At WITS we are focus on the real thing, FLYING an ACTUAL aircraft. But: if you are still considering whether or not to visit us and you are still bound to your PC for some simulated fun in the air, the following article may assist you a little.

I am writing this because I sure wish someone had told me all this stuff before I had gotten tangled up in the whole messy hobby of flight simming. It all started when I got my first joystick...an innocent enough event that ultimately cost me thousands of dollars and led to my being a licensed pilot. Never underestimate the lure of an idea!

Playing flight sims on your computer can be both fun and immensely frustrating. There are many rewards for the determined enthusiast, and at least as many pitfalls for the unwary. I will attempt to steer you clear of the worst of the pitfalls so that you might better enjoy your chair flying...which is the whole point. There is nothing worse than sitting down to your newly purchased game, eagerly ripping off the wrapper in anticipation of soon being magically transported years away to do battle with the enemy in the cloudswept skies over London, to shout Tallyho! as your Spitfire screams in from the sun to blast the unsuspecting Hun's plane to pieces beneath the weight of fire from the eight .30 caliber machine guns in your wings...only to spend the night in your chair on hold to tech support, cursing the snot-nosed geek who has tricked you into buying a half-finished game that will only run on a Cray supercomputer after a staff of skilled computer technicians installs the fifteen software patches required to fix the problems you never knew you had until you bought this blankety-blank game. (deep breath...sorry, my English teacher is rolling in her grave. I talk like this in real life, though...)

Here is a simple list of do's and don'ts that may save you hours of frustration, if you consider them at the proper time(i.e. before you spend your money/install your new hardware/screw up your computer/throw it out the window/get committed).

Some Do's:

DO be sure you have a computer rig capable of running your chosen game. Most games list minimum system requirements, which are notoriously innacurate. Normally, you will not enjoy the full benefit of a game unless it much faster than the minimum system requirements. Sim's are notoriously demanding of all aspects of your computer: processing power, ram capacity, video capabilities and hard drive space. If you don't know what any of that stuff is, follow this simple rule of thumb: Compare the relative ages of the game and your computer. If the computer is older, the game will run slowly or not at all. If the computer is newer, the game will run great, or not at all.

Most of us cannot afford the luxury of custom building our PC to meet the demands of our gaming, but there are some resonably inexpensive(by aviation standards...heh,heh) things you can do to make sure you enjoy your simming. In fact, there is one thing you MUST do...purchase a joystick. This deceptively simple event is frought with peril, as there are a plethora of joysticks and gaming devices available, but many of them are incompatible with some games, sytems or even eachother. Therefore:

DO be sure and do your research before buying a joystick. You must know which operating sytem you are using and what sort of ports you computer has on it (you have to plug it in somewhere, right?). You may also wish to consider whether or not the maker of your chosen joystick has any other products you might want to add down the road (like a throttle, or rudder pedals). Products are more likely to be compatable with one another if they are made by the same company. Good joysticks can be suprisingly expensive, so choose wisely. Things to consider are multiple functions(some come with a throttle, or twist to provide rudder movement), programmability(most of them have many programmable buttons on them...the more, the better) and force-feedback(pricey but fun).

Most sims will run and look better on computers with good video capabilities, and many modern sims demand that a 3D accelerator card be installed. Most newer PC's come with at least some 3D acceleration, and luckily, even an old computer's video can be upgraded fairly easily by installing a newer video card. A decent video card costs around a hundred dollars, but can transform the gaming performance of your computer(normally for the better) to an astounding degree. If you are technically savvy enough to install your own RAM, then you can put in a new video card. If you are unsure, chances are your geeky friend can do it for you. Or the wage slaves at the game store will be happy to do it for you for a few bucks...but don't let them upsell you on some whiz-bang brand new three hundred dollar video card. It will not make that big a difference on older games, and flight sims depend as much or more on processing power for frame rates than they do the video card. Besides, the card will be worth half that much six months from now, as the pace of video card development is frantic.

So, DO make sure your computer's video is up to the task. And DO be aware that you can easily spend a couple hundred bucks on hardware just preparing your computer to play flight sims. (although there is a nice used market out there...if you comb the flight sim sites message boards, you might find some good deals, and learn a lot besides).

But you've bitten that bullet, and now you are ready to buy your fist flight sim. Ah, but which one...there are so many...

DO choose a sim that is right for your level of experience. Falcon 4 is a great sim, for example, but someone new to the idea of modern air combat could be easily overwhelmed by it's (quite realistic) complexity. The user manual is as thick as a Tom Clancy novel. You might want to cut your teeth first on a simpler game. Most good sims have options that permit you to simplify aspects of the game until you are ready for them. This website also has a guide to flight sims, which may help you seperate the wheat from the chaff, so to speak.

