Vulkan is the next big thing for the flight sim industry.

I never truly got into flight sims to any level that might even approach [H]ardcore, but I was always a fan of the idea of them. The first one I ever played myself was on a cassette, way back in 1982, loaded into my at-the-time-quite-fucking-awesome Timex-Sinclair 1000 with the 16KB expansion pack (yes, really, 16 whole Kilobytes, yippee) and it was basically nothing but lines and some data on the screen (as seen here in the first 2 minutes or so):



Many years later came along Falcon by Spectrum HoloByte and that's when things changed and I got a lot more interested but it wasn't until Falcon 3.0 came out that things again changed and I for one became a lot more serious, but still not even close to [H]ardcore like some folk. Falcon 3.0 was fantastic, and years later after all the mods the community behind it came out with it just never really was surpassed or equaled in my own opinion, not even to this day.

I have to wonder what the original develops of Falcon 3.0 could do today - if they're not involved in the gaming industry anymore, maybe they are, I simply don't know - would be able to accomplish with some of the hardware that's being cranked out nowadays, it would obviously be some pretty mind-blowing stuff I'm sure.

I did go so far as to get a Thrustmaster Cougar H.O.T.A.S. one time, cost me like $400 but it was worth it with Falcon 3.0 and the mods I just mentioned, it was a lot of fun even with just one 21" 85 lb CRT display that sucked down a few hundred watts itself IIRC. :D
 
Tiberian said:
......way back in 1982, loaded into my at-the-time-quite-fucking-awesome Timex-Sinclair 1000 with the 16KB expansion pack (yes, really, 16 whole Kilobytes, yippee)
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Ah yes, the Timex 1000....... BEHOLD THE ORIGINAL SINCLAIR ZX81 IN ALL ITS GLORY! (sitting on my desk as I furiously wonder if a Sinclair master race meme should be created)


Y1CbsDE.jpg
 
Ah the good 'ol ZX81! Reminds me of the documentary 'Micro Men', Clive Sinclair was one hell of a character!

 
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I remember I had to work on a flight sim fanatics PC one time, he had two powered 20 port USB hubs chockers with controls, displays and crap - Looked impressive, but it was a nightmare to diagnose.
 
It's such a niche market and thus development of the engine is quite slow.

There is about a handful of solid flight simulators out there that are capable. I use DCS and there are many things that could be made a lot better if there were more developers and money, sadly there arent and thus we will be stuck with a decade old engine that runs on 1 core only ( 1 for sound as well, but that doesnt count ) and the lately introduced DX11 support.

Compared to any AAA game, Flight sims only have a fraction on the money at hand. This was is and will be the limiting factor in development.

..and yes...those setups are often combined with hair pulling when you look for failures or bad performance as there are many USB devices connected, some use SLI, 2-5 Monitor Setups, VR, additional software that runs aside for analysis like TacView, radio apps, HOTAS controller apps etc etc.. a myriad of combination and often the guy might be a good pilot but a bad admin for his own PC = BAD combo

Anything that gives me larger maps, more assets & objects on the map, more online Pilots without sacrificing fps and fluent simming is welcome.
 
I remember years ago when I bought my first actual Macintosh, the newer ones that were introduced in 2006 powered by Intel processors, I got the 20" model that was second to market (first series was Core Duo powered, then a few months later they revamped them with Core 2 Duo CPUs) even though I've used computers since the early 1970s I never owned or really spent a great deal of time using any Apple computers in the 1970s, didn't touch an actual Macintosh meaning the original one from 1984) till oh, 1992-ish as crazy as that sounds. In the Apple Store when I was getting it I was like "Ok, let's see what kind of software they have for this thing..." and I found X-Plane from Laminar Research sitting there on the shelf, the latest version updated for the Intel Core 2 Duo processors, and the box proudly proclaimed "6 DVDS OF SCENERY!!!" and I was thinking, ok, 6 x 4.7GB is about 28GB of data roughly and decided ok sure, I could play this probably.

I get it home and of course it's 7 DVDs in the box, one for the game (a 4.7GB disc aka DVD5) and code for and several airports but the other 6 DVDs were double-sided so at roughly 8.5GB per disc by the time everything was installed from the 1st disc through the entire set it was like 68GB total disc space used. :D

Yes that was quite large and at that time it was the largest "game" ever made for personal computers because of all that scenery data. And the sim itself played really well, surprisingly, even on that 1st generation Core 2 Duo processor with just 2GB of RAM in it.

But I still have fond memories of Falcon 3.0. Might have to build a retro gaming box sometime and load that up once again someday.
 
Aside from the device headache- what's a few extra USB ports?- I'd figure that VR would be a godsend for flightsims. Maybe Vulkan development would help?
 
I'm bad enough with the helicopter in BF4, ever seen a helicopter full of players crash backwards into the ground?
 
BulletDust said:
I'm bad enough with the helicopter in BF4, ever seen a helicopter full of players crash backwards into the ground?
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I've done that :D. Bad Company 2 was the worst.

Though I actually started to get good with them in BF3, and was/am arguably decent in BF4. I also gave up using an Xbox controller; nice as they are for sweeping movements, I can straight up snipe with a LIttle Bird using KVM.

And VR would *really* help for that. Can't control roll and yaw (how I configure the helis) and free look at the same time!
 
Aircraft in the Battlefield series are far easier to control with a proper controller as opposed to a keyboard and mouse. It's the only time I use a controller with my PC.
 
BulletDust said:
Aircraft in the Battlefield series are far easier to control with a proper controller as opposed to a keyboard and mouse. It's the only time I use a controller with my PC.
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They can't be called 'sims' anyway :)
 
DigitalPanhandler said:
uh, air warrior..... then after that I think I played some Microsoft combat flight sim, but my pc was definitely not up to the task.... recently got into War thunder, definitely a leap over AirWarrior. but airwarrior was the bee's knees in the 90's

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_Warrior
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I'm surprised you never went to Warbirds or the current king of online air combat, Aces High.
 
DCS is free, with 2 airplanes you can fly. Su-25T Attack aircraft and the TF-51 ( civil version of the famous P-51 Mustang ). ...but hey...it's HARD :)

digital combat simulator: https://www.digitalcombatsimulator.com

If you like it, you can buy many more modules, fixed wing aircraft as well as helicopters. Just do NOT expect to hop into the cockpit and take-off in 3 minutes.....rather NOT !

To get an idea about DCS, watch some YT videos about it ;)
 
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