Flight Simulators

All you need to know about flight simulation

Home computer and commercial flight simulators

Introduction
Home based simulators

Introduction

Flight simulators are broadly grouped into two main categories:

Commercial simulators, used by airlines and the military, to train pilots in the most lifelike manner possible and
Home computer based simulators

Home based simulators

These simulators are designed to run on easily available hardware platforms - primarily Microsoft Windows and Mac OSX, and also, to a lesser extent, Linux. The most recent versions of the most popular flight simulator software titles are:

Microsoft Flight Simulator X (Windows only) and
X-Plane (for Windows, Mac OSX and Linux)

For as long as these simulators have been available, there has been argument amongst flight simulator enthusiasts about which one is "better". Given that "better" means different things to different people, I will leave the reader to judge for themselves. Demo versions of both Flight Simulator X and X-Plane are available for download.

There are a number of other popular flight simulators, including the previous version of Microsoft Flight Simulator, Flight Gear (Open Source) and Condor (a gliding simulator), in addition to numerous combat simulators.

The level of detail and hence realism achieved with the latest generation of simulators has reached the level where they now rival, and in some cases exceed, the graphical depiction found in commercial simulators.

The limiting factor remains the capabilities of current hardware. Despite Flight Simulator X having been released some 18 months ago, current hardware is only just starting to reach the stage whereby the simulator can be run with very high detail settings at reasonable frame rates. The simulator is, however, very usable and realistic at lower detail settings on more modest hardware.

Home based simulators have a huge network of add-on developers behind them, creating additional hardware (e.g. flight yokes, rudder pedals, throttles and even complete cockpits) and software (e.g. aircraft, scenery and airports) to enhance the feeling of realism attainable with the simulator.

There are hundreds of active flight simulator web sites published, covering almost every aspect of the hobby. Some of these are very well established and have been existence for a number of years, including Avsim, FlightSim.com and FlightSimX. These sites - and many others like them - publish the latest flight simulator news, have active user forums and extensive file libraries.