Euro Truck Simulator: Simulates driving a truck.
The Sims: Simulates life, family and career.
Formula 1 2024: Simulates driving an F1 car.
Sim City: Simulates building and maintaining a city.
All these are sims, and they are also games.
If i buy a real level D sim from an airline and put it in my living room for my entertainment, it is a sim and a game too. Because i use it to play i’m a pilot flying an aircraft.
You can also say you use a game to train real life things. In fact driving schools in some countries use a driving game to train before the real driving.
A lot of companies use game elements in e-learning systems.
At its core it is a game (but arent ALL simulators?) But it can be used as an at home helping/practice aide for people studying to be a pilot irl so at the same time is a learning tool whoch makes it a sim imo
It is ‘Make-believe’. Just like I played ‘Cops and Robbers’ and ‘Cowboys and Indians’ way back when. Now I use a computer instead of a cap pistol. But, as some real aviators have pointed out in the past, parts of it can help polish their skills, just as playing those games as a child helped to sharpen our senses. Therefore, I see it as a game that develops and helps improve thinking and mental/physical coordination. You think of what you want your aircraft to do, your feet and hands make it happen (hopefully). At 95, I can use all the coordination I can get.
We agree, but we may also be a minority (as to whether it’s even pointless - obviously others feel differently).
In the end, IT DOESN’T MATTER, folks. There were far more important things to do today, like wishing friends and family a merry christmas or happy hanukka or whatever works for them, getting together with family, and now sleeping off the turkey, while feeling guilty that there are those who will be sleeping outside in -18°C, tonight, those who are hungry, and those who have no hope.
In the decade since I retired I’ve spent 10,000 hours working for free to help, and there are more homeless, hungry, and without hope than when I started.
So some time spent flying around, trying to not think of what’s going around me, doesn’t make a difference if it’s a game or a sim. A way to recharge my batteries. A vacation to Bora Bora, the Eiffel Tower, or the south pole.
Because a lot of us need a little vacation from the grim reality of repeatedly seeing our best efforts changing nothing.
Is it a sim? Is it a game? Is it therapy? It’s whatever it is to each of us.
I use a sim at work—a 2 1/2 story monstrosity that costs more than the old 767 it simulates. On rare occasions when we have time leftover and nobody has any place they immediately need to be, someone will ask that the motion be turned off so that they can “try something.” At that point, the professional level 4 simulator becomes a game.
Conversely, MS2024, X-Plane, DCS and the like are games. But, when they are approached with seriousness, planning and a commitment to follow accepted standard procedures, these games become sims. Mind you, I almost never treat any of them that way. So, for me, they are nearly always games.
Its an endless debate, but its without doubt that 2024 has been developed with more of a gaming aspect than its predecessor which itself was fairly far into the gaming side of the genre and by going that way has certainly picked up a huge number of Gamers who probably wouldnt go near the likes of XPlane
Ultimately I suspect it comes down to perception and how you use it
Very good point. I’ve never considered any of the series to be a flight simulator though it can be a systems simulator and help with procedural stuff if the systems modelling is up to it.
I remember the first Simulator I sat in, in was a Simulator for the RAF VC10, its graphics would be considered laughable today and consisted of a dedicated small building, one interior wall of which had a physical scaled down model of
approx 5 miles around the Airbase (imagine something like what a model railway enthusiast with a really big room would build) above this model there was a video camera on a rail and gimbal setup that ‘flew’ above the model. the image produced was then projected onto a screen in front of the simulator’s windscreen, the whole setup was huge.
Well, when we compare ETS/ATS to FS then we can’t complain.
Can you imagine having SCS build Flight Simulator, it would take hundreds of years for them to reach the same state FS is in right now. Starting and flying the plane only having to uses the up arrow and every now and then down, left and right. Not even mentioning the cost as they don’t provide world updates but tiny pieces of state and country updates, basically some roads and cities.
I can agree it is both. Sim and game.
You can play it like game in career or even free flight if you set assistances to act like a game.
In free flight it act like a sim.
About flight model, I can’t tell much, beside I have flown with aircraft and helicopter in real life, I didn’t controled them, so I don’t know how it is real on commands. But so far, weight of aircraft make a difference, weather conditions like icing, wind, rain make a difference in air and on ground.
I think right now with hardware we have now it is not possible to make 1:1 flight sim. There are to many factors that need to be calculated in real time, which current hardware doesn’t have resources.
What I saw from professional full motion simulator used to train pilots, they do not recreate full sim. They have pretty bad graphics of scenery, but they do what is important. Systems are working, so pilots in training can be familiar with aircraft’s systems and other.
All RAF Stations in central England have ATC.
Most are also ‘Flight Following’ Zones.
As the RAF have Flight Following, but Civil does not in the UK, Flight Following is OK.
Cosford and Cranwell North do not have ILS, and they are VFR only in daylight hours, with no runway lighting either.
Asobo have kindly included ‘D Airspace Transit’ in Tower Options, so VFR in UK is now more realistic. Only rarely must Zone Transit be used. Most often at Birmingham BHX and East Midlands, which are both surrounded with D Airspace.
North of Cosford and East of Shawbury it is A Airspace 5500’ +.
I can practice all the aerobatics there.
A note to Astronauts.
Over the Irish Sea, there is an expansive Danger Area, FL145 - UNL
Which means if your orbit takes you over the Irish Sea, the Unlimited Altitude of the Danger Area makes you at risk from missiles.
This is where the RAF and USAF practice A/A missile at Radio controlled unmanned aircraft.
I started FS with FS2 in wired mode.
I then have all the versions except fs2020.
With fs98, we were already doing flights with controllers with software imitating the radio with virtual companies and organizations such as IVAO or others.
I did thousands of hours on FS, and in 1999 when I started flying for real to pass my PPL, I was not at all disoriented by the instruments and their operation, nor even by the reactions of the plane in all flight situations.
My first instructor was also surprised by all the knowledge I already had and this allowed me to make my first landing without his help after barely 6 hours of flight.
In this sense, I therefore consider that FS has been (and still is) a modest but serious simulator (which cannot be compared with a professional simulator) which allows you to approach all aspects of aviation provided you do it seriously.
I gave up simulation after FSX because my machine no longer allowed me to run it, but I recently invested in a modern machine, and it is with pleasure that I returned to FS2024, which allows me to do VFR without problem thanks to the quality, precision and accuracy of the modeling of the world. Since 2024, we can indeed consider it, also, as a game, but this aspect does not interest me at all. So we use it as we wish, and that is the most important thing.
It is a video game. Published by Xbox Games Studios. Just because it says “simulator” doesn’t mean it’s a simulator. Otherwise I could become a GOAT overnight.
MSFS is not a professional simulator. And I say this as someone who used Microsoft flight sims over a 20 year period. There’s a very stark difference between simulator that serves for entertainment purposes and a simulator that serves for professional purposes.
MSFS is far from a professional simulator. Generally, I have a good rule of thumb when it comes to deciding this. Firstly, can your copy of MSFS become FAA-certified even if you use FAA-certified hardware? NO. Is MSFS in use professionally around the world in FAA-approved simulators? NO.
Meanwhile, X-Plane is FAA-certified and is used professionally with FAA-approved hardware. P3D is also used in FAA-approved simulators.
This tells you everything you need to know. MSFS doesn’t aim to be a professional simulator.
From my experience, its usually software (X-Plane or P3D) that do not have the words “simulator” in their name, which are actually the real simulation software.
