Basic Flight Sim Equipment?

[Ian Curtis]

Hi,

I'll be quite honest, the extent of my "flight sim" experience is Snoopy vs. the Red Baron for PS2. However, I see Rise of Flight and Over Flanders Field, and quite frankly, they look really, really interesting. That said, I have no experience with this sort of thing. I've gleaned that there's a pretty substantial learning curve, and I'm okay with that. Can someone explain/recommend to me the equipment needed to get a start (joystick, etc.) and the approximate costs?

Thanks!

[MiG-77]

Well, IMHO at first you dont need anything except good joystick with twist and throttle (And I still only got that and can compete decently in online games). All other equipment you can buy later(TrackIR, rudder pedals, etc).

Example I use this: http://www.logitech.com/index.cfm/ga...s/291&cl=US,EN

Nothing special, but is decent and it is cheap.

[Sagittarius]

Hello Ian,

i would strongly recommend a joystick with force feedback. It helps you a lot providing a stall or recognize other 'warning signals' like wing vibrations when diving too fast, etc.

The rudder control with twist is a good start but on the long run its quite stressful for your wrists - in some planes youre constantly working with the rudder in order to keep it in the air - so that i recommend you rudder pedals.

Regarding to the learning curve you've mentioned: Yes, it can be frustrating. The higher the degree of 'realism' in a ww1-flightsim the more demanding are the machines and the more difficult is it to get back home in one piece.

Maybe it helps when i tell you some of the mistakes i made when i first played a flight sim (Flying Corps):
* Don't attack everything everywhere - be sure youre not outnumbered and dont follow enemy planes too deep into enemy terretory. If your way back home is cut off by another squadron which just entered the scene, you'll know what I mean.

* Don't start a curving fight with a Fokker Dr.I while flying a SE5 - you have to know the advantages and disadvantages of your plane and use them in the right way. Same with the enemy planes: know their weaknesses and strenghts very well.

* Don't get 'lost' in battle. Be sure you know where your squadron mates are and where the enemy is. Situational awareness is very important. Dont get isolated and always be aware on which side of the front you are.

[VFC_Baxter]

For my money I would say go for a buttkicker gamer and clamp it to your seat. That and a logitech or saitek joystick with twist rudder handle and inbuilt throttle is all you need. I have one of those saitek flight systems, pedals, trackIR and all that stuff, I tried them all and they are sitting in the garage.

[totalspoon]

I've been an IL2 junkie since it came out (though my new drug of choice is Rise of Flight). I started with nothing, slowly buying bits and pieces until I now have a pretty awesome flight sim set up. Here's my suggestions based on my experiences.

Basic Rig
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There's no point spending buckets of money only to find its not really your cup of tea, so to start with, all I would suggest is a reasonable quality joystick that has a throttle and some sort of rudder control (twist grip or rocker bar). A reasonable priced Logitech or Saitek is a good starting joystick. Then set yourself up a free-track rig (Free-track is a do it yourself cheapo version of Track IR - Welcome to the FreeTrack website). With just these two items, you can do everything. The IL2 squad I fly with has several casual gamers who have nothing but this but still do very well.

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If you find you love flight siming and have some extra money to spend down the track, you may wish to consider…

Track IR5. Free track is ok but it will never match the real thing. It’s very expensive but incredible immersive. Once your used to Track-IR (which can take anywhere from a day to a week), you’ll never be able to go back. Highly Recommended

Rudder Pedals. If your joystick has a rudder function, then getting rudder pedals won’t help your flying one bit. It does however make it much more immersive. I love my CH rudder pedals and wouldn’t fly without them but their definitely not a priority in the list of things to get.

Force Feedback Joystick. A good FF Joystick can be both a blessing and a curse. It’s definitely more immersive and allows you to feel what the aircraft is doing but online against other human beings, the slight shuddering of your stick means you won’t be able to aim as precisely or hold the edge of the turn a accurately as a good pilot without one. For this reason, I use my Microsoft Sidewinder for offline and my X52 for online.

Buttkicker. Buttkicker is a force feedback device that attaches to your seat. You still have perfect control of your joystick while getting the feel of you plane literally through the seat of your pants. The only drawback is its bloody expensive. Highly Recommended for the serious flight simmer

A Throttle Quadrant. Having extra levers for mixture, radiator controls and prop pitch helps engine management and bring you into the game but this is probably the last thing you need to buy.

Head Phones with Mic. If your going to play online, you will need a good set of headphone with a microphone jack so you can speak to your team mates online

Hope this helps

Spoon

[stevedrew]

Ian,

All of the above is great advice.

The minimum you should be looking at is a joystick with twist capabilities (to emulate a rudder). A throttle is not always ESSENTIAL, but it's certainly desirable. I think you'll find that if you're a bit of a novice flier, you will not be constantly throttling up and down during combat. So the throttle is not as essential as the twist rudder. A good joystick will also have the capability to LOCK the twist function (for when you wish to upgrade and get rudder pedals).

