Best Sim to Learn On?

PeterWhippy

New member
so i went ahead and bought a Taranis Qx7 to grow with and mainly, to fly in sims. whats the BEST most realistic sim? i recently got LiftOff from steam and im not sure how legit it is. i havent flown acro IRL just yet but this acro seems a bit odd even tho ive never flown it.
 

ElectriSean

Eternal Student
Mentor
I like Velocidrone, but I've heard good things about Liftoff as well. Acro is definitely strange, especially if you've only flown with auto-leveling.
 

sprzout

Knower of useless information
Mentor
I learned how to fly FPV acro with Liftoff. The Betaflight settings in the game actually translated fairly closely to my drone for flight, as well; gave me a good baseline to work with.

Where Liftoff is sketchy is flying near objects like tree branches, or guy wires that hold up things on buildings. It's not 100% accurate, but for getting muscle memory down on the basics of flight, I'd highly recommend it.

I tried Velocidrone on my Mac, but it had issues working with my USB wireless dongle, so I kinda gave up on it...
 

rfd

AMA 51668
i have both phoenix 5.5 or and flight 7.5 - either are excellent. there are a goodly number of FT models that can be added to phoenix (and a few for real flight). the excellent first fixed wing FT old fogey can be loaded into phoenix - this is the FT foamie to learn on, and enjoy for years to come. promise.

 

sprzout

Knower of useless information
Mentor
i have both phoenix 5.5 or and flight 7.5 - either are excellent. there are a goodly number of FT models that can be added to phoenix (and a few for real flight). the excellent first fixed wing FT old fogey can be loaded into phoenix - this is the FT foamie to learn on, and enjoy for years to come. promise.


Only problem I have with RealFlight and Phoenix RC is there's no Mac version...Oh well.
 

Daniel Kezar

Ultimate Cheap Skate
Only problem I have with RealFlight and Phoenix RC is there's no Mac version...Oh well.

thats because macintosh computers (and apple devices in general other than phones) are notoriously difficult to code for and get things to work on, not to mention the user has to do many things before they can get the program running that would take mere seconds on windows.
 

PsyBorg

Wake up! Time to fly!
For fixed wing and heli sims I used to use Reflex XTR. That was a very expensive sim back in the day. The flight areas were actual panoramic 360 degree photos of real places mainly in Germany. The program itself was awesome as not only could you change every parameter of the air frame you also had full control of the environment. It was and is the most detailed sim I have ever used.

For quads I have used mainly FPV Freerider and found that to be the most realistic to set up as far as how close it feels and flys like my Alien and now my newest on for racing I call Taz. The second one I have and use is Hotprops which is also reasonably close in the physics. The maps however are more video game then realistic. Finally is DRL simulator pre pay to play which I used for the map diversity but would not really call it an actual sim more then a flight video game. Extremely cartoony and the flight model sucked as far as a realistic representation of a quad.

I have not tried Velocidrone although it does look tempting. I just have better things to put my limited funds to use for like flight batteries and things to keep me in the air for real. Lift off is too much similar to DRL to me and falls more under a game category then an actual sim.
 

Balu

Lurker
Staff member
Admin
Moderator
thats because macintosh computers (and apple devices in general other than phones) are notoriously difficult to code for and get things to work on, not to mention the user has to do many things before they can get the program running that would take mere seconds on windows.

About every part of that description is wrong :).

The only thing I had to do was to move the "aerofly RC 7.app" into the Application folder - and click on it of course...

There's no "coding is more difficult". You either can code or you can't. The only problem is that Windows still has a much bigger user base and RC simulators are niche products which reduces the user base even more.

Also most RC simulators were started to being programmed when OSX was not that widespread. They were not programmed with multiple operating systems in mind, but short-sightedly tightened to one OS.

It's more about companies thinking the required changes to the code base now is more work than it is profitable.
 

sprzout

Knower of useless information
Mentor
About every part of that description is wrong :).

The only thing I had to do was to move the "aerofly RC 7.app" into the Application folder - and click on it of course...

There's no "coding is more difficult". You either can code or you can't. The only problem is that Windows still has a much bigger user base and RC simulators are niche products which reduces the user base even more.

Also most RC simulators were started to being programmed when OSX was not that widespread. They were not programmed with multiple operating systems in mind, but short-sightedly tightened to one OS.

It's more about companies thinking the required changes to the code base now is more work than it is profitable.

On this, I will highly agree. I work for a software company, and according to our development team, they could code our software for OS X fairly easily. Several of the developers have even written programs for OS X in their own time, simple utilities, for the most part.

Where the company has issue is licensing. Apparently, for you to program using the programming code for a Macintosh, the developer's license is a fair amount higher than getting a seat license for Windows. Even though it's essentially...well...apples to apples (yes, I made the reference), it's still expensive compared to the alternative.

Now, that may not be the main reason for developers to prevent developing software for Mac, but that's the reason our head developer gave me when I asked why our company didn't develop our software for Macs.
 

Brett_N

Well-known member
PhoenixRC, although not "picture perfect visuals" gets my vote. With some google-fu you can find the download on banggood. I've also got realflight 8 - the scenery is fantastic but the model selection system sucks. Also, depending what you fly, there's an entire thread with Phoenix FT planes.
 

donalson

Active member
the lack of the reset button on the controller for realflight (if you aren't using the RF controller) kinda sucks... I prefer how Phoenix works overall... but I do need to play with RF a bit more and see if I can fix some of my "issues"... but really I only find either marginally better as an entry lvl trainer than some of the free ones out there... although the graphics aren't as good it gave me a solid feel for the basics of flying and

but I think the OP is talking more for quads...... lots of options...