Most people mention the costs of owning aircraft vs a sim, but there’s another possible reason: health. People come in different shapes and forms and not everyone who loves aviation is able to get II or even III medical class. So flight simulation is their only option to be a “pilot”.
I mean, on VATSIM (popular aviation simulation network) there’s a group of visually impaired people who have made a special interface so they can fly an aircraft even though they can’t see!
Simulation (of any kind) gives many people what they can’t get in any other way. And as with any other hobby, as long as it’s not damaging to other aspects of your life, let people enjoy what they want
This doesn’t sound like a lot, until you consider it was the #2 most dangerous occupation in the US that year.
Behind #1 Loggers (111 per 100k) and ahead of #22 Police Officers (14 per 100k).
So it’s one thing to have a flight sim rig and at worst fall off your chair. A whole another thing to potentially make a mistake in an actual plane and pay the price with your life.
Flight simulators are a pretty niche hobby. Spent a lot of time playing the Microsoft Flight Simulator - comes handy if you wanna study aviation or become a pilot.
I’m doing the same with my work from home set-up. I even have a mannequin dressed up as a “boss” who hovers at my shoulder while I try to get stuff done .
A plane. A cheap, 2-4 seat prop plane. A full sim rig can fly ANY PLANE and spaceships too!
I am not in any way a sim gamer of any of these sorts. My inputs are keyboard, mouse, or controller. And I suck at everything I play, and I try to limit my gaming time (and expenditures on gaming).
A real plane would be most definitely satisfying in its own way, but Sim planes let you perform crazy maneuvers, fly places you wouldn’t be allowed to in real life, and fly aircraft that you would never even get a chance to see. Not to mention, the whole threat of death with real life flying.
Really good points that you bring up. I can agree with you fully now. Especially on the point of being able to do crazy tricks at no threat to your own real safety.
I would love to work on a project to build a thing that could reconfigure itself to match any existing cockpit. That would be sick. Maybe like a bunch of self-arranging robot building blocks and each has a different kind of switch or dial. Or each one can simulate it, hopefully in 3D with force feedback. They crawl into position and lock arms to form the cockpit. Send a command and the F-16 rearranges itself into an airbus 380. Or a corvette.
The cheapest Cessna (say a half-a-century old Cessna-150 with only a thousand or hours left on the engine before mandatory refurbishment) will set you back maybe $20k.
Then there’s the maintenance costs (one every 50 flight hours, a bigger one every 100 flight hour and so on as well as the yearly one), plus insurance and fuel.
Oh, and flying one of those planes is not really excitting (except for landings, those are cool) mainly because it cruises at 90 knots airspeed (about 160 Km/h) which at the minimum flying height per flight regulations (except during takeoff and landing) which is 1000 feet (around 300m) does not feel at all fast.
Absolutelly, spend $30k (if you get it as a kit and assemble it yourself) and you can get something a little more excitting … or spend $2k in that setup (I’m guessing, assuming you assemble it yourself) and let the Suspension Of Disbelief save you the rest of the money and you can even fligh planes that cost many millions of dollars (which, judging by the controls, is what that setup is simulating).
Mind you a Commercial Pilot License is “only” 1000 flight hours so you might get it for less than $100k depending on which country you do your training in and hence the cost per hour in the air (or, if you do like my Amateur Pilot Trainers in the UK and give lessons for the flight hours, which can be done with only an Amateur Pilot License) though you’ll get a lot of “special moments” with trainees at the controls (did I mention landings are exciting ;)).
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