That was a nice surprise, and just as I had decided to go for Xplane instead. Now with this discount I got all of the Flight content, and I'll still give a go at X-Plane. FSX will remain my main platform in terms of diversity as well as complex addons, X-Plane for the helicopters and Flight for some quick sessions of GA.

That was a nice surprise, and just as I had decided to go for Xplane instead. Now with this discount I got all of the Flight content, and I'll still give a go at X-Plane. FSX will remain my main platform in terms of diversity as well as complex addons, X-Plane for the helicopters and Flight for some quick sessions of GA.

 

Very good choice ptsinge! I do not own xp10 - last version I bought from LR was v8, and I tested all demos of v9... If I had the time and the money I would probably buy xp10 just for the rotary wings :-) The overall performance of GA aircraft, gliders and jets is not on pair with the best add-ons for fsx or even fs9, IMHO.

 

FSX with the best add-ons still gives the best overall coverage a flightsim can ever give, that's what I think, but it costs a lot of €€€ to have all of those add-ons, and then there is all that tweaking required to be able to profit from it... I have also considered Prepar3D, but I feel a little bit confused about it's future - will they design their own flight dynamics platform to solve problems / limitations with MSFS/ESP and add vectored thrust and better rotary wing dynamics???

 

I keep an eye on DCS p-51, and also on their KA-50, but I wouldn't give the best use to those sims since I really am not interested in the military side of flying. The KA-50 looks great, but it is soooo different from a typical helicopter I wouldn't really want to learn the complex docs just to profit from it's certainly extraordinary flight model... As far as I was told, TakeOn is no alternative because the flight dynamics are far from what even FSX helicopters offer...

 

I have SilentWings and Condor for gliding simulation, and ELITE Premium v8 for IFR.

 

I think ELITE Premium, and MS FLIGHT complement themselves regarding what I look for in a GA flight simulator. I regret having to have 2 simulators installed, plus the gliding ones, for completion....

Jcomm, early TakeOn dynamics were pretty poor, but I understand they are much improved.

There is a long thread on the TOH forum with real world helo pilots contributing.

Last time I tried it I found it challenging...not flown a real helo but will be doing so soon.

Which FSX helo would you suggest to be the best flyer (not the most complex)?

 

Hopefully flight will introduce a helo soon...#

 

Cheers

Keith

But the KA50 from DCS is very worth the price. I own it and absolutely love it. I often fly it just in free flight mode. By the way, for FSX I've recently discovered the HTC addon (freeware) at hovercontrol (just google it): it adds a lot of the missing physics to helicopters (including the default ones) and the result feels quite close to what Xplane achieves, a huge improvement. I'd be curious to see how an helicopter model would turn out in Flight, but only if they would really upgrade the model a lot in comparison to vanilla FSX.

Jcomm, early TakeOn dynamics were pretty poor, but I understand they are much improved.

There is a long thread on the TOH forum with real world helo pilots contributing.

Last time I tried it I found it challenging...not flown a real helo but will be doing so soon.

Which FSX helo would you suggest to be the best flyer (not the most complex)?

 

Keith, it's been a long time since I quited using FSX. The best helicopter I ad for it was the DODOSIM Bell, but on the previous message in this thread ptsinge mentions another model, freeware, available at Hovercontrol!!!

 

Thanks for the update on TakeOn - I'll check it!

 

@ptsinge: Well, I considered using the DCS KA-50 in free flight mode too... Still trying to decide if I should really invest on the new "DCS World" and buy the p-51 and the BlackShark, or buy additional Genview scenery areas for ELITE covering Hawaii and Alaska - they're very expensive, and graphically rather limited, but ELITE is a great IFR sim.... BTW: ELITE is using ESP with one of their helicopter simulators, the physics and systems being driven by the ELITE core and the visuals carried out through ESP.

The deal is done now and you can (and should) talk about other sims elsewhere, so I am locking this thread.