Why don't peoples like the flight simulators?

I liked the Ace Combat games. Hopefully they make a new one.

1. not casual enough

2. reality sucks

(note, I do not feel this way)

I like it, waiting patiently for the dcs : f/a-18c hornet to get released

Because it's boring. I don't like any type of simulator.

I think they'll make a comeback once VR hits. I would love to play a flight sim in VR

Boring to me. My uncle loved it though.

Maybe if it had more production values like better graphics/AI of co-pilot.. fighting other jets or some sort of high PV disaster management with amazingly rendered people, etc... more expensive, shallow, eye candy stuff.

Boring. Dad Games.

nope sorry, everything you saw on top gun or ace combat are no where near the realistic representation of modern aerial combat.

realistic modern aerial combat is like this, you spot a dot on your radar, assess the situation, then lock it if necessary, after that you fire a missile away from 20 nm and do evasive maneuver or turn to other targets all done without seeing the enemy face to face; in fact close range face to face dogfights are something that is preferably avoided by modern fighter pilots than something to be embraced.

same thing with air to ground assault, even more so with today tech, pilots on the air wouldn't even need to see the ground targets, they could GPS bomb the target or their buddies on the ground (allied troops) feed them the targets, pilots simply fire their missiles from long range

somewhat different if they needed to do close air support though, in those situation pilots would need more than electronics sensors and technology marvels to do that mission.

I love them!

I also love Space Simulators (Elite Dangerous FTW) and driving simulators.

Flight sims are one of my favorite genres only surpassed by space sims like Elite Dangerous and Star Citizen.

My hope is that flight sims make a resurgence like space sims have over the years.

I still play IL-2 Cliffs of Dover with the Team Fusion mod, FSX, X-Plane, and Pacific Fighters.

Team Fusion:

no killstreaks, no perks.. why would anyone spend their time on this trash?

Ask MS. They once had great RTS series and Flight Simulator.

But then it was decided people didn't want those anymore, and instead people wanted casual spin-offs of the harder games. Which failed.

Are you kidding me???

That exaxctly what got me into pc gaming loooooooooong time ago!!!

From F15 Strike eagle or Chuck Yeager's air combat to DCS world or Steel beasts, I've never missed one sim ever!!!

Time sure, flies, but what a hell of a good time !!!

Edit : Should add an option : show fsim some love ;)

I love flight sims but you're acting like we used to have tons of actual sims and now we don't. Truth is actual sims have always been fairly few in number, and we have a few quality titles to choose from now. This biggest hit to the genre has been MS's mishandling of the Flight Simulator series over the past several years. Fortunately last year the tide started to turn by turning the franchise over to Dovetail, who got a properly updated rerelease out, got new content coming for it from Flight1, and are developing a sequel they announced for 2016, but we'll see.

Best thing about flight sims is once you find an engine you really like you can upgrade the assets for years with 3rd party products. No need for an explosion over flight simulator franchises.

I disagree, back then the flight sim genre has flourished since the late 80s just like space sim was, and that was quite many years before other pc centric genres like rts/top down and isometric action/strategy and shooters flourished, so indeed back then there were as many as if not actually more memorable flight sim games than rts or shooter titles...

Ace Combat 6 was BY far the best in the series.

But Ace Combat games are arcade games. You'll know when you play a simulator, because you'll spend like a week learning how to bloody take off :-P.

HAWX games were really bad. Physics weren't there, you could turn your plane upside down and it wouldn't drift downwards.

People complained AC6 had only 15 planes, but each had wildly different flight characteristics, all the planes felt the same in HAWX. So much more detail in AC6s physics, from the turn rate, the altitudes effects on speed and even how you've rotated the plane effects the speed and it naturally drifts all over the place. Also has better physics for combat vector thrusts (F22) or how the wing shapes effects turn rates at different speeds.

Another problem in HAWX was, because you were always flying at Mach 1, there's no sense of speed.

Flight sims are cool but I prefer more Sci Fi stuff (space sims), which gives devs more opportunity to go crazy with the design. But I'd love to see something like Strike Commander.

Isn't that an old Chris Robert's game back in the Origin days?

Anyway, I still have a few flight sims: Aerofly FS, IL-2 Cliffs of Dover, FSX, DCS: Black Shark, X-Plane 9 plus the old CFS2, CFS3, the IL-2 series, and even European Air War. I do need Windows XP and an AMD/ATI video to run the last one.

