With a new flight simulator being rolled out almost every second month, it becomes all the more important to know what kind of simulator suits your needs the best. Personally, I have seen a number of people going out and buying a new flight simulator and spending a fortune on it, only to come to terms with the fact that a cheaper, less sophisticated one could have sufficed their needs. In this write up, we explore various simulators in the market and let you decide on the kind of simulator that you might need. The subLOGIC flight simulator is one of the oldest simulators and still remains one of the most marvelous ones, simply because of the fact that it can run on a simple 8 bit machine. With an exponential improvement in semiconductor technology, the hardware became more powerful and the first home based combat simulators were rolled out in the form of European Air War and Red Baron II, both of which were (and are still) a favorite across sections of people. Most of these new flight simulators focus more on the graphical aspects of the game and are not too concerned about the actual way in which an aircraft is controlled. If you are looking for a closer to life flying experience, then advanced flight simulators such as the Microsoft Flight simulator should keep you in good stead. The latest paradigm in this whole array of flight simulation techniques is flight simulation over the network, where a number of pilots can fly and practice together. Two such networks that have gained considerable repute are VATSIM and IVAO. In short, if you just want to have some fun and get a feel of how it feels to be airborne, you can simply do with a few flight simulation games, which are available at a fraction of the cost of a full-fledged new flight simulator.
