The thing is: calling flight-sims games is like calling my camping-car a "vehicle", like "i took my vehicle to go visitting some nice places". Very confusing and a bit stupid. While this is technically correct, a camping-car completely stands out and has a different purpose (compared to what most people understand as vehicles being in general "cars"), although you can also use them as such and go to the grocery-shop with your camping-car. So I simply don't understand the idea behind insisting that flight-sims are "just video-games". For me it looks like such folks either don't really understand the purpose of a flight-sim and/or its differences or are overwhelmed/scared by the amount of knowledge needed or jealous that some use them as a traing-tool for their real flights and then feel the need to downplay them...perhaps because they cannot be part of them and feel inferior? I simply don't really understand, hence the critical reactions.

While flightsims are indeed technically a type of video game, they often stand out due to their emphasis on realism and complexity. They occupy a unique niche that blends entertainment with education and training. Flight simulators have a distinct identity and purpose that sets them apart from many other type of games.

I have played all sort of games: Tetris, PacMan, Olympic games, adventure games and many more. Since a few years the only game I am playing (that I call as such) is GTA V. All of these games have a clear purpose to win and/or collect points. They are "games" like everyone understand them and I will always say that "I am playing GTA V", no question. Not so when using a flightsim because a flightsim is completely different. Exactly like I won't say my vehicle when talking about my camping-car.

People are entitled to their own opinion. But I personnally always found it pretty stupid to call a flight-sim primarly a game and not a flight-sim. Nothing to add 😀

Edited February 10, 20251 yr by Franz007

11 hours ago, blingthinger said:

Obviously not. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X-Plane_(simulator) doesn't contain the word 'game' anywhere in the description. I'll go with this encyclopedic description. Most other folks will too.

Aaaand at the very end of that webpage, low&behold:

Quote

This video game software-related article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.

You're welcome 🙂

Playing Chess is a game so is a team of folk chasing a ball about on a sports field. Flight simulation is a video entertainment game. The degree of sophistication and realism it can import to that game is merely representative of the major developments in CGI and computer programming and hardware since PC's came about. So when I 'fly' the sim on my own I am engaged in entertainment. I can change it to a more formalised game with rules and participants via Virtual Airlines or VATSIM or Multiplayer flights.  This is not to decry or disparage the high level of realism and sophistication that has been brought to bear via computer such that the game does really simulate a real world aeroplane and to some extent the world environment in which flight occurs. In fact some models on the relevant platform (XPlane) are and have recreated the systems and performance and operation of a real world aeroplane to a remarkable level - that I find most entertaining and fun. 

It is not a flight simulator as the Aviation Industry would or can recognise. A Flight Simulator is required to be able to reproduce the look, feel, complexity and controls and their systems of the real world aeroplane. Each simulator is specific to an aeroplane type not generic flight. There is no known approved flight simulator that can allow an individual to be trained an educated to fly an aeroplane and obtain a license, rating and other endorsements from scratch without actually going flying in the real thing! History lesson one why a flight simulator because the majority of accidents in WW2 and after related to flight training accidents - this is tragic, destructive and very expensive. Even with a full motion simulator you can get a type rating but not a license. In my flying career I have seen them all, i did my intial IFR training in a LINK (Yep thats right a LINK) later on as I gathered endorsements etc etc it was all conducted in real aeroplanes not in a simulator only when I moved to large and heavy aircraft did I encounter and get to know the world of Full Motion flight simulalors. To run a full motion simulator you have to be a credited endorsed and current check pilot on the type. 

I have played with PC based simulators since I first discovered them going back to the days of Sinclair computers. I could see the potential and later as things progressed we have and did incorporate the PC based simulator game into pilot training (systems or procedures only) that would be done side by side with real world cockpits or airframes and the real world aeroplanes themselves. The PC based simulation was handy for practising procedural stuff etc but not for flight training. 

I can really enjoy the high fidelity, the look and feel of the simulator on my PC but it is just entertainment. It worries me not one iota that it is a game and a video game. If we just call it a flight simulator then that is fine as well. But I could never accept it as being sufficiently robust repetitively accurate and dynamically correct to give a trainee credit for it for the issue of their license. They want that - get into a real aeroplane with proper accredited tried and tested training syllabuses - after all its what the Aviation Industry has spend a century on refining and getting right - maybe in another hundred years virtual flying may do it then again probably not. 

If you did not have the good fortune, physical means or money to fly a real aeroplane then a PC based video game called flight simulator is a wonderful way to simulate and experience the world of flight and aeroplanes and that I would encourage anybody to do - which one? Who cares but I placed my resources and time into XPlane and I pass on the Microsoft product not because it is any less an entertaining and interesting flight simulation game but their product offering excludes internet poor country folk like myself I got no fibre optic based internet broadband to make it work!

Edited February 10, 20251 yr by coastaldriver

And possibly completely off topic now that MS have told us suckers that this is end of line for WIn10 this year - it will be back to Linux for me on a PC not buying another PC just to run WIN11. So MS whatever 2020 or 2024 is never going to happen - so thank goodness for XPlane!

I don’t know why some get offended because the majority of us are pretending to play an airplane pilot (game). This does not take away from the fact that x-plane is simulating real flight (simulator).

