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#1
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PC flight sim for training?
I have started on practical IFR training in the real world. (Vans
RV-9, hopefully RV-10 soon; mostly glass cockpit.) I do ok on precision flying, but I would definitely like to practice patterns, approaches, etc., at home before I go. just too few approaches per training hour. Fortunately, it is the year 2004 now, so hopefully, there are now pretty decent flight sims to work on a reasonably hi-end home computer. Right? choices seem to be "on top", "x-plane", "fs2004", "jepp flitepro". I looked for a comparative review of these, but could not find one. any opinions on what works well would be highly appreciated. help, please. sincerely, /iaw |
#2
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I used (and continue to use for recurrency practice) Jepp's FlightPro.
I would recommend it, but not necessarily over the rest. My requirements were to have something that I could practice procedures with. FlightPro has no terrain graphics, but I don't care about that. There are three planes to fly (a 172, a bonanza, and one other I can't think of right now). It has approaches to almost every airport in the country (very handy to shoot the approach the night before a lesson). I would recommend a yoke (I have CH Products and it works just fine). You can get rudder pedals, but I'm not sure they are worth it. You can turn the plane just fine without them, and, while I usually land at the end of an approach (after going missed a few times), I don't care if the plane lands a bit sideways due to a cross wind. FlightPro (as do the others, I presume) has some nice features like random failures of instruments, wind settings, etc. I think I spent about $220 on the software and yoke, and can run it on my laptop as well as my workstation (which is nice, as it has a 21" screen). Again, I'm not recommending FlightPro over the others. It's just that I have experience with it, and found it to be quite helpful. My instructor(s) indicated that the training flights usually went smoothly (baring any stupid actions on my part) because I prepared for the flight beforehand. (After my checkride, the DE called my instructor and said I did quite well, but said that I fly the plane like a simulator. My last instructor lamented that, as well. So I'm less than subtle on the controls! Isn't that what they're there fore?! :-)) Hope that helps. ivo welch wrote: I have started on practical IFR training in the real world. (Vans RV-9, hopefully RV-10 soon; mostly glass cockpit.) I do ok on precision flying, but I would definitely like to practice patterns, approaches, etc., at home before I go. just too few approaches per training hour. Fortunately, it is the year 2004 now, so hopefully, there are now pretty decent flight sims to work on a reasonably hi-end home computer. Right? choices seem to be "on top", "x-plane", "fs2004", "jepp flitepro". I looked for a comparative review of these, but could not find one. any opinions on what works well would be highly appreciated. help, please. sincerely, /iaw -- Remove "2PLANES" to reply. |
#3
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I just completed my Instrument checkride (successfully) this week. I
used the microsoft flight Sim 2002 and found it to be essential preparation for real flights. I trained in a 2000 Cessna 172S, which is including with microsoft flight sim. The power settings were off just a bit from the real thing, but otherwise felt pretty true to flying IFR. It also has virtually every public airport and most NAVAIDS in the country. There are 3rd party addons available to add or change NAVAIDS. You can also arm any instruments or instrument systems to fail within a period of time to simulate partial panel flight. Even using just a generic game joystick it ingrains various IFR maneuvers in your mind. Iwounld just make sure the airplane your flying is available in whichever simulator you get. Good Luck Don I have started on practical Ia FR training in the real world. (Vans RV-9, hopefully RV-10 soon; mostly glass cockpit.) I do ok on precision flying, but I would definitely like to practice patterns, approaches, etc., at home before I go. just too few approaches per training hour. Fortunately, it is the year 2004 now, so hopefully, there are now pretty decent flight sims to work on a reasonably hi-end home computer. Right? choices seem to be "on top", "x-plane", "fs2004", "jepp flitepro". I looked for a comparative review of these, but could not find one. any opinions on what works well would be highly appreciated. help, please. sincerely, /iaw |
#4
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I've only played around with MS FlightSimulator over the years and havent
spent the bigger bucks on the probably better software out there. My friend uses X-Plane and rants on and on about it ( http://www.x-plane.com ). The mapping of MsFs has gotten better every year, and most navaids and fixes (every one I ever looked for or needed) are in it. When I'm going to an unfamiliar area I like to take a look at the terrain with FS, it usually doesnt look as bad on FS as it does looking at a sectional, and usually in real life it looks pretty similar to FS. It helps with the visuals, what to expect as you come in from a certain angle, lakes, rivers, etc. For IFR I set the weather pretty close down to minimums, and sometimes throw in seasonal weather. If you have a Garmin 530, it's great practice at using that. It has a Garmin500 which is basically the same thing minus the COM. I dont have ADF in my airplane, so I get to get in some practice on NDB approaches. Overall, for the price, it aint bad. Chris "ivo welch" wrote in message om... I have started on practical IFR training in the real world. (Vans RV-9, hopefully RV-10 soon; mostly glass cockpit.) I do ok on precision flying, but I would definitely like to practice patterns, approaches, etc., at home before I go. just too few approaches per training hour. Fortunately, it is the year 2004 now, so hopefully, there are now pretty decent flight sims to work on a reasonably hi-end home computer. Right? choices seem to be "on top", "x-plane", "fs2004", "jepp flitepro". I looked for a comparative review of these, but could not find one. any opinions on what works well would be highly appreciated. help, please. sincerely, /iaw |
#5
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Go to FSGenesis and Lago (there are probably others too) and for a small sum
you can download much better terrain for MSFS. Helps flying a lot. Some of it is free also. John "SeeAndAvoid" wrote in message ink.net... I've only played around with MS FlightSimulator over the years and havent spent the bigger bucks on the probably better software out there. My friend uses X-Plane and rants on and on about it ( http://www.x-plane.com ). The mapping of MsFs has gotten better every year, and most navaids and fixes (every one I ever looked for or needed) are in it. When I'm going to an unfamiliar area I like to take a look at the terrain with FS, it usually doesnt look as bad on FS as it does looking at a sectional, and usually in real life it looks pretty similar to FS. It helps with the visuals, what to expect as you come in from a certain angle, lakes, rivers, etc. For IFR I set the weather pretty close down to minimums, and sometimes throw in seasonal weather. If you have a Garmin 530, it's great practice at using that. It has a Garmin500 which is basically the same thing minus the COM. I dont have ADF in my airplane, so I get to get in some practice on NDB approaches. Overall, for the price, it aint bad. Chris "ivo welch" wrote in message om... I have started on practical IFR training in the real world. (Vans RV-9, hopefully RV-10 soon; mostly glass cockpit.) I do ok on precision flying, but I would definitely like to practice patterns, approaches, etc., at home before I go. just too few approaches per training hour. Fortunately, it is the year 2004 now, so hopefully, there are now pretty decent flight sims to work on a reasonably hi-end home computer. Right? choices seem to be "on top", "x-plane", "fs2004", "jepp flitepro". I looked for a comparative review of these, but could not find one. any opinions on what works well would be highly appreciated. help, please. sincerely, /iaw |
#6
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"John Bishop" wrote in message ...
