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Other circumstances, like finals, prevented me from picking up the final release, plus like I said I wasn't particularly inclined to actually spend the $60 for it. Later when more operators get added I might consider it, but until then I'll pass.

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For me it started in 1990 with Jetfighter 2, I remember looking at the back of the box and being amazed on how much better this game looked than any Nintendo game.

372890-jetfighter-ii-advanced-tactical-fighter-dos-screenshot-screaming.png

372896-jetfighter-ii-advanced-tactical-fighter-dos-screenshot-target.png

After that I was hooked and owned just about every combat flight sim since(Falcon 3.0, EF2000, Strike Commander, all the Microprose and later Janes games) For awhile a few of us ARCers (myself,KoenL, Berkut, Benner) got together and played IL-2 1946 with Ultrapack Mods, Battlefield 2/Bad Company 2/ and Battlefield 3. Sadly those days seem to be gone :(/>/>/> Lately I have been trying to get into DCS, but being a study sim it takes a lot of hours to get into it.

Edited by mikeyc5usaf
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For me it started in 1990 with Jetfighter 2, I remember looking at the back of the box and being amazed on how much better this game looked than any Nintendo game.

372890-jetfighter-ii-advanced-tactical-fighter-dos-screenshot-screaming.png

372896-jetfighter-ii-advanced-tactical-fighter-dos-screenshot-target.png

After that I was hooked and owned just about every combat flight sim since(Falcon 3.0, EF2000, Strike Commander, all the Microprose and later Janes games) For awhile a few of us ARCers (myself,KoenL, Berkut, Benner) got together and played IL-2 1946 with Ultrapack Mods, Battlefield 2/Bad Company 2/ and Battlefield 3. Sadly those days seem to be gone :(/>/>/>/> Lately I have been trying to get into DCS, but being a study sim it takes a lot of hours to get into it.

And here I was thinking I was the only one to play jf2!!

Loved that game.

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Battlefield 4 gamer here (with 1.88 k/d ratio) ! I only do first person shooters.

Not too bad. I held a 1.91 k/d ratio on Red Orchestra 2/Rising Storm for a long time. Then I switched roles and tried to get my team to stop 'camping' and assault the enemy objectives. With accounting for massive artillery losses, my k/d now rests around 1.6.

What's you guys' Steam handles? I'd like to friend some of you.

Search for mine, Peanut Butter & Pork.

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For me it started in 1990 with Jetfighter 2, I remember looking at the back of the box and being amazed on how much better this game looked than any Nintendo game.

372890-jetfighter-ii-advanced-tactical-fighter-dos-screenshot-screaming.png

372896-jetfighter-ii-advanced-tactical-fighter-dos-screenshot-target.png

After that I was hooked and owned just about every combat flight sim since(Falcon 3.0, EF2000, Strike Commander, all the Microprose and later Janes games) For awhile a few of us ARCers (myself,KoenL, Berkut, Benner) got together and played IL-2 1946 with Ultrapack Mods, Battlefield 2/Bad Company 2/ and Battlefield 3. Sadly those days seem to be gone :(/>/>/>/> Lately I have been trying to get into DCS, but being a study sim it takes a lot of hours to get into it.

Nice screen shots.

This was my intro to pc gaming/WWII history/aviation

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Awesome thread! :lol:

I started playin' Dynamix's Aces Of The Pacific back in 1992; I had this 80486-based machine at 100 MHz which microprocessor was pretty fast at that time. Dunno whut happened to the video card shortly after, 'cause when I changed it, graphics were real crappy by comparison.

Then in 1993 Chris Roberts released Strike Commander 'n' I was instantly hooked. It was quite an original simulation for the time; it was a game based on a merc squadron which flew missions all over the world in order to get by.

Soon afterwards computer world became demandin,' 'n' ya'd need brand new, faster machines with top-notch hardware in order to run games; I needed to get a new machine to play Digital Image Design's F-22 ADF, then yet another machine to play Eagle Dynamic's Lock-On :rolleyes:

This is mostly whut put me off gettin' new simulations...

There are a couple of games, Wings Over Israel 'n' Strike Fighters 2 Israel, that I got 'n' couldn't even run 'cause of hardware compatibility issues.

I take it that DCS World has got nuthin' to do with Lock-On?

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DCS World is Lock-On repackaged and "updated." It has some real nice advantages, but the business model is to sell some of the necessary updates. It really isn't apparent at first, but when they sell their products promising to deliver features, which then get restated to be pay-updates, then you start to catch on. It might be worth it to try if you get the necessary system for it, but it will take an IMMENSE amount of time to become half-competent at.

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  • 3 months later...

Resurrecting this old thread for what I thought was a pretty good video from DCS. I think they tweaked the color a bit, but I don't think any other changes have been made. Keep in mind that not all of the aircraft shown are "flyable" within the sim (the F-16 isn't, for example). I think it looks good, though. This is DCS 2.0, which is still in alpha/beta.

Edited by Ken Cartwright
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My gaming started in 1982 when I was 19 and bought my Atari 800.

My first flight sim was subLOGIC's Flight Simulator II on said Atari 800:

Im with you on the Atari, mine was a 2600. It looks so old now. Its still up in the loft in my parents house in its rather tatty box with a handful of games. No idea if it still works.

Progressed to a smaller version of the same machine, the old one went into my brothers room.

These days the only PC game I play on a regular basis is World of Tanks. And then only the German tank lines.

I started playing on the RU server when it was still a limited user beta version. Open to all comers but there were not many players and only a handful of tanks.

Changed server about the time the KV-1 was split into KV-1/KV-2 and the price of the Lowe almost doubled.