Some Joysticks have a throttle on their base, others are known by the acronym HOTAS (hands on throttle and stick). You fly these with a hand on your joystick and a seperate throttle control. This is the optimum set-up for a flight sim, as you will find that you will use your throttle more when you become a more experienced pilot.

A Force Feedback Joystick is always an added bonus. There is a small motor installed in the handle that vibrates when it senses inputs such as firing your machine guns or when your aircraft is approaching stall. This is a situation that you need to carefully think about. For WW1 flight sims, the FF is a good indicator as most of your flying and fighting is done at a much slower speeds than say an F16 Falcon, but there is a payoff...when you have lined up your enemy and fire away, your stick will shake and put your aim off. Most pilots of WW1 sims agree that FF is desirable, but it will be your choice.

So that is the minimum requirement...a joystick with twist capabilities (ability to lock the twist function is more desirable), preferably with a throttle (either incorporated in the base [less desirable] or seperate [more desirable]).

As you get more experienced, you'll want to get TrackIR (after using this, I have no idea how I ever shot down any enemies...a must for flight combat). The next thing would be to get yourself a good set of rudder pedals. If you wish to fly and fight online with your new wingmen, a headset with microphone will be your next purchase (get a comfortable set so you can wear them for extended periods). Buttkicker may be the only other thing you could purchase, but is only necessary if you want the "total immersion" package.

Totalspoon's reply is excellent advice, and if you follow that and consider all the replies, you'll be well armed with information. Then you just need to wait till your bank account catches up with your desires.

[Chock]

If you are interested in WW1 flights sims, such as the recently released Rise of Flight, or any of the other ones kicking around for that matter, then over and above everything else, the most important consideration is the computer you have.

Being a very recent release, Rise of Flight is quite demanding on a computer. It has very pretty graphics options, many of which can be turned off, but even with everything turned down you will still find it needs about 3 Ghz of RAM, a decent fairly newish dual/quad core CPU, and a graphics card capable of Pixel Shader 2.0 (check the RoF site for the exact specs, but keep in mind that these are often somewhat optimistic in terms of what you really need to run the thing, so if you barely scrape it in terms of meeting the specs, then don't expect blistering performance). This is worth bearing in mind, as upgrading your computer to a level where you get satisfactory performance could get expensive, and if your computer is not up to snuff, then you'll be looking at a very jerky sim on screen which will make shooting anything down very hard indeed..

If your PC does meet the specs, then RoF is a reasonably good flight sim, but as a simulation of WW1 it needs a bit of work. There several are fundamental errors in it, such as black flak bursts from the Allies, incorrect squadron formations and tactics; i.e flying too low on OPs and that sort of thing. It's enjoyable, but if you are a purist, you might not be overly impressed with some of these aspects. Another kicker is that RoF requires you to purchase further aeroplanes, as the initial hangar is not full of everything you might expect or want to fly (extra aircraft costing about seven quid to 'unlock' in the sim). By default, you can fly the Fokker DVII, SPAD, Nieuport and DVa, but you'll be getting your hand in your pocket again if you want to drive the SE5a or the Pfalz DIII. This aspect does not bode well for modifications from users, since it looks very much like they want users 'to keep coming back to the well' so to speak.

What is more, I did buy the add-on SE5a, but I thought the flight model of it was rather poor to be honest and not especially convincing, although the Albatros DVa is indeed quite good, so if you wanted to fly as a German, you would be happy with what comes by default if that was you mount of choice. Other disappointments on the SE5a I purchased for RoF were the fact that the Foster Mount will not let you crank the Lewis gun down to fire up at 45 degrees into two-seaters from underneath and nor does it feature an Aldis sight, so you can't snipe things from long range either. Both these missing aspects mean the SE5a in Rise of Flight has somewhat 'had its teeth pulled'.

With regard to it having a steep learning curve, that's very much in the eye of the beholder. It's certainly among the more realistic of the several WW1 flight sims available when it comes to what is modeled - i.e engine overheats and such, but I found it relatively easy to get to grips with, since I am a pilot in real life, but more importantly, I'm fairly well read when it comes to WW1 aircraft, so knowing what to expect, there were not too many surprises in store, and if you are similarly knowledgeable about WW1 craft, you would probably find the same was true for you, so I wouldn't panic about it being hard to learn, there are in fact a number of tutorial lesson flights included to get you going.

Now, if any of that has put you off RoF, then it is worth considering the other notable options for WW1 flight sims, the two big contenders being, First Eagles, and Over Flanders Fields. Of these two, Over Flanders Fields is what might be deemed as the 'hard core' choice, since the goal from the developers was to create something realistic and immersive, which indeed they have managed. It's worth noting however, that OFF is essentially an add on 'mission disk' for Microsoft's Combat Flight Simulator 3, so you need to buy that sim too if you want to run OFF, but that does mean you'd have CFS3 too of course, which is quite enjoyable, being basically a Ww2 flight sim with some minimal built-in role playing aspects.

