From the pilot standpoint, I chose vintage.  The thing that makes vintage interesting for me is that a lot of the aircraft in this category tend to have an attitude of their own: unstable flight characteristics, tactful engine management, limited navigational instruments, unpredictable at times... just to name a few.  They require quite a bit more skill to fly and are outrageously rewarding when flown properly.  They also keep me on my toes.

I'd put general aviation right up there as well as a close second (mostly speaking about prop planes and the like).  Still requires a bit of a flexible mind to fly them, and they still have their quirks.  Flying GA tends to give me a sense of freedom as well.

As for airliners... I used to be big on them a while back.  The obvious appeal is the technology and the speed.  Learning procedures on an airliner are rewarding in itself, but I find that once I understood how everything works, it's not as exciting as zipping around in something lighter.  On airliners, it's mostly autopilot flying, and flying on prescribed "highways" into all too familiar airports.  Thus, Vintage and GA tend to be at the top of my list for the time being.

I prefer Vintage Propliners from like the 1940's , 1950's 1960's era. Preferbally those with 2 or more engines. Seems like all you see anymore on some of these Flight Sim sites are the same Airbuses again & again or the Same Boeings time & time again just different shots by different sim pilots. and lastly I now hear theres yet another Boeing 737-200 coming out soon, like theres not enough to choose from already along with 747's 777's 757's 787's 737-400 series on up,, gessshh how many of these same Tubes with wings painted in some corporate logo do we really need if everyone is designing the same aircraft. About like those Big huge Airport, what is there like 5 or 7 San Francisco airport sceneries you can buy now from different developers, seems everybody is following or copycating everybody else with no individual~ness at all. Most of my propliners are FREEWARE with the exception of about 5. theres a lot of these Vintage propliners that need better quality , now that we have better rendering tools and better graphics and design tools to design them with, unlike 5 or even 10 years ago !  To me Flying is really boring if all your gonna do is fly around at 20,000ft to 35,000ft at 400 to 600 mph, and land at mega airports, soon all those Tubes with Wings start looking the same , just different logos down the sides,  its like everyones got the same Shirt on' , just in different Sizes ! I like to fly propliners to regional airports out of the way, along rivers, valleys, canyons, beaches, islands, etc. not just hang around big mega airports which from what I've seen are mostly painted Gray and boring anyway. just my personel prefrence tho ~ !

Also, I notice hardly any Developer out there has come up with a Newer Decent version of Salt Lake City Airport , Salt Lake City , Utah - USA, a fairly Big Airport - but we have like 6 or 7 LAX / LosAngeles airports to choose from, all kinds of SFO Airports / San Francisco, Miami , Chicago, New York, Hong Kong, Frankfrut, etc, but hardly any Salt Lake City International Airports thats been recently Developed by any good Payware Developers seems strange !!! Also many others that could be developed that aren't instead of all this copying everybody else what everybody else is doing , following each other in circles chasing after the same left over cake crumbs,,,, then again what do I know, I'm just sum dumb Sim Pilot .

I'm mostly a CIVIL VINTAGE NUT 1920's-30's as my FSX selection screen shows (below), most are freeware FS2004 and fly fine in FSX, some don't have VC's but i can live with that as i fly mostly in external view anyway..

Oh yes the Lear 45 is a hoot too. At first I did not care for it, but my dad being a Lear 45 pilot got me hooked on it. I figured there must be something about that plane if my dad would come home from a long flight in it and then load it up in the sim!

I REALLY wish there was a nice Falcon 10 out there though for FS2004 or even FSX. I have been in that plane numerous times (ground and air) and know several pilots. All agree 'the 10' is a fighter at heart and flies like it.

jetprop wrote on Jun 12^th, 2012 at 2:16pm:


I need a VC. To me a really good sim plane has to have a clean looking and functional cockpit. Im okay with not having EVERY switch, lever, button, or knob-like-device movable, but I personally cannot stand photo panels or having the artificial co-pilot in there with you..they just creep me out. I can be a bit picky. Still, I greatly appreciate all the aircraft designer's work, more planes = more interest in the sim and aviation (at least in my book).

jetprop wrote on Jun 12^th, 2012 at 3:03pm:


meh...aw what the heck why not? 
A Falcon is a Falcon right?
Next door of my work they get a lot of Falcons, Lears, Gulftstreams, Slowtations--I mean Citations (straight winged), Hawkers, and plenty of Citation X's plus some odds and ends. Anyways, the Falcon 7X is a beast of an airplane, just dwarfs the 10! Heck the only things they dont dwarf are those Gulfstreams with tennis-court sized wings 

the guys next door:
http://www.duncanaviation.aero/homepage.php

For me it's Vintage all the way. I can't stand flying Tubes for more than an hour.