Go to FSGenesis and Lago (there are probably others too) and for a small sum you can download much better terrain for MSFS. Helps flying a lot. Some of it is free also. John remarkably, for such products, one would expect some sample scenery images on their websites. alas, I could not find such. can any of these addon products image buildings (that I want to avoid flying into!)? there are satellite images one could use to guestimate structures. sincerely, /iaw this is getting off the IFR thread. indulge us, please. |
#7
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FS2004 scenery is comprised of the following:
- terrain mesh - i.e., elevation data. FS2004's included mesh's resolution varies depending on where you're flying, but in almost all or all cases there are freeware or payware meshes that have superior resolution - and therefore, more accurate hills and mountains. (Downside: higher resolution mesh can affect framerate, since more elevation points are being represented.) A good explanation of this and also some links to freeware mesh for some areas (e.g. California) can be found he http://mesh64.home.att.net/ - landclass data: "this is a city, this is a rural area, this is a body of water"... etc. etc. Landclass tells FS which texture to use to render a given Patch of Land; it has a large library of textures (which change from season to season - i.e. what you have the date set to) from which to draw these from. - custom building scenery - Las Vegas has a lot of this; LAX is another example. Any well-known structure landmark that exists in FS falls under this category. The more detailed airports also have a lot of custom buildings. (Note to helicopter pilots - custom buildings cannot be landed on.) - semi-generic building scenery - to convey a downtown area, but not particularly realistically. I believe that downtown San Jose is like this; I live in SJ, but I don't think the downtown buildings correspond to actual ones. (I could be wrong about this though.) - AutoGen buildings - no relation to real structures, but they convey "built-up" areas; I believe that the landclass data drives the AutoGen engine. BTW AutoGen can have a very adverse affect on framerate if you turn it up much. - Photorealistic (i.e., aerial-photo-based) - I think there is a little bit of this in FS2004, but this exists primarily in add-on "payware" products; for instance http://www.megascenery.com provides some photo-based regions of the US. However, this type of product consists of only the photo-based image textures and higher-than-default terrain mesh; no building data is included to my knowledge. So the end result is that FS itself only models a (relatively) small number of real structures in the virtual world, and add-on packages typically focus on airport environs and their buildings. It's unlikely that the ol' 1906 International Order Of Odd Fellows temple that sits at the end of your local Runway 31 will be represented. That is probably way more data than you expected, and I'm a little embarrassed that I know about these things... But flight simming is almost as much of a passion as real flying is for me. In closing, I will note that if you're flying an airplane in FS and you have to worry about flying into a building, you're too low to begin with 8^) . Dave Blevins On 26 Feb 2004 08:34:06 -0800, (ivo welch) wrote: "John Bishop" wrote in message ... Go to FSGenesis and Lago (there are probably others too) and for a small sum you can download much better terrain for MSFS. Helps flying a lot. Some of it is free also. John remarkably, for such products, one would expect some sample scenery images on their websites. alas, I could not find such. can any of these addon products image buildings (that I want to avoid flying into!)? there are satellite images one could use to guestimate structures. sincerely, /iaw this is getting off the IFR thread. indulge us, please. |
#8
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deleted
thanks for all the info. has become a better thread to take to simulators than IFR. I think I will buy megascenery, just for pleasure, not for IFR training. |
#9
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#10
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PC flight sim for training?
This is an old thread I stumbled across... Wanted to mention ASA's, ON
TOP, IFR proficiency simulator... I also have FS2004Pro, but I prefer the instrument panel that ON TOP has... Besides, this is IFR practice, why are we rating sims on how realistic the scenery is? Anyway, I fly IFR in an old Apache, which is not on either sim, so I simply dial up a Bonanza or a Baron and use that... And I do not have a yoke, just use a joy stick... I do not notice the differences when getting in the real airplane... My reflexes are geared to accomodate the cockpit I'm in at themoment... It is procedures that need repetition, not power settings, joy stick versus yoke, etc... cheers ... denny |
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