Let’s not argue the sim-antics
Ready to discover once-and-for-all whether X-Plane is better than FSX?
Whether Falcon 4.0 is better than Milk Float Simulator 2012?
You’re in the right place.
What is a simulation?
To those individuals I would say this:Gosh, you’re looking well.
Been on holiday this year?
We’re just back from a week in South Devon.
The weather was marvellous.
Barely saw a cloud the whole time we were down there.
If you’re ever in that neck-of-the-woods I strongly recommend a trip on the Dartmouth Steam Railway.
All GWR locos of course, though they do have a rather nice Class 25.
It runs close to Greenway, Agatha Christie’s old house.
That’s worth a…
The following page would look very different If I hadn’t factored in mods when making my selection.
Fan skill and sweat has turned some of the titles in this list from basket cases into masterpieces.
Benoit Brabant was busySim Tractoring long before the Swiss arrived.
No-one with any sense playsFarming Simulatorfor the verisimilitude of the agricultural kit or the plausibility of the turnip physics.
It took several resets and a wallop from the office knobkerry to finally coax a decision out of it.
Couple Train Simulator 2015 to high quality routes and rolling stock and the results can be mesmerising.
you could be sure it’s a bona fide classic.
EECH passes the 10-year test with flying colours.
If you did you’re sure to appreciate the work Graviteam put into this relentlessly gritty armour sim.
It’s an unglamorous, unforgiving game inspired by an unglamorous, unforgiving form of warfare.
Tank interiors look great and feel appropriately claustrophobic.
Fighting on with fellow crewmen slumped bloody and useless at your side, is a regular occurrence.
Superb ballistics and skull scouring, sanity shredding audio cement a bleak, beguiling illusion.
21: War Thunder
Notes:Online dogfight sims go back a long way.
War Thunder’s airframe array makes Duxford’s look paltry.
Whichever realism level you end up gravitating towards, parsimony is no obstacle to success.
In WT, the pilot is always far more important than the plane.
Spend an hour climbing to operational altitude and forming up, and several more droning towards objective.
Done badly, a WW2 heavy bomber sim could be an excruciatingly tedious affair.
More than any other sim in this list B17II is a compendium.
It’s even possible to switch cockpits and pilot your silvery chaperones for a spell.
It sounds preposterous but similar illicit taxi runs are mentioned in BoB memoirs.
A group called Team Fusion have helped turn CloD around.
Their updates have transformed a sim that on release had more rough edges than Norway.
With each unofficial patch more untapped potential comes to light.
Orchestrating battles from the map view is child’s play.
If SBPPE has a shot trap it’s the absence of a campaign mode.
A mod and multiplayer scene still bustling with activity today, testifies to the sim’s incomparably strong fundamentals.
Sadly, comparing and contrasting both of these Fokker furnishers without spending cash is currently impossible.
Factor in the weaker ATC, AI traffic and flight planning facilities and FSX favouritism is the result.
Of course, there are areas where X-Plane comprehensively outsims all the opposition.
The night lighting effects are fab, the weather and fault seeding system excellent.
Does Austin Meyer’s continued faith in ablade element theory-based flight modelling approach lead to more realistic FMs?
That liveliness seems to mesh particularly well with rotary wing aviation.
Going by the latestpreview vid(Jan 2015) it won’t disappoint when it finally arrives.
GPL’s began with a chilling warning.
“You will spin and crash the first time out.
And the second time out.
And the third.”
David Kaemmer and chums knew they’d created a ballbreaker and weren’t afraid of admitting it.
GPL had to be insanely demanding because the activity it strained every algorithm to simulate was insanely demanding.
GPL’s true greatness took years to emerge.
13: Wings Over Flanders Fields
Notes:WOFF is built on rock-solid foundations.
CFS3 was one of the last flight sims to ship with a proper dynamic campaign.
WOFF is all about the long-term solo experience.
The range of sorties is substantial, the opportunities to freelance and blunder into trouble, numerous.
Even obscure hex merchants don’t seem that interested in letting us island hop.
No-one works harder to communicate the physical nuances of WW2 infantry combat than Tripwire and Anti Matter Games.
The combi-sim now offers the most convincing portrayal of period tank combat outside of specialist titles like Steel Fury.