First Eagles is probably the wisest choice if you are fairly new to all that flight simming malarkey. As it comes, you only get a few aircraft in it, the SPAD, SE5a and the Fokker DVII. however, there is an expansion disk for it which adds several aircraft, including the Fokker Dr1 Triplane, Albatros DV/DVa and one or two others. In actual fact if you buy First Eagles these days, there is a 'gold' version of it which combines the original sim with the expansion pack, making things a bit simpler and cheaper.

First Eagles has very user-friendly scalable realism options, from simple flight models and easy weapon usage, up to more demanding realistic settings. RoF and OFF have these too of course, but of the three, First Eagles is certainly the easiest one to get to grips with and as far as demands on how good a computer you need to have in order to run it, FE is also a good choice, since it is fairly light on hardware demands. Despite the relative simplicity of First Eagles, it's worth noting that unlike RoF, which does not have the Aldis sight on the SE5a, FE most certainly does have it on the SE5a, and it works well too, so it's not necessarily true in all respects that the 'hard core' RoF beats all comers!

Another major plus point for First Eagles is that there are literally hundreds of freeware add-on mods for it, from additional aircraft (some of these very good indeed), additional campaigns, better scenery, tougher flight models, weaponry modifications and all manner of things to mess around with. If you are reasonably competent with a computer, it's also not that hard to create such modifications yourself, so FE is very 'customisable'. There are links on the First Eagles developer website (Third Wire) to most of these mods.

For all three of those flight sims (Rise of Flight, First Eagles and Over Flanders Fields), you are going to want a joystick of course, and it would help if it was a good one, with a throttle and preferably a 'twist' function which you can use for the rudder. You could of course go mad and buy rudder pedals for your computer too, and these do add plenty of realism, but if you are just getting into things, that can wait. So take a look at something such as the Saitek Cyborg EVO joystick, which is reasonably cheap, has a throttle and twist rudder function, and usually installs without anything more complex than plugging it into a USB port on your computer.

If you get really into things, you may also want to look at Track-IR, which is an Infra Red tracking device that plots your head movements and pans the view from your cockpit based on small movements of your head (which sounds weird, but actually works very intuitively). Track-IR makes dogfighting in flight sims a lot easier and more immersive, but you can live without it and use the hat switch on a joystick to pan the view, which is not quite so easy, but certainly cheaper than the expense of buying Track-IR. Although as noted, if you really get into things, Track-IR is pretty much indispensable.

In conclusion, if you are worried about getting to grips with everything and want an easy introduction to WW1 combat sims that can be expanded to greater complexity, I'd recommend First Eagles and a joystick with a twist function as the smartest starting point.

Hope that helps a bit.

Al

[Chock]

By the way, since I've just registered on this site, hi everybody - Al

[TheBlackPenguin]

Does First Eagles run with Windows 7? I noticed the Third Wire website mentioning it won't run on Vista. Its $20, so not too bad a price if the campaign is worth it.

Here is a nice website on the SE. 5a:

Flying the SE.5a | The Vintage Aviator

Oh and this nice little gem on the ROF forums:

riseofflight.com • View topic - RE: The SE-5a.

Hopefully ROF will mature like wine!

Oh and welcome to the forums Chock!

Matt

[Chock]

I know First Eagles will run on the 32 bit flavour of Vista, because I have that OS on my laptop and it runs FE okay. Don't know about 64 bit though. Probably a case of not wanting to widen the things the developer has to offer support help for in saying it won't run on Vista. As for the newer OS, I really don't know on that score either, I guess the Third Wire forums would be the place to inquire.

Like many, I have high hopes that Rise of Flight will mature, especially since the marketing ethos is to keep selling aircraft into it, and if they want that marketing strategy to work, they'll have to keep adding to the content in the manner of an RPG to keep the interest levels up, so they definitely have an incentive to improve matters. It would be nice to see stuff like the Harry Tate and DH2 get a look in on a sim for a change, instead of the usual DR1 obsession.

But right now, I think the main problem with RoF is that it is touted as a 'next generation sim', and it simply is nothing of the sort. True, it does have what could be regarded as next generation graphics, but as far as immersion and depth goes, it's not even as good as air combat sims from over ten years ago; even the old Microprose Knights of the Sky WW1 sim blows it out of the water as far as campaign depth goes, and the dynamic campaign in the old Falcon 4 combat sim is still streets ahead of both it, and most other air combat sims that have come out over the past decade. So if the developers of RoF want us to really regard it as a next generation sim, then they should be addressing that kind of thing as opposed to relying on pretty graphics.

Al