DO read the box first. All flight sims list minimum(and, increasingly, recommended) system requirements. Occasionally, you can get away with running a game on a machine that is not up to snuff, but I wouldn't recommend it. In fact, it is best to consider the minimum system requirement to be hopelessly optimistic, and double it. If in doubt, you can often find a demo version of the game in question online that will let you test it's performance first. I recommend this approach for all sims, really, since many may have issues with your particular hardware configuration. Better to find out before you've dropped your fifty bucks, since it is a rare store that lets you return opened software. It is not a bad idea to read some reviews, either, since many games (especially right off the shelf) often ship with serious bugs and compatability issues. So,

DO your research(see a trend here?) and DO download the patch as soon as you install your game. Almost every game has a patch nowadays, normally within days of shipping, and they can be obtained easily from the manufacturers's website. Even if your game runs fine without one, it is best to install them, since most games will not allow you to play multiplayer online games unless both parties are using the same version of the game.

OK, now we have at last arrived at the fun part, right? Well, not quite yet. Now we must configure our game. Almost all flight sims require some monkeying around with the preferences to get the video, sound and/or joystick working properly. (So don't despair if things don't work right away...often it is just a matter of a few mouse-clicks in some preference panel to get things happening) You can often adjust many display options to improve performance, as well.

Most flight sims (especially the more realistic ones) have a considerable learning curve, and dozens of keyboard shortcuts to memorize. Fortunately, a really good joystick(you bought a good joystick, right?) has lots of programmable buttons, which can make fishing for the appopriate key in the heat of battle a non-event(which is why a real modern fighter aircraft's joystick has a zillion buttons on it...not only does the pilot not want to stop and look down to find the right switch, but the g-forces of modern fighters in combat can make that impossible).

OK, now we are finally coming to the fun part. You have your game, it runs(the biggest hurdle) and you have been treated to hours of aerial acrobatics and thrilling dogfights. But the game has begun to loose it's lustre...the scenarios are becoming repetitive, and the AI pilots are increasingly easy to blow away. Worse, there is no new game slated for release for months. Now what?

Welcome to the wonderful world of the internet. Somewhere, someone on the net is as hoplessly addicted to your favorite sim as you are, and has even gone so far as to improve it. Often several someones. If fact, many of the most popular sims have entire online communities spring up around them, all slavishly dedicated to extracting every last little bit of potential out of a game that was abandoned by the manufacturer soon after it's release. These people provide patches and "mods" (short for modifications) for their favorite game, often enhancing the graphics or realism to a startling degree. There are usually tons of add-on aircraft available, and new paint jobs for existing ones. These games are often the most fun to own, and are more likely to remain on your hard drive, since they keep growing. Sims of this nature include European Air War, Microsoft's series of flight sims, and Falcon 4.

If you can rationalize the expense, there are also purely online sims, like Warbirds or Aces High, that charge a monthly fee to play. They offer a sizable and experienced online cadre of opponents, and are continously being improved.

Some DON'Ts:

DON'T buy new hardware at eight oclock at night. Rest assured, you will need to exchange it or call tech support or something and they will be closed for the evening.

DON't think for a minute that flight simming is a cheap hobby. It isn't, especially if it seduces you into flying the real thing. It is cheaper than real flying, but then so is your car.

DON'T cheat in multiplayer games, and don't tolerate cheating. It is a sad fact of life that the anonomity of the internet seems to invite this sort of behaviour, and nowhere is this more rampant(in my experience) than on Microsoft's The Zone, a popular(and free!) place to meet other gamers for online play. The very modifiable open architecture of Microsoft's games is, unfortunatly, a double-edged sword, for it also permits less scrupulous players to cheat. It's a deplorable practice, and ruins entire evenings for everyone. Don't do it! It is, after all, pointless. What glory is their in a victory so cheaply won? It proves nothing, other than the cheater's cowardice. And, speaking of Microsoft,

DON'T bother asking anyone why you cannot see the propeller blur in Microsoft's flight simulators. Real pilots will look at you funny. The truth is, the propellor is nearly invisible when in motion. (This is a curious phenomenon I call the "media effect"...nowadays we all seem to measure reality by the yardstick of what we have seen on TV or read in books. Photographed propellors exhibit a more noticable blur than they do in real life. Likewise, the all-too-popular "lens flare" you often see in 3-D generated stills and animations is an anomaly unique to camera lenses. It is ironic that we crave these sort of effects to increase our sense of immersion when in fact they make the virtual experience more artificial. But I digress...)

And, finally,

DON'T take any of this as gospel. I'm just this guy, you know...?

Click here for a review on some well-known flight simulators.