As a kid my first helicopter flight was in a Hughes 300, my first airplane ride was in an old Aronca.

My first (only) solo flight was in a restored Stearman.

I grew up with the old airplanes and they will always have a place in my heart.

I am a vintage planes lover.

Though must admit my joining the ranks has a perhaps curious reason.

Back in... I think it was 2007? Can't remember precisely... the fire that kept me interested in flight simulation began to wane. By the following year I was in full crisis mode and considering abandoning this hobby I was interested in ever since 1992...

I felt my heart breaking, but really could not get myself to rise up to bring those big, kerosene smelling tubes of metal high in the skies... it was just too...

Boring.

That was it. It was boring. And the boring part had begun with the arrival on the scene of airplanes that had all the bells and whistles of the Real Thing. I was having the same kind of fun staying behind the AP someone else in a factory may have by punching the buttons of a numerical control machine. I had became a process controller and it was getting even duller than looking at paint drying.

Then by absolute chance I passed on the Calclassics website and decided to give a try to one of their old and low fliers...

MY. God. In. Heaven.

I had a backfire the size of a full power Tzar Bomba. Those old but engaging glories of the aviation ante-1958 managed to give me back the interest that had been waning.

All the old prop planes began attracting my interest above the now grounded kerosene stoves, from the very Wright Flier to the end of the era of prop planes, from low and low single engined contraptions to the Lockheed Starliner.

Cannot really say what really gets under my skin about that old kind of flying... maybe it was the adventurous environment... the awareness they had of being special in a particular way, to be able to make those machines fly... the struggle they underwent to find their way in absolute VFR dead reckoning and crappy weather... the having to make the navigational point using the bubble sextant and calculate your longitude keeping in mind speed and winds, knowing that the fuel was not endless...

I agree. Those people at the time were not having the time of their lives doing what I wrote, but rather sweated bullets in worry and even fear... that's why they were and still are worthy of admiration... and while modern pilots are surely themselves worthy of admiration, especially when things get tough (as they still can nowadays)... it's just not the same thing anymore.

Maybe I am attracted to that... maybe it's that old style mythical aura that bewitches me... not even I can say for sure.

It was a toss-up between Vintage and GA. I love flying GA, mainly because that is what I will be flying in real life, but the Vintage aircraft are so cool, DC-3s, P-51, almost all of them are great. I like flying military as well, but not as much as I do the Carenado Baron and Bonanza. At first I was really into commercial jet flying, but that got old.

wahubna wrote on Jun 30^th, 2012 at 8:23am:


But - commercial flying in a Swissair Curtiss T-32. Zurich to Geneva, please.... it can't get any better than that!  (Well, Imperial Airways, Croydon to Orly in an HP43....)

JBaymore wrote on Jun 30^th, 2012 at 2:23pm:


True, but doing things like that with airliners is pretty limited simply because the planes are not made for the same type of flying GA aircraft do. Hence my problem

Fozzer wrote on Jun 30^th, 2012 at 6:55pm:


GA voters might be going for vintage instead.

The terrifying thought of ..."Hours of Boredom", on an Inter-Continental flight cruise in a Jumbo Passenger Jet, always gets me firmly welded to small(ish) GA Aircraft, excitedly hopping from one local Airfield/Airport to another, with a big "thumbs-up", and a grin, from any passengers... ...!
Not enough time to get Bored!

Paul...FS 2004... ...!

Seems to me the point of Flight Sim is to fly at a height lower than the wings are long.  That’s coming from a professional pilot!  When I started designing my aircraft, the last thing I thought was that I was going to be spending so much time at this game environment.  After all, “ya’ get enough of the real thing after a few years”.  Pilots go sailing to get a change of scenery.  But working on the model also means the thing needs to be loaded to test things out.  So I end up cranking it around some hillsides or mountain range while catching a few leaves from the taller trees.  Then I’ll walk away from the confuser, for dinner or other distraction, with the aircraft on auto pilot at FL450, at MACH 1.85 and unlimited fuel, come back a few hours later and “where the hell in the world is it now”, followed by “Dive” “Dive” “Dive” exploring the virtual world, and picking up a few more virtual leaves.   I find I simultaneously need to load Google Earth, and Wikipedia just to see what this new place (“where the hell is it now”) is all about.   Airliners don't give that kind of fredom - beleive me - I know.