A lot of folks on the forums have bashed G3 in the past, but I've got to recommend RealFlight G3.5. Knife Edge Software has done a great job continuing to add aircraft and flying fields, improve the physics, and improve the training modes as they've updated the program on a continual basis since I bought it last year. Last night I was watching the Frank Knoll tutorial on doing inverted flat spins, and earlier today I was watching Jim Bourke's tutorial on Knife Edge manuevers.

I don't think you can make a mistake buying any of the major flight sims. Aerofly Professional Deluxe is really good, and I've heard a lot of good things about MRC's Reflex XTR simulator as well. FS One by Horizon Hobby is fairly new, but even if it's the worst of the four major flight sims for R/C (which I couldn't say), it's probably still really, really good. I enjoy flying APD when I get the chance, and Ikarus has been updating it with expansion packs quite a bit lately.

Real Flight G3.5 is simply the deepest flight sim available. The graphics are stunning, the sound is great, the controller that is included is made from the actual casing of a Futaba radio, and the seven available add-ons and expansions when added to the core product (which is expansive in its own right) provides you with hundreds of aircraft and scores of different flying fields. Knife Edge Software's online updating system is proven and reliable, and their product support is equally well regarded.

All of the other flight sims I've mentioned are excellent, and each has some unique features that set it apart from the rest. The bottom line, though, is that Real Flight G3.5 is the gold standard that all other flight sims are measured by.

Oh, my only caveat? I have an AMD Athlon 64 3000+ with 1Gb of Dual Channel DDR PC3200 memory and a 256Mb PCI-E Radeon X800XL video card that I run Real Flight on. If you don't know what that means, or you haven't spent at least a hundred bucks on your video card, you may have tweak Real Flight's video settings a bit to get it running smoothly. An Intel integrated video chip on your computer's motherboard simply isn't going to be able to dish out all that Real Flight can offer.