all of the airports, it allready gives jeppesen charts for the missions so why not any other airports? Next it needs power charts and such for all the aircraft, heck some don't even have a reference for Vy, V1,R,2 etc. How do you push the limits without Vspeeds and performace charts.

Finally on the F-18, I know these stats are true: Climg rate: 45,000ft/min, service ceiling ~50,000, top speed Mach 1.8. The F-18 in the game can do none of those.

My computer is a Core2duo 4400 running 2.67Ghz with a Nvidia 6600OC and 1.5Gb DDR400. Runs ~30fps on mostly high settings.

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By paying for those upgrades to your simming experience. I have a FULL 747 aircraft for FSX. About 90% of the switches work. cargo hatches etc. Plus, I use the real plates to simulate approaches and such. You can set the exact ceilings in the weather options. Or there are other programs the will select the weather for you in all kinds of configs.

Yeah but you think they could at least get the airplanes right, I don't know as much about some of the others, so I can't say they missed them also.

As far as weather goes, I know you can change it, and I also use the approach plates that I have, but I'm not going to go out and buy them or print them off for every approach in the country. You would think they could at least provide out of date ones for the game, I mean they're free on the internet anyways, just a pain to get to while in flight sim.

Don't get me wrong, I love the game, but those are some of it's shortcomings that seem easy to fix.

You can print all the approaches you want off the internet. You don't have to print every one, just the ones you want. I know Helena, MT has an interesting Back coarse localizer approach, along with the stakk.two departure procedure. Helena is my favorite place to take instrument students.
And I can't think of which airport it is in Oregon that has a DME arc onto an ILS with an NDB hold on the missed.

As an instrument instructor, I can tell you that my students that spent some time at home with a simulator needed much less time in the airplane. It's not perfect, but it gets you staying ahead of the airplane and keeping your scan up. Then you can use the actual flying time to perfect things like reading back clearances and performing checklists at appropriate times.

MTpilot said:

You can print all the approaches you want off the internet. You don't have to print every one, just the ones you want. I know Helena, MT has an interesting Back coarse localizer approach, along with the stakk.two departure procedure. Helena is my favorite place to take instrument students.
And I can't think of which airport it is in Oregon that has a DME arc onto an ILS with an NDB hold on the missed.

As an instrument instructor, I can tell you that my students that spent some time at home with a simulator needed much less time in the airplane. It's not perfect, but it gets you staying ahead of the airplane and keeping your scan up. Then you can use the actual flying time to perfect things like reading back clearances and performing checklists at appropriate times.

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My instructor says the same. Even though Microsoft says "As real as it gets" it NOT reality by a long shot. Unfortunately, some who haven't flown think it is. It's a game that is realistic and not the other way around.

I fly RC planes.

I quit playing those games after I started flying for real, for me they seemed to throw me off doing the real deal.

MTpilot, our instructors like to find those approaches for when we use the FTDs. I know of one I did that was an arc to an arc to a backcourse.

Around here the VOR-A at 2k0 is probably the hardest approach we do in the airplane. At first glance it looks like the missed is identified by 234 off CMI and 12.2DME, but from 2k0 there's no way to do it that way, you have to use the 337 off MTO with the 234 cross radial off CMI, then you can use the DME off CMI once you're inbound. It messes a lot of people up the first time they do it.

http://www.airnav.com/depart?http://204.108.4.16/d-tpp/0711/06911VGA.PDF

btw, who do you work for in MT?

That is an interesting approach. I don't think I've ever flown a holding pattern identified by cross radials. In MT, the VORs are few and far between.
I'm going to use it in the FTD next time I have a student in there.

I work for Rocky Mountain College. I got my degree, then started instructing for them two years ago.

do you remember what approach was an arc to an arc to a backcourse?

I can't remember it off hand, I'll email my instructor and see if he knows, I did it last semester so it was a different instructor, don't know if they all know the same ones.

But I don't know if I should tell u to cause your students more harm

Honestly though we have a VOR here every 40nm. Also, if we're going to a fix, even if we are identifying it via DME and a radial, all the instructors expect us to have the cross radial in the other CDI, as DME could fail at any time

The insbruk approach on the flight sim mission is a nice one, IMC in the mountains, localizer to intercept a localizer and the MDA is like 5000ft above the airport.