I play other games, Im a Resident Evil addict, GameCube and PSX (played on a PSP), also play NES and SNES games through an emulator... passes the time waiting for my turn at work (sometimes the links can leave you without a thing to do for 6-7hrs at a time)

Ive just started buying some old PC components to put together an old Pentium III based system so I can play some of the old games.

Got a load of old games that mirror my PSX>PSP collection but not all PSX games will work properly so an old PC is a must for games like C&C Red Alert.

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  • 2 months later...

I'm really enjoying playing Silent Hunter, Rise of Flight and DCS. I also like strategy games from Paradox such as Victoria and Hearts of Iron.

SH is awesome, especially with the add-ons out there that increase realism, graphics, etc. I play at full realism (my one aid is automatic firing calculations). Trying to survive a patrol anytime from mid-44 onwards is incredibly difficult. At the end, my goal was to simply get back alive, nearly impossible to penetrate a convoy and sink anything. Give you some idea of what those poor u-boot crews were up against.

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I haven't played IL-2 for quite some time, really need a better PC for it. I had a lot of the mods, extra aircraft, etc. Was fun playing Sabres vs Migs with missiles. I've got all the usual Call of Duty and shoot'em up stuff, also Silent Hunter III on the laptop that I pull out every now and again.

I've got a rather large World of Tanks garage, but have been playing World of Warships a lot recently. It's really a great game.

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  • 1 year later...

I Wanted to raise the question if the flight or air traffic simulators help improve aviation knowledge and could it benefit you in becoming a pilot?

for example, there's this game I've discovered called tower! 3d pro, its basically air traffic control simulator. i've linked the trailer below, let me know your thoughts:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FtGBnmtm3Kc

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Man, I'd love to try out some of these new flight sims that let you play online. But all I have at home is a laptop, and not a particularly powerful one. Heck! I don't even own a joystick anymore, nor would I know where to find one. 

 

The last sim I played was Pacific Air Combat or some-such. Probably about 10 years ago. I remember how awesome it was when I dove on a zero in my wildcat, led a bit, squeezed the trigger for less than a second, and watched him explode into a ball of flame. Which I immediately flew into and died! :) 

These Aces High and Rise of Flight games look awesome. 

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8 hours ago, Beefjack105 said:

I Wanted to raise the question if the flight or air traffic simulators help improve aviation knowledge and could it benefit you in becoming a pilot?

for example, there's this game I've discovered called tower! 3d pro, its basically air traffic control simulator. i've linked the trailer below, let me know your thoughts:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FtGBnmtm3Kc

Beefjack

I am a retired military pilot, and have worked for a major simulator company (CAE in Montreal) as a full-flight sim test pilot, as well as an instructor on the Challenger 604 (using full-flight sims), and currently work teaching groundschool at an aviation college.

Flight Sim games can certainly help develop your general aviation knowledge. You can learn about terminology, aircraft part names, a bit about weather, and other systems. The danger is that there is little structure to the games, and it is easy to develop bad habits or to learn things that are not necessarily true.

 

As an example, I flight-tested a military simulator early in its development (Canada's equivalent to the T-6A Texan II, used as the USAF/USN/USMC joint training turboprop aircraft). The way the simulator behaved during take-off, I was unable to drive it straight down the runway and get it airborne without crashing, even after half a dozen tries. I called the engineer that did the flight model on to the site, and he was able to take off very nicely. The simulator was poorly programmed. We got it to work after a few weeks of investigation and software fixes. A few weeks after that, I went to Raytheon's plant in Wichita KS, and flew the real aircraft a couple times. Taking off was a complete no-brainer (dead easy). This validated my experience in the sim; when I went back to Montreal, I got the engineers to make a few more tweaks so that it was as easy to fly as the aircraft, and represented it properly. The point of this story is that someone who learns to fly a simulator, if it does not represent an aircraft's responses perfectly, can be very good at it (like my friend the software engineer), but that skill set does not transfer to an ability to fly the real thing.

A game remains a game. Much of the way it responds is not close to a real aircraft's performance. While you can learn about how to operate the systems, and make it fly, you are not really that far ahead compared to someone who has zero simulation experience with flight sim games. 

 

At my aviation college, we have 6 PC stations equipped with Microsoft Flightsim X (FSX), and physical control panels with yokes, throttles, and rudder pedals. The students play with these when they like to, but their main focus is to practice instrument procedures, and learn more about how complex aircraft systems work. This game is quite well done, and there are others that represent complex aircraft quite well. In our case, we use an add-on from a company called PMDG. You can find it described here: http://www.precisionmanuals.com/pages/product/FSX/ngx8900.html

I do a 2-hour "lab" with the students in the multi-engine program, where they follow a tutorial that is contained in the PMDG product. It is a self-paced flight from Gatwick, England to Schiphol, The Netherlands. The plug-in to the game from PMDG provides a full-featured Flight Management System (FMS), which allows the students to practise creating and executing a flight plan, and to use the simulator's autopilot and electronic instruments. Hand-flying these simulators is pretty much useless, because the flight model is marginal for those flight regimes, and the control response is not at all like a large aircraft. It reacts and feels different. The autopilot and FMS, however, are very educational. By following the pdf included with the game that leads the player through the flight, they learn a lot about how the systems work, and how to operate them.

 

Short version: Flight simmers do learn a bit about flying, but those skills do not transfer well to the real thing. Following a structured program like the PMDG tutorial helps, but there is a huge amount that you do not learn, such as air regulations, weather, aircraft performance, weight and balance... and many, many other aspects of flying.

It is fun, though!

ALF

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