Most people mention the costs of owning aircraft vs a sim, but there’s another possible reason: health. People come in different shapes and forms and not everyone who loves aviation is able to get II or even III medical class. So flight simulation is their only option to be a “pilot”.
I mean, on VATSIM (popular aviation simulation network) there’s a group of visually impaired people who have made a special interface so they can fly an aircraft even though they can’t see!
Simulation (of any kind) gives many people what they can’t get in any other way. And as with any other hobby, as long as it’s not damaging to other aspects of your life, let people enjoy what they want
Wait, that’s super fucking cool. Do you have a link to the way they’re able to fly blind?
Oh God damnit. You got me. I busted up laughing.
I needed a giggle at work happy to do it.
But for real there’s a bunch of stuff. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TecHPonwJxQ
To go along with this is also risk to one’s health and potentially death.
53 per 100,000 pilots was the death rate amongst pilots in 2018 according to The University of Delaware .
This doesn’t sound like a lot, until you consider it was the #2 most dangerous occupation in the US that year.
Behind #1 Loggers (111 per 100k) and ahead of #22 Police Officers (14 per 100k).
So it’s one thing to have a flight sim rig and at worst fall off your chair. A whole another thing to potentially make a mistake in an actual plane and pay the price with your life.
Adding a bit to that: you can do all sorts of stupid maneuvers in a simulation with zero consequence, like doing a barrel roll with an Airbus Beluga.
Plus, there are combat flight sims.
That’s just a mid-range setup. The real simmers have at least 3 monitors.
Monitors are probably the cheapest part of a flight sim setup too
Real simmers have a VR headset and one of those human gyroscope things that spins on 3 axes.
You mean a head?
No a penis.
Man, at some point it might be cheaper to buy a plane.
A plane. A cheap, 2-4 seat prop plane. A full sim rig can fly ANY PLANE and spaceships too!
I am not in any way a sim gamer of any of these sorts. My inputs are keyboard, mouse, or controller. And I suck at everything I play, and I try to limit my gaming time (and expenditures on gaming).
But I kind of get it, you know?
I would love to work on a project to build a thing that could reconfigure itself to match any existing cockpit. That would be sick. Maybe like a bunch of self-arranging robot building blocks and each has a different kind of switch or dial. Or each one can simulate it, hopefully in 3D with force feedback. They crawl into position and lock arms to form the cockpit. Send a command and the F-16 rearranges itself into an airbus 380. Or a corvette.
I see you dying in an accident testing the g-force simulator you built. 😁
Do a Magneto and target the iron in people’s blood. A little electromagnetic field play, and suddenly your body “weighs” 8 times the normal amount.
That or manipulate the inner ear fluid somehow.
But I feel like the sense of really flying and being able to go places would be far more rewarding. Even if it is just a prop plane.
You’re probably one of these people who likes to go outside instead of playing localcarsimulator 4000
A real plane would be most definitely satisfying in its own way, but Sim planes let you perform crazy maneuvers, fly places you wouldn’t be allowed to in real life, and fly aircraft that you would never even get a chance to see. Not to mention, the whole threat of death with real life flying.
Really good points that you bring up. I can agree with you fully now. Especially on the point of being able to do crazy tricks at no threat to your own real safety.
Yeah but I won’t die in a sim rig unless that panel falls and crushes me to death
Oh, the plane is cheap. Aviation fuel and maintenance are where they get you.
Some of those things for PC flight sims are straight up real cockpit pieces. Dude is simply buying his plane one bit at a time until he can assemble the whole thing.
I’ve installed Internet for a dude who had a setup this gnarly. And to top it all off, he lived on a piece of land attached to an aircraft museum. He really loves planes.
Some people are so dedicated to their hobbies and I love seeing it.
An extended family member of mine hosted a reunion at his house years ago, and he apparently lived in a neighborhood where many people have small airplane hangars attached to their houses instead of a normal garage. It was nuts. You’re just walking through a normal-looking house in a normal-looking suburban neighborhood, go through what would otherwise be a garage door, and suddenly you’re in a big hangar.
