What attracts you to combat flight sims

[David198502]

Originally Posted by Sternjaeger II

I have a bit of a mixed feeling about sims.. I mean, I like flying with simulators, and the more accurate the better of course, but there's always a couple of elements that are missing which really affect the realism of the combat experience: fatigue and attitude.

No matter how advanced, a sim will hardly wear you down like flying on a real plane, and I'm not talking just about tiredness, but stress as well, which links with attitude: we tend to take more risks and do crazier stuff on a sim that you would do in real life, simply because we're not there, and if you die, you're dead only in the game.

true word, although i disagree somehow...
while what you describe is fact for every computer game, i think flightsims are the most punishing genre when it comes about dying...
sometimes you fly for half an hour or more, just looking for possible targets, when suddenly your screen goes black...happened to me a few times when i was at the beginning of my virtual flight career, and im sure i'm not the only one who experienced something similar.if you die, you have to respawn,start up the engine, take off,gain altitude,travel to the combat area, which is really time consuming, and not present to that degree in other games,... at least games i'm aware of.
furthermore, fights can be really tense and long lasting.especially in cliffs of dover i had fights which lasted 20min or even more...when you actually win such a fight, its really rewarding, and i think you cannot compare it with shooting someone in a fps game.on the other hand it can be really frustrating after having fought such a long time, such to end in the channel.
this is one reason of many others why i prefer flight sims over all other computer games.