Welcome and please contribute

[jrohland]

This forum is for information about RC flight simulators other than RealFlight G3/G2 and Reflex XTR. While those are the big players in the RC flight sim market, there are a few folks using other sims.

I use FMS and ClearView. I do plan to switch to Reflex XTR (RealFlight G3 won't run on my notebook computer, Reflex will) when I can find a good price on a used copy. Until then, I will try to make ClearView work better.

FMS is what it is. There is not much you can do to improve the physics (to the degree it mimics physics at all) in FMS. However, FMS has some very nice features:
Price--it's free. Can't beat that.
Helis are easy to fly. At least I think they are.
It is very useful to learn stick control at various orientations, such as nose-in and inverted.

If you are unsure about using a sim, download and try FMS from http://n.ethz.ch/student/mmoeller/fms/index_e.html.

Get a controller to USB cable. You can get them from http://www.milehighwings.com/usb_cables.htm and, other suppliers. For the small investment of $35 (US) you can start using a sim with your own controller.

If you want to get a little more sophisticated program, ClearView is $30 (US) from http://rcflightsim.com/index.html.

A new sim (2006 September 01) can be seen here http://www.phoenix-sim.com/. The price looks to be about $130 (US). I don't have any information about that product.

If anyone wants to list additional sim software, please reply to this post with any information you have.

jrohland

[kgfly]

Great idea JR.

I too started with FMS and ClearView. I just recently picked up a 2nd hand copy of Relfex/XTR.

I agree with all your initial comments.

FMS
===
A lot of people bag FMS, but IMO any sim is better than none, and FMS is great for initial experimentation, learning orientation, getting a feel for the controls and trying to figure out the stick movements for a new manouvre.

A big plus is that it will run on really low-end hardware. I helped a friend get it going on a P3-866 with 16MB motherboard graphics.

ClearView
=======
ClearView is much more sophisticated and much better than FMS and I think it is great value. It has true photofields, sophisticated physics and lots of features.

The author is very active and responsive, implementing enhancement requests within a week or two. He has new releases and upgrades almost every month and CV is certainly ahead of Reflex/XTR in terms of features.

The user interface is a little clunky at times. This has no affect on flying, just when navigating the configuration menus and dialogs. It's mostly an aesthetic issue, the functionality is all easy to find and works pretty well.

On the physics front all I can say so far is that CV and XTR feel very different. Flying on CV is definitely harder than on XTR. I am not sure which is more realistic, at the moment I am tending to XTR by a little bit. I can fly circuits and figure eights and hover nose-in on XTR, still struggling with all of those on CV.

There are lots of extra models available for CV which is fun. All the updates and all the models are free for life, which is also nice.

CV needs a lot more PC grunt than FMS. I run it on my Dell D600 laptop (PentiumM, 1.8GHz, 2GB, 64MB Radeon 9000M) and it runs OK, but is pushing the PC to the limit. I also run XTR on the laptop but have to run at the lowest scenery resolution, which is still great. XTR really runs very well on my desktop (Athlon 3000+, 1GB, 128MB Radeon 9800 Pro).

Phoenix
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Like you no doubt, I have been watching their website for about six months. Their first ship date slipped by a couple of months. The marketing is very enticing and impressive. They are clearly targeting G3 and XTR, their presentation looks more like XTR to me. Still no downloadable demo and I have yet to see a review or a post from anyone that has used it for real. Their initial release has a strange (to me) selection of models, and does not include any Raptors or TRex, which I thought are the most popular helis around?

At $130 Phoenix is very cleverly priced and since they say it includes lifetime upgrades and all new models, is appealing. It will take a while to gain any momentum, but if good reviews start circulating I think a lot of people that have been saving up for XTR/G3, even second-hand, will take the plunge.