I was inspired by this story of an aviator who had his wings clipped by the FAA for buzzing a beach, so low it took out a few fishing rods. One of the great things about X-Plane is being able to do things that the FAA would normally frown on, such as buzzing a beach, or, I don’t know, flying supersonic under the Bunker Hill Bridge in Boston with a MiG-21 Fishbed:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5wiZJNmmJ1Y[/youtube]
It took me a few tries to get it under. The nearby bridges make it difficult. But I managed to do it without crashing the plane. If you want to see a non-pixelated version, download the m4v here. This particular model is painted up in the colors of the Croation Air Force, which is still an operator of the Fishbed. The MiG-21 is one ugly plane, but it’s easy to fly for a fighter. It’ll take quite a bit of abuse, and it takes some work to push it over the envelope. In contrast, every time I try to fly the F-22 in X-Plane I push it too far and it undergoes catastrophic failure. The MiG is a lot more fun to fly. X-Plane is a really great product with a large community of people contributing to it. You can even join a virtual airline and fly regularly scheduled flights in the VATSIM world if you’re up to it. I’m still working my way up to flying in the VATSIM world with the X-Plane version of the Boeing 737. Let me tell you, we’ve come a long way from this.
And no, FTC, I’m not promoting X-Plane for any other reason than the fact that it’s a lot of fun and a great community. For those of us who are aviation enthusiasts who spend too much money on guns an ammunition to be able to afford a plane, it’s a fun, cheap hobby. Well, for most of us anyway.
Falcon 4: Allied Force is another fantastic sim, with a huge level of detail into the only flyable platform, the F-16 (and it’s loadouts). At the highest detail level, it took me a week of after-work time before I managed to lock on to, and then hit, a target plane with a radar-guided missile. Since then, most sims have just felt… simplistic.
Now, you are no doubt on a second terrorist watchlist what with your test runs with planes and all.
That’s why I made sure to show I practice landing too :)
The big detail you’re missing in a sim is that it’s easy to pull a 9g turn. X-Plane blacks out or reds out (depending on + or – g) your field of vision if you pull a high g turn, but you don’t really feel it. That’s probably good, because I doubt I could taked 6gs let alone 9.
Pretty marginal barrel roll: Put the nose on a point (the horizon is good) and keep it there.
I’ve had no formal training in barrel rolling :)
I’ve had no formal training in barrel rolling :)
Then I take it you never played StarFox 64? (chuckle)
That was quite fun to watch.
Falcon 3 even at the lower realism levels would simulate a black or red-out pretty well. I can’t imagine Falcon 4 is any less. (Which reminds me – I really ought to reinstall F4).
My only problem with the Falcon series is now in any other sim I have to work at remembering the rudder; the Falcon (at least as simmed and per the docs) you just stand on a wing and haul away with the elevators – the only time you use the rudder at all is if you want to spread the wealth while strafing, or during landing. (Which I never could get the hang of).