Flight sims...dead and buried?

J

jamesrickards

Guest
Is it me or has anyone seen a good flightsim these days? :(

not taking IL2 (as this is old aircraft) :D

I recall only 'LOCKON' as the most up-to-date 'NEW aircraft' flight sim! -and that was BAD...really BAD! :eek:

You would think with all this new technology we would seem some quite fantastic environments, plane models etc etc

Im really looking to put my sidewinder2 back through its pace's!!!

Cheers
 
Yep, they're making new flight sims with huge selections of weapons, including gravity cannons, custom skins, bullet time dogfights and rewind options and you'll carry out missions in Vietnam and WW2 gunning down the comical communists and nazis
 
MS flight sim 04?
 
PiePie said:
Yep, they're making new flight sims with huge selections of weapons, including gravity cannons, custom skins, bullet time dogfights and rewind options and you'll carry out missions in Vietnam and WW2 gunning down the comical communists and nazis


are you just trying to 'up your posts' cause thats a rubbish answer!

or am i missing s.thing? :suicide:
 
While we're on the subject of post upping I might as well have a go :)

I can't really see the appeal of flight sims. Most of them need a manual the width of three Bibles before you get going and it takes three attempts to get off the ground and don't mention landing.

I think that's what discourages newcomers and gamers - accessibility - there's a lot of effort needed before you can use a flight sim properly with the realism settings on full.

As you can tell I don't like flight sims. The last one I played was Gunship 2000 on the Amiga so maybe I'm not the best person to comment on this. Sims aren't dead though. I see that Silent Hunter III has just come out - The problem with them, as I see it, is that they take a lot of effort to code (physics and realism etc.) so Flight Sim coders don't have the same output as, say, FPS ones.

Val
 
jamesrickards said:
are you just trying to 'up your posts' cause thats a rubbish answer!

That takes me back. I remember people complaining to the mods about people they suspected of posting for the sake of postcount on emulation forums, as if it was some sort of status symbol lol

I guess my real response should be because flight sims are a niche market now, and most developers would sacrifice catering for niche in favour of the masses - usually by recycling ideas that have proven popular
 
Unfortunatley, flight sims along with quality driving games for the pc are a dying breed - I've upgraded my pc to the nth degree including the purchase of the saitek s52 joystick system but find that theres no flight sim to really push my system, IL2 sturmovik is great but its got to be at least over 2 years old!
 
The last flight sim I enjoyed was F117 but for some reason I lost my saves and lost intrest after that. It was a relatively easy flight sim although the graphics where nothing to write home about.

I use to like playing flight sims on the Amiga such as Interceptor and a couple from Microprose. I also likes Wings albeit more arcade. I bought 3 flight sims on the PC I never was able to get into as they were too deep for me Apart from F117 I use to play Flight Sim but there was really not to much to it apart from flying round.
Oh there was one with a helicopter that you picked up ammo and shields and thing on the way through the game and ended up going inside a mountain with it but that again was more arcade. Anyone remember what it was called?
 
Sounds a bit like Choplifter, but I can't remember a polygon version
 
There have been some great flight sims over the years but I must admit that they are becoming fewer & far between these days!

The last one I actually played was IL2 but that came out back in 2001! :eek: 4 years ago now!

The first flight sim that really spent a lot of time on was Gunship on the C64 and the Speccy. That was a superb game for it's time and it was rather satisfying sneaking up on a T74 behind a hill and then popping up over the crest to take it out with a maverick!

The next ones that really got my attention were FA-18 Interceptor and Falcon on the Amiga! These were very impressive in their day and the sight of an FA-18 taking off from a carrier was superb!

After those came possibly my all time fave flight sim.. F19 Stealth Fighter, again on the Amiga. The whole point about this one was to fly low, at the correct speeds and using the terrain to remain undetected until you reached your target. It was great fun and very rewarding completing missions by successfully avoiding radar detection.

I also played the Comanche games, which were good fun, if a little arcadey. These may be the ones that you are on about Garrett.

I must say that I have been tempted by FS2004 but have yet to make a purchase. It would be good to see some new sims hit the market though as i'm sure the quality would be outstanding today! :thumbsup:
 
In my opinion anything with fighters, missiles, and explosions stops being a flight sim and becomes a shoot em up.

Only a game like MS Flight sim can be a real flisht sim.
Im not saying only MS can make them, im just saying that others dont make them coz they simply dont have the same appeal as shoot em ups which always sell.

And with MS flight sim being so well established, most other makers cant be bothered going up against that sort of competition considering how limited the market for sims is at the moment anyway.

Its a shame, but its a reality.
 
AML said:
In my opinion anything with fighters, missiles, and explosions stops being a flight sim and becomes a shoot em up.

Only a game like MS Flight sim can be a real flisht sim.
Im not saying only MS can make them, im just saying that others dont make them coz they simply dont have the same appeal as shoot em ups which always sell.

And with MS flight sim being so well established, most other makers cant be bothered going up against that sort of competition considering how limited the market for sims is at the moment anyway.

Its a shame, but its a reality.

I'd say some combat based sims are shoot em ups (The likes of Ace Combat for example) but there are some pretty serious and accutate air combat simulators about. IL2 and Combat Flight Simulator both fall firmly into the Sim catagory. Going back a bit EF2000 was also a very detailed and accurate sim.

You are right in that it's very niche market though as the majority of people prefer games that make concessions so that you don't have to read 20 pages, spend an hour or two and have to use multiple commands just to get an aircraft airborne. Sims like IL2 get this very right IMO as they allow the user the option to play with full realism, or to take a more casual approach and just jump in for some simplified combat.

I guess at the end of the day a video game and a Simulator are different things though. A game also has to provide entertainment and be accessible to a wide range of games players. A simulator on the other hand has to provide a highly accurate representation of the real world activity that it is simulating and the entertainment factor doesn't come into it. Even MS Flight Sim makes several concessions so that it still remains a game but it is the closest video game so far to a true simulator.
 
I had F16 interceptor for the Amiga too. I couldn't get the hang of the bugger. I spent ages trying to take off from the carrier, circle round then land on it again and I buggered up every time.

Give me Elite 2 any day, that's my kind of "flight sim".
 
PiePie said:
Sounds a bit like Choplifter, but I can't remember a polygon version
I just remeberd the and it was called Extreme Assault. I remember you started of taking out some other helicopters, then progressed to the next stage and took out a convoy, then you took out some tank things, than help some prisoners escape, Then down a big tunnel.
See the link for more info.
 
I'd like to buy a flight sim....I'm going to start to do a PPL soon so would love to mess around on the PC practicing my landings, take offs etc :) Don't really want a gunship sim for that though :) more of a little two seat plane that the majority are going to find boring.
 
Looks alright for a P1 generation game, Garret. Was Zeewolf ever made for the PC?
 

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