Merkaba

Ok...I have two scenarios. One is that I only have enough computer to run maybe G3 at minimum. i.e. only 256 k ram, not the best video card. I have a three year old Dell dimension. runs G2 perfectly but I'm ready to up the anty.

I want to be able to practice full 3d plane flying and 3d heli flying with good heli autorotation... I dont want the planes/heli's to be too stable. Who wants that? So is there a decent sim that I could get for this type of comp setup?

Now the other scenario is that I basically get another cpu thats got good bells and whistles, maybe a gig of ram and a nice video card so that I can run basically any sim. Does this change my choices?

Any replies are appreciated.

pappy35

Download the demo from Realflight. I bet most sims will run pretty much the same so if one if a dog, so will be the others.

dubd

You'll be hard pressed to get decent frame rates in G3. 256mb of RAM is barely enough to run Windows without any apps open, let alone a flight sim. As the previous person mentioned, download the demo and see for yourself. You'll definitely need to turn your resolution down and turn off many of the visual effects.

da Rock

It broadens them, for sure.
It appears that the major pc manufacturers are selling "average" machines nowadays that would run any of the sims decently. It would probably be required however, for you to select one of those average machines that has slightly above average video capability. I noticed that what Dell considers an average desktop would run any of the sims. I also noticed that Dell seems to have gone up significantly in their pricing. I'm about to "maiden" my new pc today that was built at about half the price of a comparable Dell. A couple of years ago, I built this one for just under the cost of a comparable Dell. A couple of years before that, the one built was about the cost of a comparable Dell. Sounds like I ought to compare cost with someone other than Dell???? nope..... The other major pc mfg's actually don't seem to offer the specs I'm using.

mtbrc

You mite want more than one gig. G3 uses 1gig, the rest of your computor might want some, esp if you multitask it.
















I thought I was wrong once but I was mistaken.

Spacey

There are some of the top-end simulators which will run good quality and good performance on a lower performance PC. I will not name any names cause the trolls will have a field day then but trust me this is true. It's the same in the world of computer games, some games just have great engines and others are totally poop. One game will have awesome graphics, animations, interactive eniviroments, gameplay features blah blah blah and run smoothly on a pc and then the next game looks like tetris to get it to run smooth. It's all about the game engine.

The sims works the same really, G3 looks like tetris on my computer for it to run decent. My current sim looks like the real thing, the characteristics and realism is awesome if not better than G3. All on the same puter.