calderra

I want to write a novel but quick points from another outsider: 1) Community, don't be like that. Newcomer perspectives are INCREDIBLY important if you ever want this hobby to grow big enough and get enough investment to get the features you want. 2) Everyone saying the guy should start with the vanilla sim and grow with it: Right on. Thank you. 3) It is a moneymaking scam, overall. BUT- the suckers for a real sim are commercial airlines and manufacturers. Who made Prepar3d again? Oh that's right, Lockheed. A profit driven company, who absolutely will sucker anyone into paying for their product if they can. Big companies are the ones who are prepared to spend big bucks to avoid getting sued down the road when a pilot didn't know how to respond to a mechanical failure because nobody had simulated it. Accurate simulation of cockpit gauges, takeoff, landing, and damage/stress models are the first areas to get treatment for that reason. The next-highest spenders are... again let's be honest... just the sort of people he's pointing to. The sort of people who spend $20,000 on FarmVille or whatever. These people are mostly fine if the plane spawns midair and if they ever land then they alt-f4 the moment the wheels touch the ground. There's just not enough serious flight sim fans to fund the development effort to make a truly immersive experience. BUT- that may change. With the advent of the VR era, a simple act like someone handing you a warm cup of coffee is just the sort of experience people are now primed for. Simulators have moved into the 64-bit era, so in time we'll have enough overhead on our machines to be able to spend some memory on other things while still getting ridiculously great terrain and physics. But it's 100% true that things like "flight sims just moved into the 64-bit era" sound ridiculous to newcomers. Due to the commercial partners involved, you have to realize that simulations which are long-term stable and run on existing hardware (like a full-motion 7x7 simulator some airline bought ten years ago and still trains pilots on) is a very important feature. Due to the memory limits of that era, we really didn't have the overhead to do much in the way of things like scenery and physics running at the same time. Today's sims are still dragging behind because of that effect. There is hope. The car simulation arena just had its own Renaissance. Just a few years ago, your best options for what to install for hardcore sim newbies were sometimes a decade out of date and were laughably ugly and feature-dry compared to console games (Gran Turismo, Forza, etc). Then all of a sudden things like rFactor2 and Assetto Corsa and Project Cars were all launching within the space of a few years. Today there's almost a new great sim coming every year depending on what flavor of drive you prefer. These sims themselves need more improvement- like it would be nice to have better simulation of ownership such as purchasing parts as cars wear and tear- but the industry is meeting demand faster than ever. The new F1 games are getting more and more simulation of the out-of-car aspect of the season each year. So OP is right, and honestly I wouldn't be surprised if his needs will be met by an out-of-box simulator in say... 5 years' time? Like if some massive project could start a funding drive today, add 4 years for development and 1 year for all the bug fixes until it's really worth playing. It's just not there today.