Modern air combat flight sims?

[Burning Bridges]

No one posts about flight simulation any more?

some time ago I got myself a new flightstick. It's very good, does not cost much (slightly under 100$) and I fly much better with it.

https://flightsimcontrols.com/product/vkb-sim-gladiator-mk-ii-joystick/

Russian made (or at least Russian designed) it has MaRS sensors, very rugged, good quality and very precise. I learned in recent years that "Made in Russia" = made to last for life, as Made in Germany used to be in the 20th century.

I initially wanted the 300$ VKB combat stick but it is never available, plus it would eventually gets me in the range of 1000$ for joystick, throttle and rudders together. And I actually hate setting up all this equipment on my desk. The Gladiator is only 1 piece, sits perfect on the desk and is thereby hassle free. I also think that with the shitload of buttons + throttle I actually have a complete solution at a fraction of the price. Of course it does not make up for a HOTAS but for civilian planes I found that the mini throttle is more than adequate.

 

[Burning Bridges]

The real reason for my post is that Steam still has a sale on X-Plane 11 until the 7th July.

I'd recently gotten into X-Plane and it now gets my entire flying time. Out of the box it looks like shit but after I spent a week downloading stuff it looks like this

It is not as realistic as DCS but flying from A to B is so much better. At least since I went the extra mile and installed those crazy orthophoto terrains. It took me a week but I downloaded all of Spain, Portugal and the Canary Islands in Zoom 17 to 19. It looks spectacular. The only downside: 500 Gbyte in terrain data for 2 countries. Yes Gigabyte not megabyte! https://www.spainuhd.es/p/que-es-spainuhd.html

Compared with DCS maps this feels still huge. I can fly several hours in Spain in any direction without leaving the high resolution area. The world won't end like in DCS where a supersonic jet reaches one of the borders in 15 minutes. Even if I start at the coast Spain is almost completely surrounded by water and that also helps.

Framerate is a bit hit and miss and definitely lower than DCS. But I got that worked out and have near constant 60fps (it was more work than DCS). X-Plane still uses OpenGL but Vulkan rendering is coming late 2019 early 2020 and will probably remedy that completely.

Freeware addons are also much better than DCS. Some images from the freeware 737 (the ZIBO 737-800 which is sort of THE must have freeware addon)

 

[J_C]

No one posts about flight simulation any more?

some time ago I got myself a new flightstick. It's very good, does not cost much (slightly under 100$) and I fly much better with it.

https://flightsimcontrols.com/product/vkb-sim-gladiator-mk-ii-joystick/

Russian made (or at least Russian designed) it has MaRS sensors, very rugged, good quality and very precise. I learned in recent years that "Made in Russia" = made to last for life, as Made in Germany used to be in the 20th century.

I initially wanted the 300$ VKB combat stick but it is never available, plus it would eventually gets me in the range of 1000$ for joystick, throttle and rudders together. And I actually hate setting up all this equipment on my desk. The Gladiator is only 1 piece, sits perfect on the desk and is thereby hassle free. I also think that with the shitload of buttons + throttle I actually have a complete solution at a fraction of the price. Of course it does not make up for a HOTAS but for civilian planes I found that the mini throttle is more than adequate.

At first glance it looked good for me, but it seems it has barely any buttons on the stick itself. Although for civilian planes you don't have to juggle so many systems I assume.

 

[Burning Bridges]

Yes that's correct.

The pinky switch is super inconvenient and you have only one hat switch. (but I can probably build my own ergonomic pinky switch by just glueing a small piece of FIMO soft to the button )

It works for civilian sims. I can use the 2 triggers for functions like reset view and stuff as there are no guns. And with the 2 modes and extra buttons I actually have 4 times more functions I will ever need. I hardly use the buttons and mostly just hit the keyboard (for example who needs a Gear down button when you can just hit G twice during a flight).

Another thing is trim which is more precise when I put it on the keyboard, because the key update rate is very high and therefore makes smaller adjustments.

Thats why the precise MaRS axis input is more important to me than a lot of functions on the stick. The stick for me is to stear the airplane, not carry a whole keyboard on it.

In DCS it was usable too, although I probably need a separate throttle with zoom and look around. But then this really becomes a non issue.

 

[Burning Bridges]

I am super happy with X-Plane 11 and flying civilian airplanes. I have more fun than with combat simulations because I can do a lot of actual flying, and the cockpits are challenging enough.

It does not replace a holiday in Spain, but the flying part can be done from the computer nowaways.