Flight Sim Recommendation?

[Sarganto]

After playing WW2 strategy games for quite a while, I found my old Joystick this week.
Remembering how I enjoyed F-16 Fighting-Falcon, Gunship and other flight-sims, I am now searching for a new challenge. I would quite like a WW2 Simulation, but I am open for everything.
Doesn`t have to be ultra-realistic.

More important would be a dynamic campaign. I've read, that Combat Flight Simulator 3 had one of those, but then I've read a lot of bad reviews for it.

[Hertston]

For WW2, Battle of Britain : Wings of Victory, available from this very site. For modern, Falcon 4: Allied Force. Both are realistic simulators and have genuine dynamic campaigns.

[Zakhal]

Falcon 4.0 allied force has the best dynamic campaign. Longbow2 has it too but its a tad older.

[105mm Howitzer]

What about Mig Alley ? It is a few year old, but I think the campaigns are dynamic, based upon the outcome of your missions. Plus it covers an era rarely seen in fligh sims.

[JudgeDredd]

I'm with Hertston - 2 great choices.
 
I might add if you like helicopter sims, then DCS Black Shark is awesome...but check out the DRM on it. As far as I am aware it has the latest version of Starforce and the download I bought uses activations/deactivations...not ideal and not something I would normally subscribe to, but I do love helicopter sims...and it is very, very detailed.

[Zakhal]

Black Shark is great sim but its campaign is nowhere near as dynamic (its more like canned than dynamic) as the one in falcon 4 ah or longbow2. They simply dont make really dynamic flight sims anymore. 

[JudgeDredd]

True. I actually skipped the OPs last sentence which mentioned dynamic campaign...if that is important, then Black Shark isn't an option [&o]

[Widell]

I've always been interested in X-Plane (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X-Plane) but never got to it. No campaign mode, so it's probably way off from what your're looking for. The moddability and realism seems extreme on the other hand!

[String]

IL-2 1946 is still the most comprehensive and probably the best looking (despite it's age) serious flight sim out there.

[Sarganto]

BoB2 seems like something I am looking for. Falcon 4 is a great simulation, but I guess the complexity of flying an F-16 is too much. I took me ages in F-16 Fighting Falcon and this game had options to reduce the amount of realism.

Black Shark seems nice, but I don't want to play a heli-sim right now and it has no dynamic campaign.

What about Combat Flight Simulator 1/2/3? I've heard that Nr. 3 has a at least half-decent dynamic campaign and there are quite some mods out for that game.

Does IL-2 have a dynamic campaign?

[Kuokkanen]

ORIGINAL: String

IL-2 1946 is still the most comprehensive and probably the best looking (despite it's age) serious flight sim out there.

Seconded, though I haven't played any part of the serie. It's been heavily modded too, and some mods make it closer to AirWarrior & Warbirds. MMO that is!

[Hard Sarge]

ORIGINAL: String

IL-2 1946 is still the most comprehensive and probably the best looking (despite it's age) serious flight sim out there.

yea, as long as you don't care about flight models, but the shear numbers of planes types and missions are outstanding (I have a number of posts/AARs on this forum from Matrix's the last days add on to the IL-2 Forgotten battles)

Have high hopes for his BoB sim he should have out sometime this year, seeing as how Oleg can't stand English or Germen planes, the modeling should be decent, since they are the only two modelled

BoB II is outstanding, you can have 100's of planes in the air, go to the forum here and check out some of the screen shots, the Art package is outstanding, and Buddye is a great/HARD working programmer, as well as the rest of the gang working behind the sceens on it, and have added alot of good stuff to it, and are working on adding more

[Grell]

ORIGINAL: Matti Kuokkanen

ORIGINAL: String

IL-2 1946 is still the most comprehensive and probably the best looking (despite it's age) serious flight sim out there.

Seconded, though I haven't played any part of the serie. It's been heavily modded too, and some mods make it closer to AirWarrior & Warbirds. MMO that is!

Thirded.

Regards,

Grell

[wdboyd]

Salutations,

WW-2 flight simulation. I also highly recomend IL-2.

