Before I go into the technicalities, details, and intricacies, I would like to make on incredibly important distinction: there is a very non-fine line between video games and simulations. Video games are designed almost exclusively for entertainment, and rarely provide any real educational value (disclaimer: I love games, and plan on making a post about them soon. So no hate). While some video games may have fancy graphics, their realism factor is usually skin-deep. Simulations, on the other hand, aim to accurately model real-world scenarios, for education, entertainment, or both. Furthermore, there are many flying games which are NOT simulations. These include 2D "sidescrollers" (such as the famous helicopter-in-a-cave), and many fighter-plane games.
And just to make this clear: Tom Clancy's Hawx is in NO WAY a flight simulator. From this point onward I will personally slap anyone who refers to it as such.
Anyways....
In the flight simulator world, there are two main categories: military and civilian. Military flight simulators include air-to-air combat, air-to-ground attacks, search and rescue missions, scouting operations, etc. Basically, anything that is done by the army/air force/navy. Civilians sims, on the other hand, can do pretty much everything else, such as airline flights, private sightseeing, glider competitions, hot air balloon adventures, helicopter shenanigans.....even space flight! The simulator community has become so large and involved that pretty much anything that can go in the air has been simulated one way or another.
Within the civilian flight simulator categories, there are programs which are highly popular: Microsoft Flight Simulator X (FSX), X-plane (http://www.x-plane.com/) and FlightGear (http://www.flightgear.org/). about 99.99% of my sim time has been in FSX, so I won't go into x-plane or FlightGear. But I encourage you to check them all out at the links provided if you are thinking of getting into this hobby. A brief synthesis:
FSX: Designed with the Microsoft budget/schedule, meaning it has pretty graphics but generally shoddy coding. Like any other simulator, it takes a ton of addons to get it to any level of decency. But it has the largest community, best addons, and best multiplayer support. If you have the time, it can become an incredible simulator. A new sim from a new development team, "Microsoft Flight" (http://www.microsoft.com/games/flight/) is on its way.
X-Plane: Designed by an independent team. This means there is a lot of attention to technical detail and technicalities, but it's not much to look at. It also has a fairly sizable community, but doesn't seem to have attained quite the same level of diversity and quality in addons as FSX. A new X-Plane 10, with some exceptional preview shots is right around the corner.
FlightGear: This one is free! It is programmed by thousands of contributors from around the world who freely donate their time. The pro is, of course, that you don't have to pay. The con is that it is at a much lower quality than any payware products. I encourage anyone tempted by simming to give FlightGear a try....consider it a free sample of sorts. If you like the concept, go out and give a few bucks for a better sim.
I keep mentioning addons and communities, like they're the centerpiece of some blood cult ritual. What's so important about those things in a simulation? Well, they both go pretty hand-in-hand, but I'll start with the importance of addons.
Simulators have an inherent flaw: they are incredibly complicated to model. There is an insane amount of things that must be programmed and calculated for any given flight. These things generally go under the categories of weather, traffic/air traffic control, graphics, sounds, and aircraft systems. To give you an idea: It took a team of 12 developers about three years to visually model Switzerland (http://secure.simmarket.com/aerosoftflylogic-switzerland-professional-x.phtml). With that in mind, imagine modeling the entire world, weather patterns, and dozens of flyable aircraft. So back in the late 90's, a solution was found: one company would make a base simulation program (such as FSX or X-plane), which would be followed by countless addons made by developers from all over the world. In other words, a realistic sim is really a collaboration by hundreds of developers, in one specializing in something very specific. Today, it takes dozens of addons to make a sim look and feel "up to standards." Here's a top-of-my-head list of the addons I would run in a virtual flight from Boston to Miami, and what they simulate:
Microsoft Flight Simulator X: Base Flight Simulator
Ultimate Terrain X: Visually models natural terrain, roads, rivers, and other 2d things on the ground.
Ground Environment X: Calculates "Autogen" a fancy word for buildings and trees. Basically, 3d models.
ActiveSky Evolution: Models pretty much anything to do with weather, such as temperatures, pressure fronts, winds, precipitation....even hurricanes. It can update weather with real-time info.
Real Environment X: Creates realistic textures for things such as clouds, taxiways/runways, sky, sunsets, etc. Also helps simulate wind shear, icing, precipiation and cloud date with ActiveSky Evolution.
FSUIPC: Helps diversify the simulator and connects it with other addons (very ambiguous, I hardly understand it myself)
Level-D 767: A Boeing certified 767 aircraft simulation
FS2Crew: Simulates a copilot and cabin crew
FSPax: Simulates Passengers
FSXBooster: Tweaks your core FSX Simulation to optimize performance and graphics
AIRAC: Used to update FSX Navigation data with charts and airways as they are changed in real life.
FSShade: Changes shades, tones, contrasts, and colors to visually enhance almost everything
Samoshin Trees: Simulates trees (No, I'm not kidding).
Audio Environment: Creates more realistic sounds, such as rain patters, engines, brakes, etc.
EZDok: Creates realistic vision, such as shaking the camera during high speeds and turbulence, lurching forward when braking, etc. Can simulate human vision or cameras.
FSINN: Allows a connection to other virtual pilots and controllers
Ultimate Traffic 2: Simulates air traffic, with real airlines/schedules, down to the last minute.
Furthermore, there are addons for individual airports, aircraft, and geographic areas.
To compliment these software addons, I have hardware peripherals (a yoke, throttle quadrant, switchboard, headset, and rudder pedals). So basically, once you buy a sim, it's far from over. But these things were acquired over the past 5 years, literally one thing at a time.
But these addons didn't come out of thin air. Each one came from hard working men and women who joined together in developement teams to produce them for money. And money requires customers. So it is really the strong player-base and dedicated simmers who made it all possible.
The most prevalent community within FSX is the "Virtual Air Traffic Control Simulator," or VATSIM (http://www.vatsim.net/). VATSIM is essentially a series of servers which allow pilots and controllers from FSX, FS2004 (the previous version of Microsoft's flight simulator), and even X-Plane to fly and control together. This means you could log in to a gate at John F Kennedy International, and fly with/be controlled by real people, who are all using virtual cockpits and air traffic radars. Headsets and microphones allow everyone to communicate with simulated radios.
Within VATSIM, there are many flying clubs, groups, and virtual airlines (VA's). VA's are set up to create the feeling of flying for a real airline, often times from both a flight and business standpoint. Many realistic VA's have extensive application processes, mandatory introduction training, assigned hubs, rank structures, payrolls, and management trees. I fly for American Virtual Airlines (http://joinava.org/), a VA which simulates American Airlines on the VATSIM network. I am the Assistant Hub Manager of the Boston hub with 19 flights, totally 56 hours. For the record, AVA is an awesome airline, and anyone already involved with flight simulation should check them out!
That's more than enough for one blog post. I plan on making a bunch of posts on this topic, so stay tuned. That being said, I hope to take a break from flight in my next post and talk about music a little bit.
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