Flight Simulator for PC?

[+Glafnazur]

Can anyone recommend a decent flight simulator for PC? The Microsoft Flight Simulator looks pretty good.

[Bottletopburly]

Think @Rons your man 

[Craig]

1 hour ago, Glafnazur said:

Can anyone recommend a decent flight simulator for PC? The Microsoft Flight Simulator looks pretty good.

 

P3D has the best high-fidelity simulations built for it (third party of course, and can be costly) and is based on FSX, the old MS Flight Simulator. It's good, but it looks quite dated by today's standards.

 

X-Plane 11 has a more modern engine for simulating flight using element blade theory (it models the actual air over the wings and fuselage), but it's eco system for addons isn't quite as mature as P3D. It has some good, and costly addons, but P3D has the gold standard on addons (PMDG 737, FSLabs A320) as it currently stands. Visually I prefer X-Plane 11 over P3D. X-Plane also has a thriving freeware market.

 

The new MS Flight Simulator is a visual joy and has been improving dramatically over the past few patches, but its eco system in terms of addons is far more limited as it's very much the new kid on the block. That said, due to its huge following, it already has a thriving market of freeware addons (mostly scenery with some aircraft) but big developers (PMDG) are working on bringing their aircraft to it.

 

It also depends on the spec of your PC. Flight sims are notoriously bad for performance due to what's being simulated, with stutters and micro-stutters being the norm. Flight sims are prone to being bottlenecked by the CPU, so a beefy CPU with good single-core performance is an advantage.

 

MS Flight Simulator is visually stunning, but it therefore puts a lot of strain on the graphics card if run at high settings. I have a GTX 1080 Ti, which is no slouch, and it just about manages good performance at 1440p high settings. MS Flight Simulator and P3D both use DirectX, so are natively Windows only.

 

X-Plane uses the Vulkan engine, which works on Windows, Linux and MacOS, and has seen massive performance improvements realised as a result. X-Plane 12 looks to be shaping up nicely too, though no word on a potential release date. I do find it visually more pleasing than P3D, but it's very subjective.

 

I have all three of these sims. If you want to get a flight simulator, don't want to have to spend hundreds making it look nice, and have a good PC, I'd say get MS Flight Simulator and watch it evolve. If you prefer a high-fidelity simulation over the visuals, and you don't mind it burning a hole in your pocket, I'd go for X-Plane 11 or P3D.

[+RonC]

Hi Dave, I fly FSX. I'd like to get FS 2020 but as you say the cost is prohibited for me as I would need a new top end PC!

I use lots of add-on's, planes, scenery etc and enjoy using it.

I've tried X Plane and Infinite Flight but still prefer FSX.

 

Ron

[+Graham]

A guy I work with is always raving about his flight simulator.

Just asked him what he uses and he tells me it is the MS Flight Simulator.

[+Glafnazur]

Thanks everyone, I'll have a look into these, I must admit I am leaning more towards the MS Flight Simulator at the moment.

[+Derbyshire Dave]

Hi Dave,

 I bought Microsoft Flight Sim but it was horrificly slow on my PC, and my PC is quite powerful. Dropped back to X-plane, which is good AND I think can ge a limited free demo to try it out. An attraction of x-plane is that it has a helicopter, which is challenging.

 

 The other thing I bought was the condor gliding simulator. I used to do a bit of gliding, and it is very realistic.. you can soar ridges and thermals.. check this out..

 

 

 

[+Glafnazur]

1 hour ago, Derbyshire Dave said:

Hi Dave,

 I bought Microsoft Flight Sim but it was horrificly slow on my PC, and my PC is quite powerful. Dropped back to X-plane, which is good AND I think can ge a limited free demo to try it out. An attraction of x-plane is that it has a helicopter, which is challenging.

 

 The other thing I bought was the condor gliding simulator. I used to do a bit of gliding, and it is very realistic.. you can soar ridges and thermals.. check this out..

 

 

 

 

That's really cool Dave. I think I'll look at the free demo of X-plane before I spend any money. 

[Craig]

2 hours ago, Glafnazur said:

That's really cool Dave. I think I'll look at the free demo of X-plane before I spend any money. 

 

What's the spec of your PC?

 

Some videos for you to look at, more so for the visuals: (these are mine)

 

X-Plane 11 (I'm using the freeware 737 by Zibo, along with a freeware scenery for Kai Tak (video 1) and payware scenery for Innsbruck (video 2))

 

 

 

P3D (I'm using the payware PMDG 747 aircraft along with freeware scenery for the airport)

 

 

I don't really have a video of Microsoft Flight Simulator, but there is the screenshot in my profile:

 

[+Glafnazur]

Wow, they are really cool Craig 🙂 

 

my Dell XPS 8930 PC specs are 

 

Windows 10
Memory    8 GB
Processor    Intel i7-9700
Graphics    GeForce GTX 1660 Ti 

 

[Craig]

Your PC meets the minimum specs for all of the simulators mentioned, which is good.

 

If I were to suggest an upgrade, it would be the memory. 8GB is the minimum spec for X-Plane 11 and Microsoft Flight Simulator, when running with no add-ons and lower settings. I'd add another 8GB to it, bringing it to the recommended amount of 16GB (16GB is the recommended memory for all the simulators, with X-Plane suggesting up to 24GB (I have 32GB)).

 

The CPU is nice and fast, and has good single-core performance, which is good for flight simulation.

 

The GPU exceeds minimum spec, which is good, so you should get decent performance in all of the simulators, depending on the settings.

[+Glafnazur]

1 hour ago, Craig said:

Your PC meets the minimum specs for all of the simulators mentioned, which is good.

 

If I were to suggest an upgrade, it would be the memory. 8GB is the minimum spec for X-Plane 11 and Microsoft Flight Simulator, when running with no add-ons and lower settings. I'd add another 8GB to it, bringing it to the recommended amount of 16GB (16GB is the recommended memory for all the simulators, with X-Plane suggesting up to 24GB (I have 32GB)).

 

The CPU is nice and fast, and has good single-core performance, which is good for flight simulation.

 

The GPU exceeds minimum spec, which is good, so you should get decent performance in all of the simulators, depending on the settings.

Thanks Craig, I'm certainly no computer expert so it's reassuring to hear from from someone who knows what they are doing. I'll look into adding more memory sometime and I'll download the demo version of X-Plane 11.