I've heard so much about this series but I have no idea what it's about. I've always been interested in what kind of things you can do and how the gameplay is. Does anyone here have any experience with this game? It seems to be a very hyped game, especially with the new one that is out or about to come out.
I played it in a hobby shop one time. They had it set up on a little RC controller, and you were flying an RC plane, 'twas awesome. But it really is a flight sim, it's just too complicated for me to have fun with it.
I've been into MS Flightsim for about 5 yrs. and got my real pilot's license about three years ago. My flightsim experience probably saved me quite a bit of training expense because I already knew a lot. Like a lot of things, it depends on how deep you want to get into it. There are tons of free airplanes to download, and there's a whole cottage industry of payware for it. There's also a ton of help online. Basically, you fly airplanes around just like pilots do, only his time around MS tried to appeal more to the "gamer" mentality and also included missions, e.g., in one you're a helicopter pilot who has to rescue workers from an oil-rig fire before it blows them and you into a million pieces. In the past the way to "beat" flightsim was to practice for and take the various license/ratings checkrides, up to and including the one for ATP (Airline-Transport Pilot). It was tough to begin with and made tougher by a lil bug in the program, but it was doable. Prolly the biggest mistake new users make is jumping right into the big airliners. These are hard to fly. Real pilots fly for thousands of hours before they get anywhere near them. So instead of trying a small single-engine airplane and flying low and slow, they hop into a 737, crash a few times, and say "fack it."
I play it as well, and like JZL also have my real pilot's license. It is a lot of fun and you can learn a lot about flying with it.
I had fun with the last version thanks for a nice joystick/throttle. I installed tons of mods so I had extra planes and neat effects. It supported multiple monitors (which would've been awesome) but I never got it working quite right. The F14/F16/F22 were sweet though. I also downloaded a Space shuttle - that thing hauled ass! The game itself is rather bland if you don't enjoy flying planes because the objectives are usually along the lines of "fly to this airport" or "fly to that airport".
I've thought abput getting it just for the experience and the fact that it's something totally different from shooting shit and blowing things up. Still may try one of the cheaper older versions that don't cost much and break out the old joystick. I used to play US Navy Pilot back in the windows 95 days. it wasn't too bad, the carrier landings were fun and challenging.
