New buy??

[beefsteak]

I have used all the fighter stuff on my play station 2 ie ,ace combat , squadron leader / The Belkan war , etc but have never tried anything on the PC, I often fancy having a go at 'Flying' an airlner or doing a combat mission , but I don't have the 'gear' to do it. What I would like is a link to site that sells the hardware (Joy sticks etc) as well as any downloadable 'freeware' that may be out there . I did see a link to an American site that Goose is using to buy his jacket, but I wanted one a bit closer to home.
No budget limit , so to speak , but I'm not going to go too daft !!!
Ta Ian

[davem]

Welcome to the greatest way to 'lose' days on end Ian!

Most agree that the Saitek X52 Stick & Throttle combo is one of the best as it provides pretty much everything you'll need to fly an aircraft without more than a few key presses on the keyboard. Others will say the Logitek sticks are good and there are more out there. Using a throttle control makes it SO much more realistic - for instance there no way I could do a 120kt high alpha down the runway in a Typhoon with a keyboard but with a separate throttle control it is possible and dare I say easy?! The X52 is about £70-£80 depending on where you look, other sticks are cheaper, some are more expensive.

As for freeware... Lots and lots of it in lots and lots of places!
avsim.com
simviation.com
flightsim.com
surclaro.com
UKMIL.co.uk (£10 for full membership but it's a lifetime membership and also gets you access to the dedicated FS server as well as scenery and models not available to unpaid up members).
And lots more...

HTH

Dave.

[beefsteak]

Sorry for the delay in replying Dave , thanks for the information , I'm looking into a X52 , but can't find it for less than £106!!! even from Saitek direct!!(I am going to try ebay now!!)

Ta Ian

[beefsteak]

I've finally got one for £85 but it took some messing around !!

[beefsteak]

Right , I got one , it arrived this evening !!!! (Snow round here!!) and I have had a look on those sites above and can only find 'add ons' to existing games (Or am I going daft !, don't answer that Flaps !!)

The question is , can some body give me a muppets step by step guide to down loading a free game (If thats possible!!) to try, before I fork out a few quid on a new one

Thanks in advance
Ian

[davem]

Sorry Ian, misunderstood the original question...

The sites I listed above are free addons for Microsoft Flight Simulator 9 and 10, alternatively called FS9/FS2004 and FSX respectively.

Both should be able to be found going for a song or at least less than £10 although your PC specs may have a bearing on which one would be the best to start off with. FSX is still pretty young and there are not nearly as many add-ons for it as there are for FS9, but those that are out there are normally better looking and (usually) contain more detail thatn FS9 addons provided your rig can handle the sim in the first place.

If you can list what you're PC specs are it will help the suggestions.

ATB,
Dave.

[beefsteak]

I have bought an " x gold" off of Amazon for £17 and am eagerly awaiting it's delivery!!! I hope it will work on my PC (Or else I'm goin to have to get a new one , computer that is!!!)

Thanks for the help Dave, I will let you know how things progress .

[beefsteak]

The sim arrived on Friday afternoon and after fighting off my kids with various bribes and threats of legal action , I finally got it loaded , it took a lot longer than I expected , and I haven't downloaded the "Acceleration Expansion Pack yet !!!
I have done the first 5 parts of the practise flights , ie micro light , Cub and the tricky landing at the mountain air field, I'm on the glider now and can not for the life of me get it to follow 'tug' , mind of it's own and constantly pulling left or right or down.
Am I missing a way of trimming ???
Also the scenery isn't too clever , with great black triangles of unloadedness (If that makes sense !!!) until you get close then it seems ok.

Ah well on with the show , as you see I'm up erly with my baseball bat to get on here before the kids wake up ..........LOL

[beefsteak]

As I said , I have a couple of problems with the quality of the graffics with my copy of MS Flight Sim X, on the little white "To install the game " leaflet it says "You must have the game CD in the CD-ROM drive to play.
If this is the case which of the two discs should I have inserted ????

[davem]

I know this was a feature if FS9 where it was Disk4, but if you do a complete install of FSX it should put everything onto your HDD so should not need the DVD. If you have the space for this, it is the way to go as reading from the hard disk is much quicker than from a DVD every time it needs to draw scenery etc.