What is a sim, what is not...

[icarus]

Originally Posted by Madfish

I believe anything can be a sim if you allow the bending of real world laws of physics etc.

However, the way I define a sim is this: A simulation follows real world mechanics as closely as possible.

This means that for example Flight Unlimited isn't a sim anymore to me as the flight model is now arcade. The same goes for many older games and even IL-2 1946 will lose it's "sim" status at some point. This is simply because these games cannot simulate flight in the highest achievable fidelity anymore.


Many other games are following a different approach though. For example simplifying the flight models on purpose. Those are clearly arcade.

So my definition for arcade is clear. My definition for a sim changes over time.



Battlefield 3 is clearly arcade to me though. Too many shortcuts were taken that prevent the game from actually simulating - it's more of a fantasy demonstration if you will.
ArmA3 is a simulation in the genre of military shooters - for the flying part I don't know (yet) but ArmA2 is clearly not a flying sim.

You hit the nail on the head. Everyones def has changed which is why there is so much argument on the subject.

The dictionary def has not. If we all follow the accepted dictionary def, we won't be arguing over the definition, only discussing which sim is more realistic, accurate, etc.. Which is really the essence of what we are talking about here.