Flight sim as training

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CerroTorre

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CerroTorre
It might be better to ask this question on a flightsim forum but i’m less interested in the geek out on computer tech details than I am getting on other pilot perspectives.

I’m looking to use a simulator for procedural IFR training while I am unable to fly for a couple months this winter due to work. The goal is to be as overprepared as possible prior to getting heavily into actual flight time on the IFR license with an instructor. In other words, fly a bazillion approaches on a computer that emulates a 172 with a Garmin 430.

I understand the benefits of purchasing a full system with all the fancy mock panels and power quadrants and giant monitor and head tracking and all that stuff.

But I really don’t care to spend that kind of money. I feel I can get significant benefit from a computer, stick controller and XPlane 11.

So, my question. Since I have to travel, and don’t care about a fancy setup ... does anyone have a recommendation on a LAPTOP that would be sufficient to run the program well (smoothly) with what you would consider “adequate” screen size to make procedural training doable and worthwhile? I know the system requirements are listed on the website but am trying to get a more real world experience take on it from another pilot.

I don’t need a fire-breathing system. I want decent performance and yes, maybe fun, boosted graphics for days I want to goof off a little, but it’s really a tool not a toy. I don’t have a clue about modern computer specs (last time i paid attention to that was back when a Pentium was sweet because it was better than a 486dx...:) so a little help there is appreciated.

Thanks all.
 
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I use XPlane 11 (started with 10) for IFR approaches, holds and so forth. It is good practice, convenient if I have 15 minutes to spare, and fun. I have one screen, an add-on aftermarket Aztec to emulate my plane, and a 4 year old desktop with a good graphics card that works well.

I actually don't do anything else with my set up as I am not a "gamer" and would rather spend my time doing something active that does not involve being in front of a computer.
 
Practicing procedures if you are already capable of self evaluation is an awesome idea.

xplane with just enough accessories to allow you to use the program without it being a PITA.
 
I use an Alien laptop with a CH Yoke and X-Plane 11. I have dual G5s, and there are add ons for that. I have it mounted on a little folding tray table. I just pick it up and move it out of the way. It hardly takes up any room, and it's always ready to go.

For IFR practice, a sim is not all that demanding on a computer. I have the weather set up so that there are no graphics above 400', and mininal graphics below that. The rendering and graphic details take the horsepower. If you want photorealistic VFR scenery you will need lots of computing and graphic processing power. That's not what I need.

I eagerly awaited MS 2020. For years I used an earlier version with a flight model of my SD. I got a panel that was identical to mine. It was a very realistic sim.

I downloaded 2020 the night it came out. I haven't installed it yet. My understanding is that now there are limited airports available. I want to practice at local airports, and the scenery, while beautiful, is not helpful.
 
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I am doing something similar with Flight Simulator 2020 but I am a beginner with no experience. I have been using the 172 with the G1000's but in reality I might never be in anything with G1000's. Haven't found any planes on there yet that have 430's or anything that might be more common. I see the benefits of it as far as knowing how to set an altitude change or heading change. More or less just being familiar with what buttons and knobs do what. I have a pretty powerful setup that I use for day trading and like you I'm not a gamer so if it wouldn't have been for me already having the beefy setup I probably wouldn't have bought the sim
 
Anyone pursuing a career as Professional Pilot can get motivation

knowing you must do well in the sim before let you fly the noisy thing!
 
Thanks for the feedback all.

Anyone care to get nerdy and say how much above minimum system requirements they’d recommend going for someone who is mot a gamer and just wants adequate performance without any lag with average graphics settings?

Minimum requirements:
  • CPU: Intel Core i3, i5, or i7 CPU with 2 or more cores, or AMD equivalent. (Dual-core CPUs slower than 3 GHz should try the demobefore purchasing.)
  • Memory: 8 GB RAM
  • Video Card: a DirectX 11-capable video card from NVIDIA, AMD or Intel with at least 1 GB VRAM
What is needed above those bare minimums (assume I know nothing about what those specs mean)?

How big a screen are those who use a laptop seeing as a functional minimum?

Even better if someone knows of a good
laptop option they could point me towards. It would at least give me a reference point to start doing my own deeper dive of research. I’m just completely clueless about the current state of computer specs.

I initially was really excited about MS FlightSim 2020 but it sounds like a lot of their avionics are not modeled out properly or completely. That defeats much of the purpose for me. To say nothing about the massive computer requirements to run it.