Only as some others have pointed out here, for professional training purposes , you need other hardware than a simple pc. The specs for such a pro simulator are way different and just this is why there is a professional license as well, I guess.

I can not comment on the engineering aspect of x-plane, but seeing that tricks are being used to overcome some of the flaws in the flight model of existing planes, I would never rely solely on x-plane to design a new plane.

5 hours ago, brinx said:

created xplane said they are the same

I'm not talking about XP when I reference ATP. I'm talking about the sims an ATP would use. You're glossing them into a single category and that's wrong. Plus on this particular topic I don't give a hoot what Austin thinks or says :)

 

2 hours ago, Daube said:

You're welcome

Haha you found it! The section at the very bottom that nobody cares about. Good job! That's also why I specified 'description'. For all we know, efis is running a slander campaign with his editable encyclopedic references. 

2 hours ago, Daube said:

You're welcome 🙂

So at the end it’s a software.

2 hours ago, coastaldriver said:

But I could never accept it as being sufficiently robust repetitively accurate and dynamically correct to give a trainee credit for it for the issue of their license. They want that - get into a real aeroplane with proper accredited tried and tested training syllabuses

That’s literally the definition of what a simulator is made for. Not to replace real flight training but - as it says - simulate it. Not sure why some think it should be at the same level as real flying experience…

Btw. a game and an entertainment aren’t the same. I am flying in real or go to cinema as entertainment. Both aren’t considered games.

Edited February 10, 20251 yr by Franz007

49 minutes ago, soaring_penguin said:

I can not comment on the engineering aspect of x-plane, but seeing that tricks are being used to overcome some of the flaws in the flight model of existing planes, I would never rely solely on x-plane to design a new plane.

Now imagine that an aircraft manufacturer did exactly this: designing a new aircraft on X-Plane and test it before building it in real. So they used X-Plane to test a real aircraft before building and selling it.

54 minutes ago, soaring_penguin said:

I would never rely solely on x-plane to design a new plane.

Solely? Nobody does. It certainly isn't the only design tool that would get used. It is but a link in the chain.

4 hours ago, brinx said:

Sadly, lots of people get offended and defensive when you call a simulator a game. 

Oh I know. Many in the MSFS forums get absolutely crazy. 
 

 

5 hours ago, brinx said:

Only the terminology changes. Even the creator of the simulator you develop addons for, Austin, acknowledged this fact.

For the same reason I tell people not to use the challenger as a training tool, even though several FBO’s do so, anyway. Legal issues come into play. 

22 minutes ago, blingthinger said:

Solely? Nobody does. It certainly isn't the only design tool that would get used. It is but a link in the chain.

THIS!

Car manufacturers do crash tests of their cars first in a (here it is - 'the word' 😉) simulation. It saves them a lot of time and money, to not crash hardware (i.e. a car).

Plane manufacturers do test flights before the planes go into operation. Applicable for many other fields as well.

Based on the results (and more an better number crunching machines), the simulation is refined more and more. However, a simulation is always based on mathematical models, which are an approximation to reality.

Even the million dollar number crunchers we have nowadays are not able to predict exactly the weather on wednesday at 3:14 pm in your street. Anecdote: I have read several years ago that a meteorologist was telling about someone asking him about the weather 'on wednesday at 3:14 pm in his street', because he planned to do a barbecue in his garden and didn't want to have rain at that time.

Edited February 10, 20251 yr by flying_carpet

I suppose X Plane could be called an aerodynamics' simulator.  You create your shape and it responds, hopefully, as would a real world object with the same properties. I am not sure how FS2020 works, internally, these days.

Then you put on your best pilots' hat, yell 'chocks away, Biggles' and  pretend your a real word not allowed pilot. It's both a game and simulator, depending on your mood and intentions.

4 hours ago, The_Flying_Potato said:

Then you put on your best pilots' hat, yell 'chocks away, Biggles' and  pretend your a real word not allowed pilot. It's both a game and simulator, depending on your mood and intentions.

I have never found the game-mode because I never found how to win at that game or at least see a ranking-list…but I wouldn’t even know what game I had to play beside flying planes….stupid me! 😉

Probably the most important distinction between a simulation and a video game from purely a software (rather than explitly use case) perspective - is a simulation has the capability to tell you things about the real world you either dont or even cannot know before, whereas a video game is not grounded in the real world, so there is little/nothing to be actually learnt from it.

Car Crash behaviour is a good example of this, for xplane its stuff like developing the beta technologies aircraft. My guess for Hotstarts CL650 is there is a very large number of things everyone involved learnt about the aircraft that wasnt in the documentation.

A good simulations greatest value is in what it can tell you about the real world - and very often things that no one knew before/were not designed in.

A video game cannot do this because every aspect and interaction in a video game is deigned for entertainment purposes, emergent behaviors are generally considered or manifest as bugs, rather than new knowledge.

to put that another way,

A game is designed to behave in a certain way

A simulation is designed to recreate known aspects of the real world, and then how it behaves depends 100% on how good or badly those known aspects represent their real world counterparts. 

Edited February 11, 20251 yr by mSparks