True. DCS is all hardcore airplane systems and no "heart". No dynamic campaign, no feeling of realism outside of the cockpit. I suppose that is attractive to some, not to me.

55 and have pretty much given up just all my flight Sims. Was an avid X-Plane user since version 5.35 all the way up 11 now. Still have it all and hundreds invested in payware products.
Just don`t have the time it takes to get it all up and running and just sit back and enjoy.

Same thing goes for IL-2 1946 and Rise of Flight. Still installed but just sitting there. Have not used either one this year so far.

I guess after becoming an empty nester my free time has evaporated. Just to much to do.

54 here. A lot of very good points summing up my own feelings exactly. When I flight sim, it's either SF2 series or IL2-46 modded. I have DCS and just about everything else under the sun. I just am not that interested right now in complexity. I'd rather just fly, or drive, or as of right now just play Skyrim...

64 and gave up maybe 6-8 years ago. Played EAW fanatically. Was CO of 105 Squadron. Had online wars with other squads etc. Played IL-2 for quite a while but it did not have the "heart" or "feel" of EAW and eventually I juts stopped .......I think F4U summed it up pretty well.

The IL-2 folks seemed more interested in having flame wars over the colour of the rivets on the lower left cockpit panel than in having fun. I actually had a working version of EAW on my PC for a couple of years after I had removed IL-2 ...I tried Rise of Flight but just didn't like it and I never had any interest in anything past the WW2 era

52 here. Started in the late 1990's with CFS1 and CFS2. Lost interest in MS after FSX and CFS3. Falcon 4.0 took the energy of a young man. I remember spending hours just learning the basics of the radar and ground pounding. The IL2 series was fun offline, but the online was too intense for me. I remember waiting, thinking that LOMAC was going to be great, only to find I had to really upgrade my rig. The Thirdwire series were the ultimate is just flat out fun and eye-candy. Getting new planes, cockpits, terrains, missions, etc. became an obsession to me. Once I got in my late 40's the last thing I wanted to do was sit in front of a computer screen at home after working a 12 hour shift starring at dozens of them at work. Then I got sick, forgot how to just have fun for a little while there, and just lost interest. Still fire up Wings Over Vietnam on my old XP box. That was my sweet spot.

Thanks for the response so far guys. The general consensus seems to be that the gameplay and complexity change with the flight simulations themselves is what drove many people away.

I wonder how you get the flight sim companies to realize this?

I wouldn't care if a sim had a "hardcore" mode, so long as it also had a "lite" mode that wasn't completely dumbed down. In the past I've seen flight sims that had a "lite" mode but it seemed too dumbed down, it was as if they only understood the extremes of either hardcore or arcade.

75, still an EAW fanatic for the reasons Archie noted, and still flying EAW160 online

I definitely see myself still gaming well past 70.

I remember there were the flight sim "snobs". Any talk of using the "lighter" settings was looked down on. I always found it rather funny the guys who thought just because they were good at dog fighting in a simulator they were Chuck freaking Yeager. It's an age thing I guess. I used to be a real field rat at several RC clubs, now that has slowed down too.

Reading a few responses above, I must echo a similar path... Getting into larger and larger hardware and controller setups. At one point I used to have a chair with a center mounted stick and throttle on the arm.

And as mentioned above, more and more time spent in setup. And the point arrives where I don't want to do the setup stuff in order to get to the play.

With Elite (the only "flight" game I currently play), I have thought a few times about just going back to the "good old days"... I simple 2 axis joystick, keyboard, mouse. Make the best of it and focus on playing.

This thread has been a real eye-opener for me and I can definitely understand why console gaming systems have been appealing for so many people who used to be primarily PC gamers. With a console system you just turn it on, load the game and go. I think the same phenomenon has happened with flight sims.

I disagree with that conclusion.

I do not mix the complexity of the procedures on a simulator with the complexity of the system I run it in. I do not care, and probably will never care for a console.

