Hello Everyone.....a new member asks for advice

[cyber_hawke]

Hi,

After several years away from flight simulators, I have decided to return to the fold. I am seeking advice on which simulator to purchase. I am looking for one that has sufficient documentation or training missions to learn the sim, also one that has enough variation in the missions to be fun. Playing in a multiplayer environment is also cool.

I originally posted on the CFS forum and someone suggested I post here.

Any suggestions?

thanks,
Cyber :icon29:

[gramps]

Hmmmm, tough question:costumes:


reckon it boils down to whatya want in your sflight sim. If ya want online flyin, I hear IL\PF series is the best as far controllin cheaters go. It has purty good graphics in it too from what I've been told.

The down fall is, you have to be satisfied with what comes with the games,an patches that are released. You can't just download anything an it work.

CFS3 is purty good too. Kinda buggy on some folks pc's, but there's fixes for most of that out there too. Your purty much stuck with what ya get on it too far scenery goes. There are some major add-ons comin for it tho.
Ya have MAW, which is a whole new theater for it comin for it.
You have OFF, which is a WW1 version in the works too.
There are some planes that are out for it too.


If ya want the whole world to fly from, an be able to download an add just about anything, from planes to scenery, to etc............ , then CFS2 is still the best around.

Not much help I know, but it really just boils down to what ya want to do.

[CybrSlydr]

Gramps summed it up pretty well, but I think he needed to add that for Online play, IL2FB/PF is the best we currently have. Download Hyperlobby and you can hop on pretty much any time and have hundreds of people from around the world to play with. Not to mention the online wars. :)

That said, I think IL2 has the better SP experience as I was just plain sick and tired of having to fix something I already bought. If tweaking is your thing, then stay away from IL2 - only tweaking you will be doing is that which is in the options menu. :)

[KOM.Nausicaa]

Hi, Gramps and Cyber have said the essential. IL2 is way superior in multiplayer, not only concerning stability and precision, but also sheer presence of players. Il2 is though not tweakable by the user, which is maybe the price to pay for its great online play.

CFS3 is very nice offline, but very bad online. You can barely play it "stock" online, and even then, you have a very small presence of players, and you better need a very good connection--still, you will have "jumping" planes (lag) and "mole" planes (planes flying under the ground) and multiple other problems.
CFS3 is however tweakable for offline play and offers a wide variety of user made add-ons and planes, sounds, effects, missions, campaigns etc.

Concerning planes: CFS3 comes with a small amount of "stock" planes, which are considered as being quite bad, for FM's as well as for models, cockpits etc, but it has a large choice of user made planes that you can download. The 1% Avhitopry ones are very good, especially for FM's. IL2 comes with a bigger choice of stock planes (talking about the merged version here) and plus all the planes that had been released over the time, it has now over 160 or so planes, from which 70 are flyable. (i counted it once, but I cant recall the numbers exactly).

If you go for IL2, and you want to play online, you need to purchase IL2 "Forgotten battles" and the Ace expansion Pack, and PF (Pacific Fighters). You merge this installation together, and then you need to patch it up until the latest version, 4.01. That is not too difficult to do, downloading the patches will maybe take some time, depends on your connection.

I don't know about CFS2 or 1, but I think Gramps summed it up already.

Regards,

Nausicaa

[BFawlty]

If you go with IL-2 series, be sure to get Lowengrins fantastic campaign generator. Personally I prefer IL-2, I still have CFS 2 installed. I like the add ons people in the community have done for it and as mentioned you get the whole world in there.


BF

[FF_StepChild]

GET 'EM ALL! I did. All of them have aspects I like and dislike. Realism or arcade, the choices are how you set up any of the sims and where you fly them. Noone can tell you what you will like. LOL