I've been out of the Sim community for a years due to babies and lack of me-time, but a picture on this site's 2011 sim review of a typhoon attacking a train rekindled my interest... What current "good" simulators can I find that have a flyable Hawker Typhoon or Tempest? And by flyable, I mean I'd like to shoot at stuff too, I saw one for Flight simulator but I don;t think that offers targets.... If it's a mod of an existing sim, please be gentle and explain what I need to do, it's been a while ;-)

Thanks in advance...

Greg.

Hi Greg,
That shot was from IL-2 1946, which despite being a few years old now is by far the best overall WWII flight sim around.

You can buy IL-2 1946 for less than $10 at some places, and after that you'll want to download the latest official patches (4.101 is the latest I think). Whether you use mods or not is up to you, but many of them are very well done.

You'll enjoy the Typhoon and Tempest in IL-2 1946 - they have very realistic cockpits and good flight models.

The Typhoon and the Tempest are also in Microsoft Combat Flight Simulator 3.

The 'D-Day' addon for CFS3 had good campaigns for these and other RAF types, but it doesn't seem to install properly in Vista. Better still there's the freeware CFS3 ETO Expansion, which has all the CFS3 planes, many, many more including some superb RAF ones, plus many other improvements, including some marvellous airfields and excellent new effects: http://www.ww2aircraft.net/forum/cfs-i-ii-iii/cfs3-eto-expansion-17765.html

CFS3 tends to be regarded as the poor relation of IL2 as far as WW2 sims go but it has much better coverage of the western European theatre (a single, theatre-wide area of operations, sadly excluding Norway, rather than a series of smaller 'maps') and a wider range of RAF planes, if you include the ETO expansion. The air-to-air combat isn't up to IL2 standards but the ground-pounding has the significant advantage that the AA fire in IL2 is still a lot more lethal.

I'd recommend both IL2 '46 (add the UP3 and DBW mods from here http://www.sas1946.com/main/index.php - they are absolute must-haves, for single player!) and CFS3 + the ETO Expansion.

Thank you both. Just ordered Il2 1946... I think I have a copy of CFS3 somewhere (probably dusty), so I'll see about updating that as well...

There was another patch released for IL-2 1946 just last week.

The patches can be found in the downloads section right here at SimHQ. Even though guod did not use the m as part of the description the patches in those forums are the correct patches.
IL-2 Series Downloads: http://simhq.com/forum/ubbthreads.php/forums/265/1/IL_2_Series_Downloads.html You must be logged in to access the downloads forums.

IL-2 Sturmovik 1946: Patching Order:
Download and patch in the following order.

• CD/DVD Rom: v4.07m
  
  
• Patch 1: 4.08m Official Patch - (If your version is 4.08m continue to the next patch.)
  
  
• Patch 2: 4.09m Official Patch - (If your version is 4.09m continue to the next patch.)
  
  
• Patch 3: 4.09m Skins Pack Official Release - (Optional Skins Patch. If you want the new skin pack make sure to install before continuing to the next patch.)
  
  
• Patch 4: 4.10m Official Patch - (If your version is 4.10m continue to the v4.11m patch.)
  
  
• Patch 5: 4.10.1m Official Patch Fix - (If your version is 4.10.1m continue to the next patch.) This patch has been included in the v4.11m patch.
  
  
• Patch 6: 4.11m Official Patch - There is a Hotfix patch that is in the v4.11m downloads forum too. Add the Hotlink patch after installing the v4.11m patch.
  
  Once the patches above have been installed your installation is current.

Wheels