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 ;)).
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.
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 .
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.
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.
Do you know how much it costs to annual a Cessna 172? You could build 3 of these rigs a year for what the aviation equivalent of a 1988 Toyota Camry costs to maintain and fuel.
First time I got into one, this was my exact reaction: wtf this thing is like a 1980s corolla turned onto an aircraft. I was sure I’d get killed in that rickety pos.
Some of those things for PC flight sims are straight up real cockpit pieces. Dude is simply buying his plane one bit at a time until he can assemble the whole thing.
I’ve installed Internet for a dude who had a setup this gnarly. And to top it all off, he lived on a piece of land attached to an aircraft museum. He really loves planes.
Some people are so dedicated to their hobbies and I love seeing it.
An extended family member of mine hosted a reunion at his house years ago, and he apparently lived in a neighborhood where many people have small airplane hangars attached to their houses instead of a normal garage. It was nuts. You’re just walking through a normal-looking house in a normal-looking suburban neighborhood, go through what would otherwise be a garage door, and suddenly you’re in a big hangar.
I’d put money that he has at least a small plane. I work in the motorcycle industry and there’s a large overlap between pilots and motorcycle riders for some reason. Quite a few private pilots have pretty well set up flight sim rigs at home. Not to this extreme, but most have the basics for running MS Flight Simulator
I work in the motorcycle industry and there’s a large overlap between pilots and motorcycle riders for some reason.
I got a single neighbor who has two different cars, a bunch of e-scooters, and builds different e-bikes constantly in his garage. Some people are just enthusiastic about modes of transportation I think…
Doing a PPL and I’m already considering getting at least a scooter. Easy and fast transport to the bumfuck nowhere area of the airport we fly from, I need to go regularly but never take any pax.
I’m going to take a guess that this sim setup is mainly for IFR or instrument flying. I know some people that do virtual airline stuff and they follow real life as closely as they can, so after taking off its auto-pilot on and using instruments for navigation instead of visual landmarks.
I can 100% promise this cost less than getting a pilots license, especially if you want to fly jets. Most people will pay over $10,000 just to get their private pilot license.
Yeah and the $10,000 is just for single prop. ATPL costs like $70-100k so yeah like Yurgenst said, this setup is definitely cheaper.
Also this isn’t the craziest setup I’ve seen. On Reddit years ago I saw a F-16 pilot recreate his entire cockpit complete with the FLIR displays and a real F-16 yoke but managed to make it collapsible. So he could stow it into a chest like thing that his wife approved of haha. He was like “I just really love my job, I want to keep doing it when I’m not working”.
This person is probably a CFI, and simulator time is always cheaper than actual flight time. 25% of your flight time can be in a simulator when learning to fly.
Fuel and maintenance are the big ones. I had a CFI who owned his own old Cessna 150 and would teach me for free. I just had to pay for gas and maintenance, and it was still almost $200 an hour. Aviation is expensive!
I’ve seen certified simulators that are nothing more than a 27" monitor, a yoke, peddles, and a throttle control. That set-up looks better than any certified simulator that I’ve ever seen.
You are completely correct. Most certified simulators aren’t used for familiarisation training but basic manoeuvres. Buying a certified simulator is often extremely expensive and getting one you’ve built certified is insanely expensive and very, very complicated (which is why they often come as pre-assembled kits that flight schools can line up themselves).
I would wager one of my children that this set up isn’t certified.
I wouldn’t bet against you. This setup looks like it is for a jet, probably a commercial airliner. It seems unlikely that anyone is getting certified flight instructions for a 737 in some dude’s dining room.
There’s also the issue of medical. Someone might not be able to medically get a pilots license, but can pull up a chair. It might not have anything to do with money.
They might already have a pilot license. This setup costs way less per hour than actual flying. And it lets you try things that would be risky in a real plane. Or you can practice bad weather or equipment failures safely, so you can better handle a real situation if it occurs.
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