This. I'd take an arcade racer over a racing simulator any day.

At the risk of coming off as elitist and condescending, because they are intellectual and require learning before you even play. DCS modules (for example) are basically jumping into a real plane and being asked to start it up, taxi, takeoff, navigate, refuel in-air, dogfight, land, etc. Not so bad with the WWII era planes, but some of the more modern modules can get intensive. I can completely understand why much of it strikes a bore with so many. With some jets you're firing missiles 20 miles away from a target you can't see, and paying attention to avionics and system management 90% of the time. Simulators operate under the principle of the pleasure one garners from an expected learned competence before you can even begin, being able to conquer the game mechanics, and the payoff that comes with it at the end. For many playing games, that payoff isn't worth the effort, or they desire it instantly.

I don't consider simulations to really be games. It takes a certain personality to enjoy die-hard sims such as DCS: those that find the most rewarding experiences are the ones that require time investment and work. Gameplay that's earned and is rewarding on the back end. It's the same reason I love the Silent Hunter series by Ubi: plotting patrol courses, locating ships on sonar, stalking them waiting for the opportune moment, taking weather and time of day into consideration, going to periscope depth, manually IDing ships correctly, plotting accurate torpedo solutions after gathering all needed intel through observation. Then going in for the kill....it all makes that torpedo hit incredibly gratifying when it does occur.

As such, I can 100% understand why it's a niche genre. It's hardcore and demands work and patience. Few play games to work or be patient, they want to come home after work, chillax on their couch, push a button and watch shit blow up. Plus, especially with flight sims, there's the fact that any decent one will usually necessitate additional hardware investments such as a decent stick, rudder pedals, Track IR (and soon VR), which can become costly quickly.

This is an excellent game with the mod fix, it's unfortunate it received such a negative first impression.

It deserved to get panned when it initially released. The game felt unfinished and it was a hog.

i always liked ace combat games, but the last game was a total crap, i hope they make a new one , because no other flight simulator games were good enough . only ace combat can bring back a good flight simulator game

i.e. unfortunate.

nice and precise words you put there...

Back in the early 90's I used to play hundreds, perhaps thousands of hours of USNF (United States Navy Fighters) came with a manual thick as a phone book as well. lol

I wish MS would bring FSX to X1, I'd love it.

Yes it is. BTW have you played Falcon series. Those games had really fat ass manuals.

This.

People can barely get into car racing simulators even though they drive every day. Learning the freaking controls for a jet liner? Impressive, but time consuming.

My friend use to love the shit out of Flight Simulator X. He would role play taking off and landing aircraft and playing flight control with other people online. He's not a fully licensed commercial pilot. That's the type of person that likes flight sims lol.

I played the original Falcon (both on PC and Commodore Amiga) back when its developers were still Spectrum Holobyte. Went through Falcon AT, Falcon 3.0, and Microprose Falcon 4.0.

In fact, my first online experience was a 1v1 dogfight in Amiga Falcon via modem to modem. Fantastic at the time.

I still have the Falcon 4.0 binder somewhere. Looks like this one:

console gamers don't because there too hard and don't normally fit into the type of game they play, not cinematic enough.

I play FSX a lot, the new Steam version is pretty good to runs better on my system.

Flight simulators.. what a joke. When was the last time Gamespot or IGN covered one of them.

Probably not. It barely used multicore processing. At least the original MS versions (like the ones I have) didn't.

I remember posting FSX screenshots chugging along at 1 fps. Ha Ha!

That with a 2.8 GHz Phenom II X3 720BE (4th core enabled), 8GB RAM, ATI HD 5770 (1440x900).

To simulate flight properly is has to be boring as **** and have a steep learning curve, most people including myself are put off by that.

@Cloud_imperium said:

@jun_aka_pekto said:

@Cloud_imperium said:

Flight sims are cool but I prefer more Sci Fi stuff (space sims), which gives devs more opportunity to go crazy with the design. But I'd love to see something like Strike Commander.

Isn't that an old Chris Robert's game back in the Origin days?

Anyway, I still have a few flight sims: Aerofly FS, IL-2 Cliffs of Dover, FSX, DCS: Black Shark, X-Plane 9 plus the old CFS2, CFS3, the IL-2 series, and even European Air War. I do need Windows XP and an AMD/ATI video to run the last one.

