Hacker News Reader

Comment by Buttons840 | Hacker News Reader

The thing I love most about flight simulators is the avionics. I would happily exchange flight realism for more depth in the avionics systems.

I especially love the 90's / early 2000's style with a mix of analog and digital instruments. Lot's of physical buttons, multiple small screens, a somewhat poor UI compared to modern standards, etc.

I'd love to play around more with these types of simulated systems. I almost literally would just like a button pushing simulator. Are there any other games / simulators which might scratch this itch for me?

View on HN

Go check out DCS! It's free to play this month due to COVID-19.

They have everything from WW-II steam gauges up to modern glass cockpit jets like the JF17 and things in between like the Mirage or the F14 tomcat. They're all extremely accurate simulations and you'll be reading 1000+ page manuals to learn what all the buttons do. It's literally button click simulator

I was going to suggest this. DCS is amazing. I literally powered up an F/A-18 from cold start and took off. So satisfying.

wow how is this not esports, this is edge of your seat stuff! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zt2W6flz9go

It is an e-sport! Just very niche!

We livestream dogfighting competitions https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gqUdcYvbzf8

X-Plane is pretty good. Several of the default small aircraft have a Garmin 530 GPS navigator from that era. It simulates interacting with the with buttons and knobs. Entering waypoint names is realistically slow :)

Falcon BMS. It has F16 incredibly well modelled. Uses core engine of old game (5$), but overhauled by free mod in very active development.

The depth of avionics and world are unmatched even today. The only lacking area is graphics, but is expected to be upgraded to direct x 11 in following patches

I have played that. I second the suggestion to others.

From xkcd's "Interplanetary Cessna":

> X-Plane is the most advanced flight simulator in the world. The product of 20 years of obsessive labor by a hardcore aeronautics enthusiast who uses capslock a lot when talking about planes, it actually simulates the flow of air over every piece of an aircraft’s body as it flies. This makes it a valuable research tool, since it can accurately simulate entirely new aircraft designs—and new environments.

https://what-if.xkcd.com/30/

I splurged and subscribed to X-Plane's global scenery and all planes option on Android.

While it's a limited experience compared to a 3-axis stick and throttle on a mid-high end PC, it's still a lot of fun to pick out places like Gibraltar, Saint Maarten, and other unique situations and fly in and out on HUD / trail view.

(I had my toe in the door, did three hours of PPL instruction, never could follow up on it. And many hours of sims all the way from Sublogic days.)

> I had my toe in the door

Heh, I had almost my entire body through the door, but stubbed my toe on the threshold! ~50 hours logged, a handful of "cross country" solos, did my night landings etc. Got sick for about a month, holidays, wedding coming up, just never got back into it. I actually lost my logbook for a number of years but I'm looking at it now on my shelf.... one of these days.

I have about ten hours and loved it but I just can't justify the cost. It's so expensive when I have so little disposable income despite making six figures

Not sure if you were asking, but it looks the new MS Flight Simulator returns to hardcore simulation territory.

My programming apprenticeship back in 2006 was working for an avionics subcontractor. For one project, we had hundreds of thousands of USD worth of real cockpit electronics hooked up to a copy of Microsoft flight sim. It was... awesome.

Try http://aerowinx.de.

Zibo 737 mod on X-Plane 11 will give you hell of a time. It's super realistic compared to stock 737 on X-Plane. Heck, I spend more time mucking about with FMC and inputting the flight plan than flying these days :)

I'm right there with you, I considered building my own home simulator cockpit for a while, but gave up due to ROI. They're so expensive and time consuming even for a low fidelity one, and I'd need to build a new one for every plane I want to fly.

If you're comfortable with and willing to spend the money on VR, I was able to buy a peripheral that allows interaction with 3D cockpits in simulators such as DCS. It's not as good as a real simulator, but it's an awesome experience at less than 10% the price.

Can you not select steam gauges and a GNS 430, for example?

If not, that seriously hampers this product as a training/refresher tool.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com