Flight Sims etc

[High Sierra]

Can anyone suggest me a decent combat flight sim to play?

I'm also looking for carrier based stuff/sub simulators - all WWII based.

I wasted alot of hours on AVG Harrier in my youth which was a very good play, looking for similar

[Liare]

IL2 : 1946, and if you got a monster under your desk, IL2 : Cliff's of Dover

[Dark Flare]

Wings of Prey on sim mode is pretty good.

[rufuske]

Open Falcon.

[Lancehot]

Combat Flight Sim

[Jurskjeld]

The Falcon 4: Allied Force can be a decent alternative. Any of the open Falcons, in fact. Haven't kept up with them, but even F4AF will test your skill in the areas that matter, even if graphics aren't 2011.

[friznit]

Been trying FreeFalcon 5, sadly it's buggy as hell and CTD's all the time. Shame, cos the features are supposedly better then Open Falcon / AF. Was AVG Harrier Assault the one where you had command of a carrier task force and all it's assets? Epic game iirc, shame noone reproduced anything similar.

The most recent release is A10 DCS. It's a proper hardcore A10 sim with all the buttons, very pretty and after a couple of patches is pretty swept up, although the inevitable lack of a dynamic campaign limits it in the long run. Good fun to play with a flight of 6 in MP.

Rumour has it DCS are due to release a fast jet sim next. It's anyone's guess what it could be though.

[McRoll]

I second Il2 Cliffs of Dover. It was buggy as shit but now its somewhat playable and it even runs quite smoothly if you dont fly over London or huge industry spots at least. Also, they are still bringing patches so it will become better with time. Imo its the best compromise between hardcore simulation and accessibility right now, because in a WWII plane you dont need your whole keyboard with shortkeys bound twice for the electronics shit, only the whole keyboard is enough

You definitely need a quadcore, 4 gig ram and a 1gig ram fast graphics card though (HD Radeon 5850 extreme or better), otherwise dont bother.

Edit: for sub sims, Silent hunter series, though I only played the 3rd one. The latter ones are pretty shit and bugged to hell from what I've heard.

[Jurskjeld]

Silent Hunter 3 was a phenomenal experience. With Grey Wolves it became really immersive, and from a U-II to ICX you had a fantastic timel. Nothing like the thrill of a task force! Twice in many, many months of playing did I encounter them, and only once did I get a few torpedoes off at maximum distance. Made that Nelson keel badly, but she still outran my VII-B :/

[Ishanda]

I'm not really much of a simmer, at least before now, but I love the A10 and so I got DCS: A10 to satisfy those of my urges that involve 7-barreled 30mm cannons.

I've found it great fun, challenging and rewarding in equal measure - and relatively bug-free - but you really need a joystick/throttle combo with enough buttons to bind all of the A10's HOTAS commands (as long as you have those, you can click everything else in the cockpit with mouse). And the A10's air to air capabilities are quite limited, as is its speed... so depends on what you want. :P

[balistic void]

I got IL2: Cliffs of Dover (and 1946 ofc). Stopped playing because it was so buggy and slow, even on new monster sandyvag + 6970. Must try it again, doesn't have proper campaign tho Just series of missions, no campaign map or anything. I was disappoint.

Got DCS: Black Shark and DCS: A10 as well. Verrry fucking complicated games to play properly. Yeah you can play them in arcade mode but what's the point then? At least A10 has decent tutorials, but no way are you gonna memorise all those controls. Would be a full-time job just like the real thing, they have 90% of the A10s controls and stuff modelled. Just missing some topsekrit radar modes and stuff like that. Need to invest a lot of time setting up proper keybindings and stuff like that, trimming the aircraft, controlling the laser designator... it goes on and on.

Seconding Silent Hunter III recommendations. Proudest moment = sneaking into position, then sending 2 torps (not homing ones) from electroboot under keel of American Fleet Carrier, breaking it's back. On full-realism settings with manual torpedo control etc. Avoid SHIV tho, it was shit.

tl;dr: I'm too lazy to play proper sims these days

[friznit]

radar modes, in my A10? Well I never...

I miss Falcon 4. It's just too old now to be bearable anymore, but it was the last truly decent full campaign with a map bigger than a postage stamp.

[CastleBravo]

One of these days I'm going to learn how to play this shit.

[youtube:5wz3s3la]sD2ESo8bheM[/youtube:5wz3s3la]

[balistic void]

Oops I meant other stuff in A10, laser modes, target recognition computer and stuff. I seem to remember them saying in the manual that stuff was omitted there. DCS did an F18 sim in the past I think, and some radar modes were left out.

That video of OpenFalcon is very good, the only thing I would criticise is the checkerboard pattern visible on the terrain from altitude. IL2 Dover has the most gorgeous terrain I've seen in a flightsim yet... dogfighting over London is impressive.

[Jurskjeld]

Excellent video! However, I'm not sure I'd maneuver against SA-4s with my fuel tanks still hanging on the aircraft... And regarding textures, Falcon is definitely not for enjoying the scenery; it rewards you for staying as high as you can.

[rufuske]

Plus this is default terrain. There are better textures and higher resolution meshes available for download.

http://www.tomch.com/ht/pics/compare/index.htm

[friznit]

There was a handy dandy post somewhere that listed the differences between Allied Force, Open Falcon and Free Falcon. I think in summary AF = Original game + user patches; OF = Srz Business F16; FF = loads more content (all planes flyable, better graphics, more campaigns etc). The real turn off for me was that it was very unstable in MP and there's no clickable 3D cockpit.

[High Sierra]

I'm after a more WWII sim. want to fly a spitfire and fill german shit full of holes.

[CastleBravo]

Oops I meant other stuff in A10, laser modes, target recognition computer and stuff. I seem to remember them saying in the manual that stuff was omitted there. DCS did an F18 sim in the past I think, and some radar modes were left out.

The big thing they left out was jammer modes and functionality since that shit is uber classified.

[friznit]

Since Frugal's is gone (QQ) I found that F4 comparison poast on SimHQ here

OpenFalcon seems to be the one if you want MP, FreeFalcon for the most single player stuff.