The Simulation market has been around for a long time. It’s still here and bigger than most people think. We know about Flight Simulators with their hardcore followers, but what else is out there?
Well surprisingly, after doing a little bit of digging around, there are a LOT of simulation games. Straight away, I’m going to discount things like SimCity, just because those sorts of games are more of a management game, rather than a hands-on simulation of something from every-day life.
As mentioned, this is probably the most well-known simulator, and is so well supported that you can buy hardware add-ons for the game, including proper yokes, rudder pedals and throttle controls. And that doesn’t even count the huge number of software add-ons, with new scenery, airports, aircraft – you name it.
For the truly enthusiastic, the game comes complete with a very good Air Traffic Control system, ILS systems at airports, with all the correct approaches you would expect. And the detail inside the cockpit has to be seen to be believed – the aircraft feel & look as per their real-life counterparts. Of course, this is not a lot of fun for the casual gamer as there is no “achievement” other than completing a journey. There are no timetables, or anything to stick to, it’s completely left open to the gamer to work out what they want to accomplish. There are, however, lots of missions which are also available and can be completed, to give the casual gamer a reason to play the game. The various tutorials, from learning the basic controls, to flying IFR, are there to help too.
There are other civilian-based flight simulator games like FlightGear (open-source), but most are of the military type, focusing on dog-fighting and missions. IL-2, and the classic F-16 are two that spring to mind in this genre.
Flight Simulator is the best system for the home, accurately simulating the physics and flight characteristics of the aircraft. Born in 1982, as version 1, Flight Simulator X, released in 2006, is the 12th version of the game – and hopefully not the last. ACES studios, owned by Microsoft, were closed in January 2009, so the future of this long-running game series is unknown.