I understand the folks cautioning to not sim train without a CFI. There’s certainly a possibility of building bad habits and I’ll try to beware of that and adjust how I use it accordingly. I still feel the upsides outweigh the downsides if care is taken in how the sim is used.

Thanks again!
 
Minimum requirements are not an ideal goal. It will “run” but poorly. But there is good news. You have a lot of options. If you are willing to wait until after the midpoint of January, nvida is releasing the next generation mobile video processors. Which will drop the price of current generation hot rod setups.
Also, something to think about is that in my line of work “field service engineer” we run fantastically powerful mobile CAD workstations. (Basically laptops typically more powerful than most folks have for a desktop, with incredible graphics processors. Because CAD). But in this industry, most are leased for about 2-4 years, then refurbished and sold super cheaply.

An example would be this one,

Dell Precision M6800 17.3in Laptop Business Notebook (Intel Core i7-4810MQ, 16GB Ram, 500GB HDD, NVIDIA Quadro K3100M, HDMI, DVD-ROM, WiFi, Express Card) Win 10 (Renewed) https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07HG85H4R/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_glc_fabc_Snt7FbP7X9CW9


Hope this helps.
Also that big dell can have 2 3.5” HDD’s,or SSD’s and upgrade the RAM to a ridiculous amount. Though the power supply is the size of a brick, and just as heavy.
 
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I used to work at a company that manufactured interior plastics for aircrafts. We had a Faro laser scanner and a CAD department. I bought a Dell Precision M4600 that had pretty beefy specs. I'm currently typing on a Precision M4500 that I bought in 2010. It was pretty high end when I bought it. The CAD workstations were all desktops that I bought from ibuypower. You can also check out Falcon Trading computers. You can probably find something decent there.

I work in IT but haven't touched a computer in awhile other than my trading computer I built this summer so I'm not as up on the specs as I used to be. I work in Cyber Security now so I couldn't tell you what the better CPU out there is now.

The one I just built has a Tomahawk Max B450 motherboard with an AMD Ryzen 3600 6 core CPU and 32GB Ram with a GTX 760 graphics card. I built it for day trading but use it for Flight Sim 2020. Graphics card needs to be upgraded for that. I had to turn the graphics down in the sim
 
optionizerSS said:
I am doing something similar with Flight Simulator 2020 but I am a beginner with no experience. I have been using the 172 with the G1000's but in reality I might never be in anything with G1000's. Haven't found any planes on there yet that have 430's or anything that might be more common. I see the benefits of it as far as knowing how to set an altitude change or heading change. More or less just being familiar with what buttons and knobs do what. I have a pretty powerful setup that I use for day trading and like you I'm not a gamer so if it wouldn't have been for me already having the beefy setup I probably wouldn't have bought the sim
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If you buy the premium version the C172 with steam gauges has a 430 and 530.

If you are practicing dead reckoning and navigation solely via pilotage and VFR sectionals, MSFS2020 is actually pretty good. If you are learning avionics, I recommend X-Plane 11, MSFS2020 has a long ways to go.
 
If you don’t care much about the out the window graphics, you can use a very modest graphics card. After that you can spend $$$ on a home sim, with yoke, throttle and multi channel video.

Home sims can be great to reinforce IFR procedures and are great practice if you head to a new airport with unique approach (aspen).
 
FlunkyMonkey said:
If you buy the premium version the C172 with steam gauges has a 430 and 530.

If you are practicing dead reckoning and navigation solely via pilotage and VFR sectionals, MSFS2020 is actually pretty good. If you are learning avionics, I recommend X-Plane 11, MSFS2020 has a long ways to go.
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I got the basic FS2020. I have only flown the C152, 172, and 208 and tried the Citation but that didn't work well. Tried the KingAir 350 also. The 152, 172, and 208's are all pretty easy now. That is most likely something I would probably be flying in reality so no reason for me to try the 737 or anything I would never fly anyway.
 
CerroTorre said:
Thanks for the feedback all.

Anyone care to get nerdy and say how much above minimum system requirements they’d recommend going for someone who is mot a gamer and just wants adequate performance without any lag with average graphics settings?

Minimum requirements:
  • CPU: Intel Core i3, i5, or i7 CPU with 2 or more cores, or AMD equivalent. (Dual-core CPUs slower than 3 GHz should try the demobefore purchasing.)
  • Memory: 8 GB RAM
  • Video Card: a DirectX 11-capable video card from NVIDIA, AMD or Intel with at least 1 GB VRAM
What is needed above those bare minimums (assume I know nothing about what those specs mean)?