Post-Papyrus David Kaemmer’s appetite for sophisticated physics and accurate tracks has only intensified.
That verisimilitude and the high standard of competition still draws professional race drivers to events and leagues.
10: ARMA 3
Notes:Discovered ARMA’s amusing ‘attach to’ command yet?
Back in 2001while their combat sim-crafting contemporaries were busy fleshing-out and fine-tuning sub-genres, BIS were amalgamating them.
The visionary Czechs took bolt-cutters to the invisible shackles that kept tank simmers tethered to tanks.
They snipped the strings that linked ripcords with Mission Over messages.
They gave grunts compasses, hiking boots, and FPS-mocking tactical freedom.
Most importantly, they changed forever the way we thought about tractors.
The build-your-own-trucking-business concept at the hub of the long game is quicksand of the deadliest pop in.
Seconds after completing one delivery, you’re mulling over the next.
Which is the prettiest way to Bratislava?
When should I pull in for fuel and a nap?
Do I have the acceleration necessary to overtake that dawdling HGV on the next straight?
Do I want to listen to Japan, Joanna Newsom or George Benson for the next 45 minutes?
There are just enough landmarks and scenic differences to sell the illusion of trans-European travel.
Computer-controlled Spits, Hurris, Bf-109s and Bf-110s pick dogfight tactics from a playbook containing 80+ different manoeuvres.
BoB2 is a relic of a more enlightened era.
Where can I buy it:Developer’s site, Amazon, etc.
Creators Marcel Kuhnt und Rudiger Hulsmann have painstakingly recreated a small portion of the Berlin of their youth.
Simming at its purest, OMSI isn’t particularly interested in artificial rewards or punishments.
Actually, come to think of it, the entire sim gave off an intriguing odour of otherness.
I can still remember how shocked I was the first time I was hit by flak.
There was a brutal, unembroidered honesty to IL-2 that myself, and many others found instantly endearing.
I recall too, being deeply impressed by 1C: Maddox’s approach to after-sales.
The original plane set grew steadily after release thanks to a series of then-highly-unusual free updates.
If you’ve never Sturmoviked, you really should.
Kunos have nailed it.
Structurally AC does nothing that hasn’t been done a hundred times before.
The solo career mode and multiplayer options are as conservative as Cheltenham Spa.
The track folder contains fewer surprises than an episode of Escape to the Country.
It doesnt feel like a filter.
It isnt Game Xs version of car Y; itisthat car."
Over the last few years ED have overseen a burgeoning third-party development scene.
If DCS World has weaknesses at present, they are campaign structure and cartographic variety.
Embrace optional intricacies like manual chart plotting and targeting and successful hunts feel infinitely sweeter.
Gofullfull real and forswear time acceleration, anda bizarre world of interrupted sleep and priceless insightsawaits.
Once appropriately augmented it arguably has just as much right to occupy this slot as its forerunner.
2: Falcon 4.0
Notes:Falcon 4.0’s history is almost as complicated as its avionics.
Subsequent semi-sequels and community-engineered updates have broadened theatre and ride choice, and vastly improved visuals and stability.
Today, most discerning Falconeers opt to fly the seventeen-year-old stalwart in its ‘BMS’ form.
You want something as vast as the Sahara and similarly easy to lose yourself in.
Ideally you want a game that doesn’t have slaughter at its centre.
Your rheumy eyes scan higgledy-piggledy shelves for several minutes before finally settling on the golden spine of FSX.
More hobby than game, Flight Simulator can be enjoyed in countless different ways.
It welcomes nostalgics, explorers, aspirants and obsessives.
It caters for the sociable, the solitary, the stressed and the war weary.
It soothes, it trains, it entertains and employs.
To pigeon-hole MSFS is to malign it.
All of MSFS’s finest airframes and prettiest panoramas have been parachuted in post-release by outsiders.
Expect to spend hours browsing freeware file repositories and mulling over potential payware purchases.
A pre-existing passion for planes will accelerate initiation and enhance enchantment, but is by no means essential.
Flight Simulator will change you, you’re free to be sure of that.
My second: Adam) to establish once-and-for-all whether Rising Storm and ARMA are manshoots or soldier sims.