I prefer mouse and keyboard, although I have been using a controller for some games.

But mostly, I like complexity. That is basically the core of my RL job. But when I am gaming, I want that complexity to give me some enjoyment payoff. To have fun with my complex systems. Not for the sake of complexity itself.

That is the appeal, or, nostalgia, if you will, from old sims that we all have been talking about here.

50 now and pretty much stopped playing sometime around 2000-2001 when I was in my early 30's soon after we finished JF/A-18. I had pretty much been living/breathing/sleeping flight sims for years with the last stretch being more than 6 months of 100 hour weeks. We knew the next project wouldn't be a flight sim and I discovered when I tried to play one just for fun if it was one of ours I'd switching into debug mode and if it was by someone else I'd still be analyzing it and would start "seeing" the code of the AI logic. I realized that it would be a while before I'd be able to disconnect myself from the work aspect and be able to play them for fun. Over the years occasionally I'd try one of the console ones but they never grabbed me and sometimes the simplifications would drive me nuts (yes, it's a short drive). In some cases to do a loop or Immelmann you hit a button or use the second joystick. ???? As for my PC it was getting rather long in the tooth and so didn't think it would run the newer sims well.

Now that I have a new system though I've been thinking about trying the base version of DCS. Since the first hit is free ;-) it seemed like a good test. Then I get to see if any of my old joysticks work with the new computer.

Elf

My story's not really reflected in the previous comments. From the early/mid-90s --starting with DI's Apache and then through all the Jane's stuff, US Navy Fighters, ATF, Marine Fighters, LB2, F/A-18 (thanks Scott )and so on -- through to about 2008 I was a flight sim junkie.

In 2009 I stopped, but not because I had lost interest, but because I had a kid, and a new wife, new life, and there was no time.

In 2013 I misplaced the wife and had more time. But after moving out I got an apartment and it wasn't feasible to have a full desktop, so I did my gaming on a fast laptop. Strategy games, shooters, that sort of stuff. I still wanted to get back in to sims, just wasn't a logistical possibility.

It all started to fall in to place though when I bought a new house last summer. For Christmas I gave myself all of these PC parts as a present that I slapped together and had a blazing fast new box. Falcon 4 had always been my main sim and I decided to install BMS and I've been doing it non-stop since then. You can read dozens of AARs in the F4 forum here at SimHQ if interested. Or join us on our campaign server.

So in my case it was more life's curve balls that kept me from flying. At 49, I still love the complexity of a sim like F4 BMS. I never stopped wanting to fly, even though I took a long break. And I am really having a great time once again.

Similar to what others posted, I'm 47 and I still play flight sims but I typically don't have time to invest into ones that require alot of setup or deep systems learning. I mainly play Elite Dangerous, Prepar3D, X-Plane.

I've got a few hundred hours in Elite Dangerous using just the XB1 controller. I own a couple of HOTAS (X-52Pro, T1600FCS) but I just want to pick up and play without having to plugin and make room for a stick and throttle, or to put it away when done. Elite supports using the X/Y/A/B buttons as shift buttons so makes it really configurable and easy to play using just a XB1 controller.

VR (Oculus Rift) has revolutionized Elite for me, and so I am revisiting some sims I previously didn't have time for but have great VR support (DCS and IL-2 BOS), so I haven't given up on the harder core sims, but we will see if I will actually spend time with them in long term.

I used to do the heavy-duty stuff too. Falcon 4, Longbow 2, Black Shark, FSX Hercules payware etc. But now... meh, I hit my mid-40s and relaxed a bit.. Now in my early 50s I'm interested in the thing I'm trying to do, not necessarily the mechanics of how to do it. So, helo pilot in ArmA3. Still fire up the old herc now & then though

I'll be turning the big five-oh at the end of August. I believe my midlife wanna-be-20-again hormones are finally settling down (pretty sure I still got plenty of T, though ) and thinking now, with some clarity, what I want to do with the second half of my life. Or maybe I'm already deep in the 3rd quarter or at the 7th inning stretch, who can know?