How big a screen are those who use a laptop seeing as a functional minimum?

Even better if someone knows of a good
laptop option they could point me towards. It would at least give me a reference point to start doing my own deeper dive of research. I’m just completely clueless about the current state of computer specs.

I initially was really excited about MS FlightSim 2020 but it sounds like a lot of their avionics are not modeled out properly or completely. That defeats much of the purpose for me. To say nothing about the massive computer requirements to run it.

I understand the folks cautioning to not sim train without a CFI. There’s certainly a possibility of building bad habits and I’ll try to beware of that and adjust how I use it accordingly. I still feel the upsides outweigh the downsides if care is taken in how the sim is used.

Thanks again!
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I strongly recommend the MSI GSxx Stealth (I have GS65) line of laptops, at least 9th or 10th gen i7, at least 16GB RAM, and at least an NVidia GTX1660 GPU. Very slim, well designed, moderately priced machine. It has enough horsepower to run 30fps at decent graphic settings. Anything less will stutter and XP11 may even complain about not being able to run in real time.

As far as sim software, a few thoughts. I have previously used FSX and X-Plane 10 and 11 to keep instrument skills sharp. You’re correct about FS2020 shortcomings. FS2020 has very poor G1000 implementation in the initial releases. If you know how to use X-Plane 11, you can do some decent work, with good avionics accuracy, even loading and saving your own flight plans etc. I love the graphics in FS2020, but by comparison it's way too much work and too much disk space to get anywhere near same realism in XP11. FS2020 is great for novices to be able to see their own cities/homes, and see a few exotic destinations. But the FS2020 avionics details have a long way to go to be useful for real pilots.

I find flight sims to be invaluable for several things. Flying IFR in hard IMC takes practice and repetition to do well. Using cockpit automation (especially something as capable as a G1000) efficiently to help reduce pilot workload is important, but very time consuming and expensive to achieve in the real aircraft to be highly competent. Before I go fly practice approaches under the hood, I routinely fly them on the flight sim (I used to use FS-X years ago but mostly using X-Plane 11 for past 5 years) just to get the waypoint sequence, coordination between G1000 and Foreflight, and the G1000 button-pushing practice (even if virtual with mouse clicks). I even verbalize the plate in a mock briefing sometimes to keep sharp. By the time I get to the plane, I know the plates well and I'm already comfortable with the necessary steps to execute a smooth approach. Loading in cross-winds with low ceilings on a sim can even help hand-eye coordination when it comes to hand-flying an ILS to minimums. Keeping the needles centered takes practice (as least for me ;-) Not exactly the real world feel, but very helpful for process.

The other thing I find incredibly useful is flight planning to new destinations, especially for mountainous terrain. While XP11 and FS-X don't share the same photo-realism of FS2020, they are remarkably close to actual terrain, ie height of peaks and valleys, etc. Just working with Foreflight is a bit more difficult, even with my 3D subscription. All of these are light-years ahead of flight planning with a VFR chart. When I lived in California, I took a rental 172 over to Yosemite, Tahoe, etc. While the POH says its ceiling is 14K MSL, that is generous for most rental aircraft. Once you get a rental above 12,000ft your climb rate is maybe 100ft/min. So you need to understand the terrain you will encounter extremely well. I must have flown practice routes 20 times (a great thing about flight sims is you can speed them up by 2X, 4X, 16X, etc) continually tweaking my routes. Each time, I am pausing the sim, rotating about the aircraft, to look at clearances, bailout points, etc. All the while adjusting the route in Foreflight to perfect it. By the time I took the actual flight, I knew all the major obstacles and had a great flight plan with over 50 waypoints that steered me along the most scenic but relatively safest paths. It was amazing how close the terrain heights in the flight sims were to the actual world.

Last August, my son and I flew our DA40 about 6000 miles from Atlanta to visit a bunch of national parks out west, ie Grand Canyon, Zion, Bryce, Arches, Yellowstone, Tetons... Loading my flight plans into Foreflight then into XP11 helped me plot the ideal routes and even gave me a feel for some tricky airfields along the way.

Good luck!
 
I was reading on Reddit that the MacBook Air with M1 chip work with xflight. Even with the 7 core GPU.
 
