Flight Simulation is a popular hobby for people like me who like airplanes and want to experience flying their favorite planes at home. Flight simulation has grown considerably since its beginnings from Microsoft Flight Simulator 1.0 in 1979, with Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 and its photorealistic modeling of the entire planet Earth bringing even more interest into the hobby.
One of the most popular and successful consumer flight simulators is X-Plane, developed by Laminar Research, which is currently on version 11 (X-Plane 12 will come out next year). X-Plane sets itself apart from other flight simulators due to its unique "blade element theory" aerodynamic model that makes it easier for people to design aircraft realistically for the simulator and make it useful tool for even designing real world aircraft.
Speaking of designing aircraft in X-Plane, most flight simulators come with a set of base aircraft, but these aircraft are generally not fully accurate simulations of the real thing, especially in regards to jet airliners. Developing a study level (which basically means as close to the real thing as possible) aircraft takes an unbelievable amount of time, effort, and resources, but simulators like X-Plane allow for 3rd party developers to create their own aircraft for the simulation. This is not only allowed, but encouraged not only by Laminar Research and the developers of other flight simulators. What has grown from this is an organic addon market where members of the flight simulator community have come together to re-create the world's most iconic aircraft for their favorite simulators. This is nothing new, and older, more mature simulators like Flight Simulator 2004 and Flight Simulator X have just about any aircraft you can think of available in addon form. Being a newer simulator, X-Plane's 3rd party addon market is smaller but still very impressive. Entire companies, like FlyJSim, FlightFactor, iniBuilds, Touliss, Felis, and many more exist for the sole purpose of creating and selling ultra realistic airplanes for X-Plane 11. Incredible websites like x-plane.org are dedicated to the sharing of these addons, which aren't even limited to planes, but also include scenery and plugins that add technical features to the game like an improved pushback system, passenger loading and satisfaction monitors, and AI traffic.
While there are
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Hi I woke up one day decided to wanna learn how to fly Any tips for a complete noob.. I ride motorcycles I read it helps alot Any online flight simulations out there that you guys recommend? Or is that a waste of time?
Obviously going to a helicopter school but I wanna know more or have some kinda better knowledge already if that makes sense
Do aviation units have simulators pilots can practice on when they aren't flying the actual aircraft? How often do pilots get to use them? And how accurate to the real thing are they?
Answer here:
I've had the thrustmaster twice before for Xbox and had serious drifting issues on both. They also incorporate some serious hoops for you to jump thru to get it replaced, so I didn't bother a second time in 3 months. That's been atleast a year ago so I don't know if the quality has improved. Really want to get into Sim mode. any suggestions would be appreciated. Blue skies
I found this Wolfram System Modeler package example online which looks promising but can't find the actual package for it. I have stl models of the plane I want to test, I just need a software that can take propeller/control movements and find the lift, thrust, drag, etc. and if possible stress on the aircraft body.
Anyone know something I can use?
Just purchased a cockpit simulator for racing and flight simulator. I'm looking for a 65" TV that I can install onto the stand which puts the TV right in front of me.
I'm looking for something which is 120hz at 4k and HDMI 2.1.
Looking for suggestions in the UK, the cheaper the better
Hey all, thanks in advance
Was a flight sim game, loaded from tape.
Was third person, you could see the back of your plane and the ground below you was "3D", in the form of a wireframe with maybe some light texturing. I had both a colour and a greenscreen Amstrad and I only remeber this game being black and white.
I can't remember if it was a war sim, but given the plethora of war based flight games in the Amstrad era, it's very likely.
It may also have been available on the Commadore, Speccy etc - as most games were back then.
Hello! I've been for over a year using X-Plane 11 and MSFS, but from this summer I was already tired of it. I using VATSIM, SimBrief, charts, Volanta, flying in VA. Can you suggest things that can still catch on for hundreds of flight hours? I'm just tired and wanted something new.
Thank you;)
I am working on a proof-of-concept flight sim demo in UE4. It works quite nice, but the current map I bought on the marketplace is rather small and it took me some time to optimize it for VR.
I am looking for a larger map where it takes a few minutes to fly from the edges of it with a helicopter. It is for an internal demo, it does not need to be specific, however it should be something which looks good faraway (still has some efficient foliage display) and very performant for VR. I see some packages on the marketplace which could work, but as I know there is no refund for these, so I am not sure which one to try. Do you have a suggestion?
