I am a leader at an RAF Recognised (#13) Air Scout group.
I am currently drafting a grant application for some IT kit for my group. I would like to get a ‘decent’ (cue laughs here) Flight Simulator. I am aiming at £2,000/£2,500 grant to get 2 laptops (1 could be admin level spec), projector and flight controls. I have been overwhelmed by the amount of kit out there.
So my question, if you had £2/£2.5K, what would you buy?
I think you need to start by defining what you would consider to be “decent”: How many displays? In what layout? What sort of controls? on-screen or separate instruments?
DOH!!! Apologies, hate it when people do this – let me give you the rest of the requirements.
We operate from a church hall so need something that can be brought out, put away and stored easily. The budget is cover 2 laptop provision, a projector which I thought would’ve approx 1.2k but then added the extra for Flight Sim stuff - uprated laptop, controls and software.
We have a smallroom which we could darken where this could be setup on a table and project on the wall.
Our current setup is a small wheeled desk/trolley with a tower PC on the bottom and the monitor and projector on the top.
The monitor displays the instruments, and the projector throws the outside onto the wall. We’re looking to get a yoke, throttles and some pedals to attach to the trolley too (they’re clamp type - so easily adjusted or removed.)
As you’ll be looking to use this for other applications (presentations, training, entertainment etc) then a laptop sounds great - but don’t expect it to look particularly good - you’ll have to trade graphics for performance. FSX + Xplane are both very resource (CPU + GPU) hungry and FSX was coded before multicore CPUs were available to the average consumer, and Xplane - although arguably the better flight physics simulator its not the most user friendly.
You’re looking for about 3.0GHz or better CPU (recommended to have a QuadCore Intel Processor - ideally i7 3.5GHz
Look for at least 1GB of Graphics (GPU) (ideally 2GB)
RAM = >4GB
OS = Windows 7 64bit
The rest is not important.
Monitor - go for a 24" at least if you’re looking to run off a single monitor.
If you go for the dual monitor/projector method - go for a 19" widescreen for the instruments - and the projector on the wall for the outside view.
Was looking through my latest edition of PC Pilot, I myself am a flight simmer and have been building mine up over the years. I got this in the emails through BADER…
if your just running flight sim on this, then you could save the £30 - 40 and not have the HDD, run it all on the SSD.
Not sure what FSX and Xplane are like with Win 8.1.
the great thing is it isn’t permanent.
Yeah its bulky but the wooden frame just slots together in a flat-pack design so we can take it out on recruitment events.
At the initial research stage - looking to obtain a 3 - 4 “unit” flight sim set-up for our sqn. Aiming to buy new if possible, & to have the option to link the different units together for cadets to practice formation flying, or in sequence in the circuit, etc. Any suggestions welcome, either here or via PM.
I tried the previous links for the Saitek products, but the discount code doesn’t work - any clues please?
I’ve been looking at setting up similar at another sqn. I’ve been looking at desktops like this (http://bit.ly/18mlQ9q) and then adding a graphics card, with the addition of the joystick and rudder pedals it’ll make a fairly compact set-up. as for the sim software I am thinking of going with XPlane or Prepar3D, both have multi-player built in, but I’d make sure all the desktops were ethernet rather than wifi.
As for the discount codes, I can only assume they were time sensitive, you could try contacting saitek and try and get a discount/donation?
Thanks, been in touch with the company mentioned, they asked if 128gb SSD is going to be big enough & if any background discs would be needed? Ethernet connection is fitted on that model.
So, for a basic “learning” flight sim, would there really be any need for background discs?
Software - FSX or XPlane? There seems to be subtle difference is how each type performs & how fast the CPU should be, & how each format handles add-ons. However, for our “base-level” version, I doubt if we will need top-end performance. Prices seem to be similar - is it “one install” per DVD, or multi-install? I would guess the first option!
OS - Win7 seems to be acceptable?
This was a quote from one forum:
[quote]In short, FSX + numerous add-ons will certainly give you a very pleasant flight simming experience, but built on old and waning foundations.
XP10 + add-ons will also give you a very pleasant flight simming experience. The big difference is, with X-Plane you know that not only the add-ons will keep evolving, but also the actual flight sim (engine) itself.[/quote]