What Else Do You Sim?

I do flight simming quite a bit, since I'm trying to reach a CPL in real life; and flight sims really help to learn and practice certain things. I also play ATS for fun.

Definitely flight sims. As someone who was at a very impressionable age through the golden era of flight sims in the 90s, I was lucky to play a lot of them. Red Baron, Chuck Yeager's Air Combat, Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe, right through IL-2. In more recent times, I've messed around a bit with DCS, Rise of Flight, and FSX, but with nowhere near the intensity that I put into race sims nowadays. I'll always love planes, though, especially WW1 thru WW2 warbirds.

If you are like me and believe you don't necessarily need vehicles involved for a game to be a "simulator", then I have some other examples. As a big "stick & ball" sports fan as well, I've gotten many hours of fun out of playing what you might see called "sports management sims". In particular, college football and baseball management games, where you are put in charge of recruiting, setting budgets, training schedules, gameplans, etc. Extremely addictive! I also fervently believe many Wargames can blur the line into meeting my definition for "simulator" (I'm talking about proper big-W Wargames here, not "games that have a war setting", which I how I'd describe Call of Duty, etc). For example, I am a huge fan of the "Close Combat" series - lots of hours sunk into those games over the years! I often see Close Combat, IMO, miscategorized as a "RTS". I think first and foremost it's a Wargame, but I think if you look at what's modeled in real-time in those games, you can make a very strong case as it being a "simulator" as its secondary or perhaps sub-genre.

It's a topic thats near and dear to my heart because, ever since I was a little kid, I have always been a bit obsessed with "realism". Specifically, very interested in the extent to which video games can give the player at least an idea of what the real thing is like. Conversely, I have never been able to get into anything remotely "fantasy" themed. Lots of people love it, I'm totally cool with that fact, but my own brain seems to just naturally reject it. Monsters, paranormal, supernatural...with precious few exceptions over my life, it's a big turn off for me. Sci-fi is a "sometimes" for me, but it has to pass some kind of plausibility check in my brain. I have a sinking feeling I'm not alone in this within the sim racing community!

For space and sci-fi:-

Kerbal Space Program and Simple Rockets 2 are some really interesting ballistic simulations even though you play them mostly in 3rd person

Lunar Flight is another interesting, and hard as hell simulation of a lunar transport module which also has a beta VR mode. Which leads me to the Outer Wilds which has many of the sim elements of Lunar Flight but incorporated into a really good game as well.

Frontier Pilot Simulator is a pretty good take on futuristic VTOL aircraft, but very heavy on the GPU.

I try some flight sim, wih the little i have, im sticking more with only racing stuff. Although DCS really rock in vr, even if is just for a quick 5-30 min session, its always a good experience. Its kinda expensive (the level of detail is absurd, so you get whay uou pay for), and to master just one aircraft can take up a looong time, so it kinda pays off. Have yet to test this Flight Simulator in VR, cause for sims, at least for me, once you go VR theres no turning back,

Let me bring Derail Valley to every VR simmer'S attention. Its a hidden gem.

The physics keep you constantly on your guard. This is one of those games that was developed aorund VR from beginning on - the 2D option was added later only due to loud public demand. So, the 2D lives with an interface that was optimised for VR in the first.

This is by far the most satisfying - and tricky - railroad experience I have ever seen on PC. Its lovely.

I basically like everything sim related, but with 2 small kids all I have time for is a weekly RD Club race.
I fully expect to pick up flightsimming when they get just a tad older though

vr flight sim x -plane /Mfs 2020/ fishing sim -russian fishing 4/Fisher online /train sim world 2/cosmosim elite dangerous /eve :valkyrie warzone

The Flying Hun said:

Let me bring Derail Valley to every VR simmer'S attention. Its a hidden gem.

The physics keep you constantly on your guard. This is one of those games that was developed aorund VR from beginning on - the 2D option was added later only due to loud public demand. So, the 2D lives with an interface that was optimised for VR in the first.