Building a plane one day at a time.
Do you know how much it costs to annual a Cessna 172? You could build 3 of these rigs a year for what the aviation equivalent of a 1988 Toyota Camry costs to maintain and fuel.
This. A full sim rig still costs a lot less than an actual plane, plus it runs on electricity and not leaded petrol so it won’t send you loopy at 60.
For what it’s worth, avgas is going lead free, and there’s already unleaded options.
First time I got into one, this was my exact reaction: wtf this thing is like a 1980s corolla turned onto an aircraft. I was sure I’d get killed in that rickety pos.
Only a single monitor, and then it’s not even an ultrawide?
What kind of a low-rent setup is this?
The Alienware ultra wide oled is one of the biggest upgrades I’ve ever felt when upgrading my computer. Absolute game changer.
I’m doing the same with my work from home set-up. I even have a mannequin dressed up as a “boss” who hovers at my shoulder while I try to get stuff done .
“boss” who hovers at my shoulder while I try to get stuff done
A cat would also work for this.
Should upgrade to a sex doll so you can rage fuck it when your boss pisses you off.
The $20 chair is definitely a statement of priorities and my favorite part of the image.
Chair isn’t even articulated, 6/10 tops, I wonder if he even has force feedback.
I’d say good chance this guy does have a plane.
Pretty cool with the overhead and side panels.
Yeah but what percentage of them are actually functional? In MS Flight Sim half the buttons in the planes do nothing.
Half the buttons in a plane don’t do anything as long as everything is working. 90% of my numbers are made up on the spot
Someone posts something kinda cool.
Doofuses of the internet: we must find all the faults to prove how much smarter we are
This is probably a work in progress. And this person may not have the same preferences and priorities as you for their own personal setup.
just buy a plane
Yeah, I don’t think you can get a Mig-29 or a F-16 off e-bay, amazon or craigslist.
You can probably get a Cessna.
The cheapest Cessna (say a half-a-century old Cessna-150 with only a thousand or hours left on the engine before mandatory refurbishment) will set you back maybe $20k.
Then there’s the maintenance costs (one every 50 flight hours, a bigger one every 100 flight hour and so on as well as the yearly one), plus insurance and fuel.
Oh, and flying one of those planes is not really excitting (except for landings, those are cool) mainly because it cruises at 90 knots airspeed (about 160 Km/h) which at the minimum flying height per flight regulations (except during takeoff and landing) which is 1000 feet (around 300m) does not feel at all fast.
Absolutelly, spend $30k (if you get it as a kit and assemble it yourself) and you can get something a little more excitting … or spend $2k in that setup (I’m guessing, assuming you assemble it yourself) and let the Suspension Of Disbelief save you the rest of the money and you can even fligh planes that cost many millions of dollars (which, judging by the controls, is what that setup is simulating).
Mind you a Commercial Pilot License is “only” 1000 flight hours so you might get it for less than $100k depending on which country you do your training in and hence the cost per hour in the air (or, if you do like my Amateur Pilot Trainers in the UK and give lessons for the flight hours, which can be done with only an Amateur Pilot License) though you’ll get a lot of “special moments” with trainees at the controls (did I mention landings are exciting ;)).
Why so few monitors??
I’m going to take a guess that this sim setup is mainly for IFR or instrument flying. I know some people that do virtual airline stuff and they follow real life as closely as they can, so after taking off its auto-pilot on and using instruments for navigation instead of visual landmarks.
Maybe I just want to try that obviously terrible approach to check if I’m right about my skills you know?
The one with all the wind on that god awful little mud hill?
Have to land that Harrier vertically on the side of a dam.
Flight simulators are a pretty niche hobby. Spent a lot of time playing the Microsoft Flight Simulator - comes handy if you wanna study aviation or become a pilot.
