Hey Gang,
I decided to bite the bullet and get a sim to start practicing at home. Question is, which one? Tower has the GP sim delux version for 199. Is this worth it, or can I get away with the lite version? Are there any others out there?
Thanks
Rick

I have decided the same. I'll be buying one in August.
I too am wondering if G2 is the only alternative for the serious flyer.

Rick:

If your computer will support the G2, that would be the best $200.
you could spend. Last year it cost me $275.
Unless you set-up wind and gust for flying, the take-offs/landings
are a bit easier than real life. I bought mine to stay sharp during
rainouts or winter freeze.
As far as I know, the G2 is the only one that allows you to set-up
engines from a .049 to a 3W Twin gas with sounds and smoke to
match. With 10 or 12 flying sites you can edit each site to your
own taste. I took the Airport scene and erased all bldgs. leaving
background trees then I had a wide open concrete runway to fly
from.

Randy

I second the vote on the G2 Sim. I have it with the USB interlink, and all the add-ons. I love it!!!

It's the ONLY thing I've ever spent this much money on and never had guilt feelings about or any regrets. I use it daily. I'm now exploring park flyers so all I have to do is adjust the existing aircraft to the appropriate sizes and change to electric power systems. I can then fine tune from there to see how different prop sizes/gearbox ratios etc affect flight performance.

I have tried FMS also and it's a good thing it's free. I seems more like a bargain bin computer game than a simulator to me.
You will not be sorry for getting Real Flight G2 unless the wife finds out you spent that much money.

I must agree that G2 is the king of the hill (bust flight model, best graphics, best overall, at a kingly price too) but it really isn't the only game in town, FMS can be a pretty good sim if you can find the realisitic planes... it's so easy to make planes for that there are a ton of not very realistic planes out there that scew most peoples opinions of it... Ikarus Easyfly is another good option if you've not got the big $$ for RealFlight... you can get it for $50 new with an RC Transmitter style Joystick. I have a long indepth review/comparison of a bunch of the sims on my rcmagazine site if you want to do even more reading on it.

You can get FMS for 39 bucks with transmitter cable, a whole lot cheaper than 200 and you can use your own transmitter.

What are the min requirements for FMS? Will a Pentium 2 233hz with MMX do it??? Thanks John

You can get it a lot cheaper than that. The average EBay price is around $20. Alternatively the software is free to download and if you can solder you can make a cable for under $5 with bits from Radio Shack (or your local equivalent).

Steve