Aircraft nerds and gamers......

[TGS]

I grew up playing flight sims.....A-10 Attack!, and F/A-18 Hornet (creative title) were my favorite. Started flying for real in 1995. Flew some others. Have played IL2 Sturmovik particularly for the early war fighters that I love.


If you like flight sims, check out Digital Combat Simulator. This game is un-freakin-real. Every single actual function and button in the cockpit is live, and you actually have to fly it. P51? Yeah, you can't just hop in, hit the engine button and go. You've got to handle all of the fuel adjustments, magnetos, priming, etc. I've only flown the free "demo" portion of the game so far, but I imagine I'm going to buy into it. The game itself is free, and it costs money to buy each individual plane/campaign beyond the initial Sukhoi SU-25T and Mustang. So, I imagine it can add up to quite a bit of money, but holy cow.....I've never been in a sim this intense. According to the developers they've put approximately 50 man-years of work into it. I can only imagine they got it this detailed by use of actual fighter pilots.

I've only ever flown Cessna 150s, 152s, and Piper Cherokees......but shit, guys, this game is a real simulator unlike anything I've seen on a PC.

For a demo of how stupidly realistic and detailed it is, check out this video on carrier landings with an F/A-18C Hornet and the amount of nuance/precision required:

[einherjarvalk]

I've got a group of friends that is heavily invested into DCS. I've held off because I'm waiting for one specific module that I feel my whole life has been leading up to.

[TGS]

I'm excited to see that they have the F-5 Tiger II, Flanker and Hornet. The Viggen is also really neat to see, but also sort of weird because it's a very odd option. I'm a huge fanboy of the JAS39 Gripen, but I'll take the Viggen for now until I can fully channel my eurotrash dreams....

The Tomcat will be gnarly. When the heck are they going to have an F-4 Phantom!? Or F-8 Crusader, F-16, A-7 Corsair, Mig-29 Fulcrum, or...….heck, let's be honest. I just want all of them.



If you haven't downloaded DCS World, you should go ahead and do so. It's still crazy fun.

[einherjarvalk]

Modern Air Combat (MAC) is a "set" of aircraft that basically builds off the Flaming Cliffs 3 module for DCS World and includes the Fulcrum-A and Fulcrum-C along with a number of other aircraft; however, it should be noted that MAC will not reach the same level of "study sim" complexity that full modules such as Viggen, A-10C, F/A-18C, Mirage, etc. have, and aircraft that have full-depth complexity will be dumbed down in the MAC package.

If you're just getting in, it may be worth waiting for MAC to drop so you have some options and aren't being kicked into the deep end of the pool right away. I'm still waiting for Tomcat since it's the only airframe I have any interest in mastering, though I've dabbled in Flaming Cliffs 3's Eagle a bit previously.

[TGS]

If you're just getting in, it may be worth waiting for MAC to drop so you have some options and aren't being kicked into the deep end of the pool right away.

That's probably solid advice.

Which, on that tangent, I'd be interested to see our resident fighter jockies such as @GyroF-16 and @Triggerf16 start up the blank game in an F5 Tiger and see how it shakes out without any tutorial training. For any regular person we wouldn't know what the fuck to do, but in this game you can hit all the switches, levers and buttons like the real deal, and I imagine the F-5 would be awfully close to the T-38 Tweet they flew.

I've just found my new time-suck when I'm travelling overseas to keep me out of the troubles that our FBI brethern broke the news about today....

[SiriusBlunder]

This is nit-picky, but you mixed up the two trainers. They were the T-37 Tweet & the T-38 Talon.

[Peally]

Had the Tomcat and Hornet ordered within 10 minutes of them being for sale; DCS and IL-2 are my go-to flight sims and only communists would think two seaters with buddies aren't fun

The Viggen is cool but it's a very niche aircraft FWIW. Definitely a Viking plan-ahead-dump-missiles-run-home type jet versus something that can loiter around all day wreaking havoc like the A-10. Probably great in single player, but MP it really depends. The Mirage 2000C is also pretty cool for an old school fighter. Hell pretty much all the aircraft are cool in one way or another...

Anyone here wants to fly sometime hit me up on Steam (username Peally, with the doomguy icon), it's not hard to cobble together quick little missions to train or fight AI, or plop into multiplayer for the larger scale stuff




For multiplayer Discord is the usual VOIP program of choice these days but a lot of multiplayer servers also support SimpleRadio, which is integrated-into-DCS radio software that enables you to use the dials in the cockpit and such to tune to different channels through VOIP. It's pretty awesome once it's up and running. (example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gZVvbK6YFLI)

While I normally play around in SP with buddies MP can get fun. Servers like BlueFlag constantly run campaigns you can pop in and out of, with BlueFlag specifically having a site to keep track of the live situation (http://gadget.buddyspike.net/)

[Guerrero]

@TGS: we must have been separated at birth.

After the "P-51" thread, I've had the hankering to play a good combat flight sim, but they are no where near as popular as they once were. I played "A-10 Attack," "Their Finest Hour," "Red Baron," "Aces over Europe," "Aces Over the Pacific," the PacWar IL-2 versions, (we do not speak of the craven "Strike Commander"), not to mention the massively multiplayer on-line "Warbirds" and "Aces High"... and those are just the ones I can name off the top of my head.

I will definitely give this a look.

[JDM]

I Have never been so excited in my life.

Jane's Flight simulators were my only friends when I was a child (clearly).

TGS, THANK YOU!

[Peally]

The Tomcat will be gnarly. When the heck are they going to have an F-4 Phantom!? Or F-8 Crusader, F-16, A-7 Corsair, Mig-29 Fulcrum, or...….heck, let's be honest. I just want all of them.

F-4 is in development IIRC, F-16 has been hinted at, A-7 is getting an updated modernized model packaged with the F-14 but will be AI only until the future, Mig-29 literally got an upgraded flight model and trailer release this week (russian fighters are typically not clicky cockpit hyper in-depth planes due to security reasons regarding the Russian gubment, so they may be easier to learn at first). These are among many others currently listed as in progress of course.

When I say "in development" keep in mind the teams that work on these aircraft are relatively small and it takes them roughly 4 years to fully create one. People have been foaming at the mouth for Heatblur (third party developer) to release the Tomcat for a long time.