FLIGHT SIMULATION: ..."IT'S JUST A GAME!"

A game is something you can play and can finish.
The Flight Simulator is like the Energizer Bunny...it goes on and on and on, you never have to finish it. There is always one more flight left.
Golf Sims are the same, there is always another course.

😀 I've been simming since 1986 and still loving it. My wife can't understand why. Well it's not a game. It is just cool! 😎

Flight simulator may be what's called a game. But for me, and all the people around here, it's more like real life and much more realistic. Most games have unrealistic features. But this game doesn't. Everything in this game is cool and fun. Personally I think this game is more like a virtual flying lesson, you may not be able to experience what it would be like in real life but you still might be able to learn the basics and afterall its a 'Flight Simulator'

Id have to vote that it is more then just a game. Anyone can buy this game and play it but someone who takes this stuff more seriously like me, very quickly realizes the complexity of Flight Simulation, its more then just a game. I got the new FS2004 (having had owned previous versions) i always too did fool around in FS and for the past 2 months Ive been working on every learning aspect of FS (all ground school and lessons, and only having 1 more lesson to learn before i go for my FS ATP), and only during this time have i came to realize that it entirely depends on the type of person.

For someone who is serious about flying and FS this is FAR more then just a game where as someone who doesn enjoy it all they see is "a game"

As i just read in a previous post on how mostly anyone can fly 737 in FS to some extent, but if that person were to take a closer examination of the manual and true aspects of the airplane, will this come to see the complex nature of the airplane. For some reason i can relate this to FS being more then just a game.

Excellent post C-GNEX, and our Canadian Brethren are always welcome around here (I love Canada and am virtually flying exclusively for Air Canada and Jazz at the mo).

I thing RadarMan's analogy is perfect - there's apparantly infinite variety within the Sim.... When I rarely get a little tired of simulating Airline operations, I go off in my Cessna 152 and tour France using just a compass, or I cross the Irish Channel in the Curtiss Jenny!

There is no "end" to the sim - it cannot be "clocked" (to coin a phrase from my 80s gaming youth!).

My final bit to add is that I am not even 1% interested in any "Video Games" as such..... I hate PlayStations, Game Boys, etc, etc.... I'm not interested in Driving Games, racing games, "Fantasy" things like Doom, etc, etc > > > > > Sorry to offend those that like them but YAWN ! They really do feel like kidstuff to me.... My gaming days ended in 1992, aged 19, with Sonic the Hedgehog on my Mega Drive.

...But I love EVERYTHING to do with aviation and flying- it's on my blood and I enjoy this love every single day - I either talk to people, research things, read, or even dream about flying every day !

I can't fly due to Diabetes but FS2004 gives me so much realism, so much to learn, and so many challenges.... it is the most realistic virtual world that there is !

My final bit to add is that I am not even 1% interested in any "Video Games" as such..... I hate PlayStations, Game Boys, etc, etc.... I'm not interested in Driving Games, racing games, "Fantasy" things like Doom, etc, etc > >

Ditto from me..

It's not a game really in any sense of the word to me. I know it is to some people, but not me...Depends what you do with it.

For me, it's a complex exercise every time...and more fun than anyone should be allowed to have without breaking laws...

As far as simulation goes, it's not a game. As far as games go, I still play them. And there's a few i'm addicted to. I however hate most console games, with the exception of a select few.

With FlightSim, I have these times when all I do is fly, other times it's boring to me. In those cases, that's why I have Unreal Tournament 04', Doom 3, and my collection of Command and Conquer games.

I am a "babe in the woods" when it comes to flight simulation. I am 53 years old and have zero desire to play any type of video or computer games. But I just finished printing off about 200 pages of flight simulation material that will help me in my efforts to learn how to fly efficiently and as close to real life without flying a real plane. If it were a game or didn't come close to real life flying, I wouldn't waste my time. I am really getting into the aspect of not only learning to control a simulation plane in regards to taking off, trimming the plane and performing a quality landing, but also the more complicated part of flying, at least for me, the ability to fly using instrumentation and flying from point A to point B without getting lost.

Someday I would like to do the real thing and I believe FS9 or the next version will put me that much further ahead. It isn't easy becoming profecient with the flight sims. I am glad it takes an effort to fly the planes in FS9 and learn the art of using tracking equipment to find your way around the open sky's of the world.

I am also a competitive pistol shooter and the similarities to Flight simulation and competitive shooting are very close. Both require a lot of practice and study to get profecient. I take both very seriously to the point that I like to do both well. I have been shooting for several years now and have become pretty good. Hopefully with practice, study and help from this forum, I will get pretty good at flying.

I guess in the final analysis, each of us has to decide whether or not flight simulation is a game or not. I personally choose to treat it as an excellent hobby that I enjoy and can learn a skill in the process. I don't look at it as a computer game ❗ 😉

I dunno, as I said here before, I love flying! Just the topic name makes me mad ! I don't look at Flight Sim as a game, and I am always appalled when some poor soul calls it a "game." But I also like Superman and wish I could fly like him !!! Maybe I'm weird!! rob

Like Sfetty said it's about refining techinque and that can go into all areas of a life. A flight simulator person is most likely 2B an analytical one. Nothing wrong with that. Probably also a high degree of interest in World geography. --From all that I know w/addons/ config/ cfg's/ AFCADS and all the rest of the technical engineering stuff, it goes beyond a game in terms of ones ability to manipulate and build it. No doubt that FS folks I know have their brains in full gear. Microsoft must have calculated this probability because they made the program almost completely open source.

hi Guys, new to this forum, to me its something of ....like a passion! 🙂

When I told my school friends that I play flight simulator the first thing thay siad was "thats boring you should get a shoot'm'up game our something like that" no affence to the people who do play them but I dont like going around ruthlessly killing people.This is not a game to me theres a lot of difference between a simulator and a common game I'm not good with those games anyway thats why I chose fs9 becouse theres presure theres just nice calming flying.