This morning, our Daughter's ex boyfriend who has remained a friend of the family, rang.
To cut a long story short, he booked me in for an hour in a 737-800 simulator.
He's an animation producer, so will bring some camera gear to record proceedings.
Any tips from you jetsetters? I guess that I can dispense with opening the clear view and calling "Prop clear!"
I'll guarantee you one thing.. you'll believe at some point you're actually 'flying' it.. such are the sensations you get in a full-motion sim. In fact, I'll guarantee you TWO things.. the second being your hour will go incredibly quickly. I'll go a stage further and guarantee you a third thing.. you'll want one
Go in there with an open mind. If you can.. pull a 738 off the internet and familiarise yourself with all that glass. Even having done this, you'll very soon realise that hanging onto a 'real' one is NOTHING like flightsim at all. As real as it gets isn't very real at all in comparison
I'm chuffed to bits for you mate. I'm sure you'll enjoy every second
It is quite extraordinary how one starts to "feel" the movement of the aeroplane, even on a static simulator. Also, in general how much more direct input is needed to the controls - that was the experience I had. I was in a 747-400 simulator once, and by the time an hour was gone I'd done one (decent) touch-and-go and ploughed into the field a couple of times! Fortunately, I got another 30 minutes or so for a bit more fun. But that hour felt like 10 minutes. The interesting thing was how much more you need to look around to keep an eye on everything and because of that you just forget to do even very basic procedures. Any computer-based sim will feel hopelessly inadequate for weeks!
I've never flown a full motion sim, I'd love to though. But even from the 20 or so hours I had accrued in the PA28, the sense of motion adds more than you'll ever get from FS on the PC. I'm sure you'll have a fantastic time.
A freind of mine...not seen him for ages now, was a BOAC VC10 pilot
He found, in many ways the real one was easier to fly than the FS sim...this was up to FS2000, simply due to the lack of feel feedback and blinkered vision.
The full motion must bridge that gap somewhat.
Garry
"In the world of virtual reality things are not always what they seem."