Yes it is. BTW have you played Falcon series. Those games had really fat ass manuals.

Have'em all since the Dos era.

Still recall the bfm lessons video that comes with the 3.0 version...and you can watch here.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OCFMX5z-ed4

And you had a book for every plane in the game. Memories ;)

Are we talking about Flight Sims or dog fight games like Ace Combat?

They require a PC and a joystick. Also time and patience. That's something you can't mass market.

Because you touch yourself at night.

I miss Flight Sims,i never play them anymore,yet never decided to stop playiing them it just happened, i recently bought a Saitek X52 Pro flght stiick but thats for all the space sims coming out,i have yet to use it on any flight sims :(

I spent an insane amount of time in Gunship 2000 and F15 Strike Eagle on my amiga, I also used to play Chocks Away on the Acorn Archimedes at school on my lunch break.

Excuse me im having a huge Nostalgia trip.....

Post is legit as ****.

They're the most complex and hardest to learn genre around (well.them and other realistic simulators of similiar kind). People love simple things and they don't like to spend dozen of hourse learning how to play.

Anything difficult and complex will always be niche. We should be happy that this niche is big enough on PC that those games still get made at all.

Here I was thinking I'd be having everyone screaming down my neck from my first sentence. :?

@MirkoS77: what you said x1000

I for one love flight sims but I know why most people don't. I used to play Falcon 4 which is hailed as the single most realistic military flight simulator ever created, mainly because of the avionics. It came with a basic tech manual that was huge in itself and a downloadable manual that was likely nearly as big as the one for the real F-16. You had to actually sit down and read and practice using avionics and stuff while learning how to actually fly the thing. Join an online fighter squadron with people who took the game extremely seriously and it was a hell of a ride. I remember it took me weeks to get accepted into the squadron because they required you submit a checkride video of you performing specific maneuvers to standard and also required you pass an oral evaluation on avionics and weapons systems and stuff via teamspeak. It was crazy that I actually had to go home at night and study for a video game. I failed 4 times before they finally let me in lol

Plus like some have already said they are "simulators" meaning they simulate real life. Real life is actually boring. Being a real life military pilot isn't like Ace Combat by any means. Even in Falcon 4 you were at war with N Korea and it was absolutely nothing like Ace Combat. The majority of the time was spent flying 2 and 3 hour patrol missions in a huge circle doing absolutely nothing at all. Or flying 3 hours to the very top of N Korea then dropping out of the clouds and dropping a few bombs then flying 3 hours back. Every once and awhile your AWACS would tell you that there were enemy fighters 50 miles away or so outside of your patrol ring only to call back and tell you they turned around once they got close, like they usually do in real life. Damnit...gotta keep flying in a huge 20 mile circle again, thought I could shoot at somebody but nope.

And real life air fights are not like Star Wars with you chasing each other down in close dogfights. Modern missiles have 20-30+ mile ranges. Your "enemy" is a green dot on your radar screen, you fire a missile and it leaves the rail and you might see a faint trail of fire far off in the distance. Thats how Ace Combat works in real life, which is again, boring. Intense in real life but boring in a video game because you aren't actually flying a multimillion dollar fighter jet 20,000ft in the air and you can't actually die..

Or you'd fly 3 hours to drop bombs only to get pinged by an enemy fighter patrol right when you got close forcing you to jettison your bombs and turn around and run. Or you'd pop out and get shot down by a SAM. Or take a few rounds which shot your aircraft up making it super hard to fly and your avionics are gone so you have to spend 4 hours flying at half speed with the joystick jammed all the way to the right and the left rudder pedal pushed to the floor in a very uncomfortable position trying to limp back to friendly territory so you can try to land at a friendly airport.

To me such things are super fun, so most people that is beyond boring. Spending 2 hours planning a mission, 3 hours flying it, and 30 seconds dropping bombs, is a thrill ride to me but I can certainly see how thats not everyones cup of tea...

Because when I have time to play a game I want to do just that. I don't want to read through manuals and be bored. Ain't nobody got time for learnin.

The best sim I've ever played is Space Shuttle simulator on the Amiga, the fucking instruction manual for that was insane, you had a full print out of the control panel for the space shuttle because you had to scroll around to find the buttons so the game was pretty much unplayable without it. All I ever managed to do inthe game was blow it up on the launch pad.

@ten_pints: LOL! Well, if anything I'm sure you had some laughs over it before it became frustrating haha.