I have a really nice X-Plane simulator in my hangar. It is a great way to practice IFR and the best plane to do that is the 172 that comes with X-Plane with the GPS. The GPS simulates the 430W very well. I disagree with some of the advice that you were given above. First, you do need a very fast computer with lots of memory and a good video card with lots of memory on the card. If you do not do this, you will have a very frustrating time because there will be a significant delay between your flight inputs and the response on the screen. You will start a right turn but the response will not be immediate so you will increase your turn rate, the computer will catch up and show you in 60 degree bank. That is no way to learn anything. I do not recommend using a laptop for simulation. You want to get the fastest 64-bit game mother board you can find (I am a big fan of Asus mother boards), a fast processor, at least 10 gigabytes of memory, and use the recommended video cards for at least 30 frames per second. I also only use SSD cards instead of hard disks. That really speeds up the system. I also use the Saitek yoke, quadrant, and rudder system with radios module. These aren't necessarily the best but are affordable.
 
I had really bad luck with Asus customer support when my MB broke. EVGA has comparable performance and awesome customer support.
 
I built my computer for trading stocks but have recently bought Flight Sim 2020 so using it for that along with the Honeycomb yoke. I bought an MSI Tomahawk B450 Max MB and a Ryzen 3600 6 core CPU with 32GB RAM. Runs my stock trading software great but my graphics card is a little under powered for FS2020 but it works with it set to 30 fps.
 
I've studied both minimum and recommended hardware specs for MSFS2020 and X-Plane 11. Unless you go for a very high-end laptop (translation - expensive) you may not be happy. You can still get X-Plane 10 on the Laminar site, and there are copies of MSFS 2004 (100 yr anniversary) and MSFS X all over the place that work well on most laptops without breaking the bank. As you mentioned, a $10 joystick is just fine for what you're looking for. I'm running X-Plane 10 on a Mac Mini (circa 2010) with 8 GB memory, and MSFS 2004 & MSFS X on an even older HP computer with Windows 7 and 8 GB memory.

You already have the minimum specs for X-Plane 11.

The software is huge (and takes forever to install) because of all the scenery and airports. Fortunately, you can select the bare minimum for what you want. For example, I install scenery and airports for about 250 miles around Denver, and Oshkosh, of course, with 3-4 single-engine airplanes. If there's a Microcenter store near by, take the list and talk to one of the few people who know what they're doing (the ones in the build-it-yourself dept).

On the MSFS2020, the minimum specs are:
  • CPU: Intel Core i5-4460 or AMD Ryzen 3 1200
  • RAM: 8 GB
  • OS: Windows 10 64-bit
  • VIDEO CARD: Radeon RX 570 or GeForce GTX 770
  • PIXEL SHADER: 5.0
  • VERTEX SHADER: 5.0
  • FREE DISK SPACE: 150 GB
  • DEDICATED VIDEO RAM: 2048 MB
Also be aware that many reports (there's a thread here on POA) about the disappointment of MSFS2020. But as pointed out in the thread, it's audience is much larger than the pilot community, it's going after the gaming and the general public. The physics of X-Plane are better than MSFS2020.

All this is why I suggest going with a previous version of either. Cheaper hardware. For IFR practice, you don't need the super-fast-refresh-rate for scenery. Unless you really, REALLY need the high-end laptop for something other than IFR practice, of course.
 
I can not recommend strongly enough PilotEdge. I sim a lot and PE has added a level of realism that really makes me a sharper pilot by being able to handle coms as well as navs. I have tried other free alternatives but PE is by far and wide the best.

Btw, I am an XP11 user and still thinks that is the best sim overall (YMMV). However, what I would also recommend for whatever sim you use is to download some orthographic scenery. I use UHD/HD mesh (free) and OBXdirect (not free, not expensive) - large downloads (several hundred gigabytes) but well worth it.
 
Trogdor said:
I can not recommend strongly enough PilotEdge. I sim a lot and PE has added a level of realism that really makes me a sharper pilot by being able to handle coms as well as navs. I have tried other free alternatives but PE is by far and wide the best.

Btw, I am an XP11 user and still thinks that is the best sim overall (YMMV). However, what I would also recommend for whatever sim you use is to download some orthographic scenery. I use UHD/HD mesh (free) and OBXdirect (not free, not expensive) - large downloads (several hundred gigabytes) but well worth it.
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I have a lot of megasceneryearth graphics downloads. Not free, not expensive, and there are occasional sales. You probably also want a weather engine.
 
texasclouds said:
Make sure you aren’t developing bad habits. I’d use it alongside CFII instruction, but not pre-instruction.
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Spot on - this was my question to this idea. Thanks. I'll hold off doing any work on my own until I start flying.
 
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