My dream future is to become a retro "bedroom developer", making MS-DOS compatible games to run on various devices via DOSBox emulation, mainly flight, space, sub sims and shooters. Getting a formal education is kinda iffy right now due to cost (even with living at home) and classes (not liking the curriculum and tech-heavy campus atmosphere vs. 30 years ago). Yeah, I missed the boat, likely going to have to do it on my own and *really* do it this time (after too many false starts)! I've already started my own syllabus (including English, mainly want to write better) and I'll still be taking college entrance exams (ACT, additional math) if just to know that I can still pass them. Wife is being very supportive, whatever I decide.

Currently making extremely simple 16-bit 3D wireframe games (Open Watcom C/C++ and ASM) before even trying to tackle "Build Your Own DOS Flight Sim"...
Build Your Own Flight Sim in C++: Programming a 3d Flight Simulator Using Oop

New one on the way...
Flights of Fantasy: Programming 3d Video Games in C++/Book and Disk

Meanwhile, I'm having loads of fun playing DOS sims and games (mainly Fleet Defender, halfway through the manual) while looking over the Tornado source code in awe...
https://github.com/tornadorebooted/tornado-dos-flightsim

And yeah, it's legal...
http://www.moodurian.com/tornado/fo...82d466e2dc8a4fa5&topic=9.msg32#msg32

P.S. The JetFighter III GUI (roaming the Carrier) still blows me away!

I'm 48 and pretty much stopped after Lock On, between changing directions in what I wanted to invest my extra money on (photography) and just not wanting to invest as much time to learn the good sims. I had a blast back in my 30's playing Janes F-18 and USAF with the group I used to run with but I don't just have that much time anymore w/kids sports and my photography hobby.

I'm with Bib. I don't mind complexity, if it's leading to something. So just having a systems simulator is a bit thin in the entertainment department. Just as I don't feel any sense of accomplishment after having managed to start my car; I get that when I have reached my destination, possibly even having enjoyed the drive to it. Yet I like realism and it's part of the fun to get the aircraft set up and ready to go. But then there needs to be something of a "main event" to keep me engaged and entertained.

For me, beyond all complexity or level of detail, there needs to be an engaging environment with some sense of mission - a good story-driven "campaign" (Jane's products) or a decent dynamic campaign. Preferably a combination of both. Or add some RP elements for all I care. Go crazy!

But I never managed to get into either DCS or the "IL" franchise. Sterile, and quite frankly, incredibly boring, IMHO. After watching a couple of Bunyap's videos, I got interested enough to (almost) finish the F-15 "campaign" in DCS and learn the A-10C module, only (in the latter case) to run out of interesting things to do with it rather quickly. There were a handful of missions/ mini-campaigns, but once one learned the general structure of those missions (and the limitations of DCS's engine), they didn't pose much of a challenge. So I got bored with it quickly, and haven't touched DCS for almost 3 years now.

I did enjoy FSX/ P3D for a quite a while, especially with PMDG's excellent products and FS2Crew, but VAS issues finally drove me away, as well. Should LM take P3D to 64bit, I probably will get back into it.

Now, XP 11 does look very interesting; out of the box it looks as good or even better than P3D with a ton of payware addons (at least from the vids I saw on YouTube). If X-Plane 11 had better high-end 3rd party support (PMDG, FSLabs, FS2Crew, Active Sky, Ultimate Traffic and some decent ATC), I would get it for sure, despite all my "investments" in P3D. Or even better, eliminate the need for a lot of those 3rd party addons (like flight planning, weather engine, textures, AI traffic and ATC) in future updates - and I'd be definitely on board!

And make the stuff more "plug&play" friendly. I don't have the time, and frankly, energy to endlessly fiddle around with settings, profiles, .ini files and all that crap. Ideally, I want to be able to just start the software and be ready to go.

Oh, and I am 45.