Jane's USAF game.

[Singlecoil]

Does anyone know of a better combat flight sim game than Jane's USAF? It is definitely the best one out there that I have tried and I've tried quite a few. Is there a successor to this one? I've tried F-18 and Israeli Air Force, but they weren't nearly as good in my book, and IL-Sturmovik totally sucked. Combat Flight Sim was OK, but it lacked the sense of missions and campaigns that USAF has.

Any other hopeless gamers out there?

I think I can feel the flames of the real fighter pilots...

 

[VNugget]

What qualities are you looking for in a "good" flight sim?

Both Jane's USAF and IAF are widely regarded (this is not just popular opinion either, but the games were advertised as such) as "survey sims," meaning that they modeled several different planes, but didn't go into any depth when modeling avionics. ( the analogous MFD pages of the different planes are the same, many of the switches don't work, etc.)

On the other hand, Jane's F/A 18 (and their older F-15) modeled only 1 plane, and went quite in-depth with the specific workings of the system. The other "big boy" in this arena, which you didn't mention, is Falcon 4, which models the F-16. It was originally published by Microprose, but then the rights were sold down the line by several companies. (Along the way, the source was leaked and the fan community made numerous improvements to the bug-laden original release.)

You can find a very helpful online community that deals with flight sims (mainly Falcon 4) at http://www.frugalsworld.com.

P.S. Just out of curiosity... what didn't you like about IL-2? I've only played the demo, and I haven't touched CFS, so I can't judge, but popular opinion regards IL2 as the hands-down best WW2 sim on the market today.

 

[Singlecoil]

I had heard the rave reviews of IL-2 myself and that's why I bought it. It ran like crap, though that was on a TNT2 video card w/ 32MB Ram. I tried and tried to get it to run better with various tweaks, then finally took it back. I have a G4 card now, I'm sure it would run on that.
Maybe I should look at IAF again, as I guess I like the 'survey sims'. I hadn't heard that term before, but you are right, they "simulate" a lot of different aircraft in the same manner.
Thanks.

 

[Hawker1]

Jane's USAF or MS Flight Sim '02?

I'm looking into getting one of these two games. I've never played either, so I want people's opinions about both.

I've heard nothing but good things about Jane's USAF. How much does this game cost?

For MS Flight Sim '02, I want the general aviation one. Like I said, I just want you guys' feed back on the two. I'm leaning towards this one just because it'll get me familiar with the general aviation aspect and prolly will help me in PPL practice.

One more ?, what about a joystick? What kind? and what all does it need to do? How much are these also? Thanks.

 

[SDF2BUF2MCO]

Sorry for a little thread creep here but has anyone tried the new Jane's WWII or MS WWII combat flying games? I've got the old WWII Jane's and Europe WWII MS. I like the Jane's better.

 

[GoldenEagle]

Lock On: Modern Air Combat

If you don't mind waiting, there is a great combat flight sim in the works that I have been reading about. It looks terrific. It has amazing graphics, and supposedly realistic physics and detailed cockpits.

Anyway, the game is called Lock On: Modern Air Combat.
http://www.lo-mac.com

It looks very cool and is scheduled to be released this summer. Go to there website to check out screens. Looks like this will be the first good combat flight simulator to be released in a while.

 

[Singlecoil]

Thanks for the link. Lock-on looks interesting.

For any fans of the old f117 game by Microprose, I just found a great DOS emulator on the web that will run just about any old dos game and make it work through any soundcard and joystick on Windows XP.
Search the web for this filename to install...

VDMSound-2.0.4-WinNT-i386.msi

 

[Anaconda]

this may be a little retro these days, but i always liked the original su-27 flight sim. granted the graphics weren't hot, and the manual was sim, but the level of acft detail was very high, and i thought the flight characteristics were also very good, of course that's based on my limited experience...