ORIGINAL: Durachko
I've been looking to buy a sim for over a year and am just now ready. I found this topic and thought "Whoa! This will end my search." Boy was I wrong.
I've been fluctuating between AFPD and G3 but am mostly - I guess - concerned with sharpening my heli skills - so now Reflex and Phoenix have got me thinking . . .
So, has there not been any highly rated pilot(s) who've used and rated all or most of these top six???
I mean, one can go online and find reviews for just about anything under the sun so surely there's been some "top gun" flyers who've ventured to try a number of sims???
I am certainly not the "top gun" pilot you are looking for, but I may be able to help a little since I just went through what you are going through.
Based on everything I have read, which is a lot, it seems that you can't go wrong with AFPD, G3.5, Pheonix, or FSOne for fixed wing aircraft. RTX is slightly less useful (for fixed wing), but still pretty good. For heli's, the consensus seems to be RTX or Pheonix for the most realism.
What I gathered from all the reading I did was that they are all pretty close. All of them require you to 'massage' the models a little for truly realistic performance, but they all preform good right out of the box. I have read posts from 'experienced pilots' that said such and such airplane is spot on in (insert sim name here). But again, the consensus seems to be with a little tweak here or there you can have realistic performance in any of the above simulators.
I chose FSOne because the fixed wing aircraft physics seemed to get the best 'out of the box' remarks (compared with G3.5 and AFPD), my favorite local hobby shop carried it in stock, I like Hanger 9 products, the developer has been very active on this and other boards answering questions, and it came with a nice controller (I don't have a decent computer type transmitter, yet).
If I would have had a good transmitter, or was willing to buy one right now, I would have picked Phoenix. It seems to be the consensus pick for the best of both worlds (fixed and rotary wing). If you want variety, consider AFPD or G3.5. They have been around the longest and seem to have to most users/add-ons available (although FSOne and Phoenix are sure to have lots more available in the near future, I'm sure).
Remember, everything above is just my opinion based on what I read... and what I read was just a bunch of opinions. I truly think you can't go wrong with any of the above.