Hobbies - Other Interests

[06YarisRS]

Originally Posted by ern-diz

Flight sim, schlight schim, this is just good ol' video gaming to me lol.

There are many that would differ in opinion. It never bothered me when folks called it a video game, but those more serious 'simmers' didn't see it that way. I remember when Microsoft mused about turnng the Flight Simulator franchise into a console game. It created quite a stir in the community. I believe the plan was to remove most of realism, improve the graphics, making it more accessible to the general public, sell more copies as the platform was not a money maker for FS. Since the game was released, it had an open platform and MS shared code so that 3rd party developers could make complex addons. One brilliant aircraft I bought and flew regularly was a 767 that modeled every system on the aircraft and had an extremely steep learning curve. It came with what was essentially the actual flight manual for the real aircraft, complete with all procedures and checklists from dark cockpit,all gate to gate operations, including and fuel/weight/cargo/passenger calculators. The flight modeling alone was a major programming endeavour.

There were other very complex addons such as weather generators that took years of development and worked on complex algorithms. I regard the MSFS platform as a base engine. It was the 3rd party development that really added the complexity and realism.

MSFS is used by real pilots (recreational and commercial) and flight schools, large and small. One of the guys that provided me with pics for my Calgary scenery is a WestJet captain and he uses it to keep current on instrument flying between flights.

A couple of my buddies that used MSFS were given two hours at a Flight Safety center in a real Boeing simulator and they successfully completed all phases of flight. Apparently the simulator operators were quite impressed and even threw in a few mechanical failures that the guys handled without incident.

I think most copies of MSFS sold ended up on shelves collecting dust as long-term engagement in the program required a significant investment in learning.

So is it a flight 'simulator'? Yes, Is it a video game? Also, Yes. LOL.