Specifically, IL-2 Sturmovik 1946 The Signature Collection. By UBISOFT

Includes the entire IL-2 collection of flight simulations plus all-new content (200 new missions). Five(5) games in one.

Compete online with up to 128 players.
Fly jet and rocket planes in Alternate History Campaigns.
Fly the entire globe, from the sands of Iwo Jima to the snow-covered steppes of Russia.
Complete mission/campaign editor.
Highly detailed 450-page plane guide.

If you are into all WW-2 aircraft, this is the one to investigate.

Windows 98/Me/XP (only).

[Jeffrey H.]

ORIGINAL: wdboyd

Salutations,

WW-2 flight simulation. I also highly recomend IL-2.

Specifically, IL-2 Sturmovik 1946 The Signature Collection. By UBISOFT

Includes the entire IL-2 collection of flight simulations plus all-new content (200 new missions). Five(5) games in one.

Compete online with up to 128 players.
Fly jet and rocket planes in Alternate History Campaigns.
Fly the entire globe, from the sands of Iwo Jima to the snow-covered steppes of Russia.
Complete mission/campaign editor.
Highly detailed 450-page plane guide.

If you are into all WW-2 aircraft, this is the one to investigate.

Windows 98/Me/XP (only).

Sounds great, but tell me, what sort of copy protection does Ubisoft add ? I'm too lazy to go look.

[uncc]

All good/great recomendations above, but since you mentioned CFS3, you may want to check out the many user-made add-ons that have come out for it, especially the WWI one, Over Flanders Fields (http://www.overflandersfields.com/). There are 3 versions (aka phases); the first two being shareware and the last payware. You WILL need a copy of CFS3 (available on Amazon.com for $10 I believe) to play any of the addons . I've been playing OFF Phase 2 and it is great. I'd like to get Phase 3 (and yet may), but the price tag is a bit steep ($50, + $9 S+H). The are several other add-ons (Korea, PTO) that I haven't tried yet, but the most interesting one (to me) is MAW (Mediterranean Air War), http://www.medairwar.com/. Just be prepared for some heavy duty downloads. I think OFF and MAW both exceed 1GB and then some....

[uncc]

The IL-2 1946 DVD (US version) does not have any copy protection....

(and I think I did have it running under Vista. Had to replace my HD and haven't reloaded it yet...)

[Lützow]

ORIGINAL: Sarganto

After playing WW2 strategy games for quite a while, I found my old Joystick this week.
Remembering how I enjoyed F-16 Fighting-Falcon, Gunship and other flight-sims, I am now searching for a new challenge. I would quite like a WW2 Simulation, but I am open for everything.
Doesn`t have to be ultra-realistic.

More important would be a dynamic campaign. I've read, that Combat Flight Simulator 3 had one of those, but then I've read a lot of bad reviews for it.

Well, regarding dynamic campaign nothing comes close to Falcon 4. Concerning detail and complexitiy, PMDG products (747-400, MD-11 for FSX, FS 2004) outshines F4, but those are civilian aircrafts. I also purchased IL-2 due to WW2 background, but this one was not my cup of tea. Too arcade style for my taste.

You always have to compromise. There is not *the* perfect flight sim.

[Sarganto]

First I have to thank you for all your advice. I think I will give CFS3 and IL-2 a shot, because I can get my hands on them quite cheap (or via friends )

Other problem is that my old Sidewinder Precision Pro Joystick seems to be broken. I've bought an Gameport-to-USB adapter to be able to play with it, but it doesn't send any commands to my pc, when I push the buttons (if I try to calibrate it for example). I tried another superold Joystick, which has a broken Y-axis. This superold piece of junk seems to work though. It sends info about pushing buttons and using the X-axis.

Don't know what to do now. Already bought the Adapter for 10 bucks (high value €-bucks!) and I think the Sidewinder is one of the best Joystick-Designs ever
When I started thinking about playing flight sims, I didn't think about buying a new joystick...

[JudgeDredd]

can't go wrong with a Logitech...any of them. I've used Logitech for years.