This is by far the most satisfying - and tricky - railroad experience I have ever seen on PC. Its lovely.

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I'm not dissing this whatsoever, but I spend way too much of my real life on Trains, Trams, and Buses to ever want to try a simulated version.

it does look good though.

Would love to try MS Flight Simulator however my available time (~2 hours a week) barely allows me to run my racing sim.

I've kind of burned out on flightsims, with how DCS is almost non-functional as an actual military flightsim and BMS is a PITA interface and setup wise. IL-2 is fun enough, but the content is quite lacking and the AI suffer from the same issues they suffered from over a decade ago. Civvie flightsims don't interest me one bit unfortunately.

I've moved on to Graviteam Tactics recently, and some Steel Armor. At least they function somewhat well, although the genre is very different I admit.

Does Hell Let Loose count as a sim ?
Cause there's certainly been a lot of it...

The latest MS Flight Sim has been a nice relaxing experience of exploring from the couch (and xbox controller i'm afraid..)
but bringing back souvenirs from when google earth first came out !

Flight sims MSFS and P3D, as well as War Thunder to get some tank action.

So far, nobody has mentioned helicopter flight sims.
I used to enjoy Comanche 2, 3, and 4 by Novalogic and AH-64D Longbow 2 by Jane's.
Circa 1996-2002 ... ooh, I'm dating myself!

To echo the many others, Flight Sim 2020 is excellent. I actually bought a Rift S to simrace with, but it makes me almost instantly sick. However, I can be in a T45 Goshawk doing barrel rolls and high G aerobatics and don't even feel slightly sick.

I'm a military aviation guy really, and I like shooting stuff, so I do a lot of flying (and of course fighting) in Arma 3. I've gotten rather good at lobbing Mk82 guided 500lb bombs at people.

I also like Train Simulator, some of the mods (such as Armstrong Powerhouse's Class 37) are very true to the real thing. Also being able to drive along my local railways (which are actually very scenic) is good fun.

I wish there was a good quality ship simulator out there. Ship Sim Extremes was a bloody disaster and Ship Simulator 2008 is... well, from 2008.

DCS whirlybirds of death ( I wish more people did fly those )

Sometimes planes as well but I'm too lazy to fully learn them lol

Mostly American Truck Simulator with ETS2 in a distant second.

1983 was the year I got in to simulators with sublogic flight sim on the c64. Since then I have had every msfs released and also spent more than a decade in combat sims like il2, lomac, dcs. I never got the bug for flying heavy metal and preferred lighter single and twin engine.

It wasn't until more recently that I got in to sim racing, with the release of rf1, gtr,gtr2. Although recent appears to be 15/16 years ago That got me on to the basic controllers and then the upgrade path to all we have available to us now as sim racers, DD's, motion, wind, nice rims, dedicated rims.. $$ spent that would have been unfathomable in the early days.

The good thing about nice flight sim controllers is that they have become cheaper and cheaper over the years. Oh wait, they havent, thats just because sim racing has made them seem so cheap

Over 1000 hours in Euro Truck Simulator 2. More than any racing title

I sim mainly in VR, so you'll find me in DCS, Il-2 and VTOL, and I used to have several thousand hours in Elite dangerous (until odyssey left a bitter taste), flatscreen I'm trying my hand at Star citizen. I used to hop into Euro and American truck sim, but as I was driving Artics at the time it was a bit like unpaid overtime, I may have to give them a whirl again.

The Zaccaria pinball sims: despite the obscure license and shambolic dlc strategy, probably the best pinball sim out there. Spent a lot of time in Rise Of Flight, and the IL2 reboot. Lots of Train Simulator, though train sim 2 suffered many problems related to migrating to the unreal engine so not so much of that. Uboat is great, and I spent a lot of time in older subsims like 688 etc.

Latest arguably sim title is Carrier Command 2. It is still a bit janky and low res in both presentation and systems, but buried under that is a sim like vibe.

Oh, and of course Euro Truck Sim.