"Trousers" indeed exists in American English but hardly anyone uses that term anymore. I believe "pants" in the UK means something that is stupid or silly?

Yeah,if something is sub-standard we could call it pants.

In Canada we call something sub standard sh*t.

What age?


I believe this entire industry to be driven almost exclusively by people just like those in this thread. 35-70’s generally with an interest in aviation and history particularly but there are other common interests.


I myself am an almost dead center typical at 56, and I can cheerfully say I remember the place from Jane’s Combat Sims days. Biohaz anyone? The early days of Strike Fighters, the likes of BoB and and EAW, MiG Alley, I have EVERY one of those still and I bet I am not alone here. Longbow 2, all the excellent stuff we had and indeed still do with IL-2 and DCS not to mention the civ sims, we have it in clover. As testament to this I bet I additionally am not alone in maintaining what might be thought of as a “temple” to late 90’s gaming, a Pentium III FCPGA at 1 GHz running 768 mb of crucial ddr and a Voodoo 5500 AGP card under Win98se. Yes Virginia, it WILL play legacy games like the aforementioned Longbow 2 in glide.

But the hook to get kids in isn’t there is it?

My Son is 21. He eschews social media other than discord or reddit and in this he is fairly typical I believe. But his best friend, well his best friend might have made a mistake. He also is 21, just turned. His Parents are well fixed with Intel, his Father is I believe retired already after a long career there, his Mom has the luxury of being a home maker. But due to Coronavirus and him being young they tossed him from the home up on the hill and made him go get a job and live elsewhere, since he wouldn't follow the rules. Apparently Dad started with a broom at Intel and it gave him ideas over the years. Dunno, but all of a sudden “T money” as my Son calls him was right out of working at the local independent Honda shop and had somehow decided upon becoming “Pilot Trevor” which certainly seems a bit of an upgrade from the previous moniker if nothing else.

My point with all of that is that the fix is in. Although subsequent cratering of the industry has cost him his slot at the Cessna School out at the local FOB he WAS in School, and earning it the old fashioned way, by washing the damned School crafts. He will be back. I know because I know I will eventually get my own ticket, I already have a bunch of hours logged, courtesy of my ATP Dad and spending the time with me as a youngster. But where can the kid get hours NOW?

Enter the hook.

His Bestie’s poor Dad has been buying this crap for years, Professional level simulator hardware and software, to the point of being able to get whole swaths of it setup so close to IRL that almost all the knobs and switches are in the correct place, making VR operations simple as well as practical. Anyone here heard of Gleim? For XP 11? There’s one for Prepar3D as well, but it requires the A2A birds, either Cherokee or 172, I have both. So many add ons all the way to True Earth and PMDG 747 or Aerosoft’s 300 series Airbus’. Notch’s 747 or the Zibo will get you close in XP, what’s your flavor? What simulator to fly? All ran on my nice 5ghz, 2080ti powered setup in VR, what’s not to like? Put on the Cosmos flip the face plate down after initializing SteamVR and done.
P3D has mouselook, XP uses the VR manipulators for punching buttons. I can see index controller support being hacked in decently eventually, making operating the G1000 just like IRL.

Hopefully you see what I mean by now. He can’t scratch that particular itch any longer, not without bucks. No bucks, no Buck Rogers as the saying goes. Do you suppose he will mind VERY much when he sees that MY setup will not only outperform the one at the School, it will look way better doing so as well?
Same systems being modeled so that point is moot. He would have to “pay” of course for an instructor to certify the hours and the instruction being given, you don’t get out free, unless you are just practicing on your own time as I do for relaxation as well as other reasons. I don’t know about you but I would jump, as just like I told Ales at studio 397, yes 2k for a car model is expensive I realize. But compared to driving the real thing it is a fraction. My C6 ZR1 will go through 2000.00 of tires alone in an afternoon. Aviation instruction is orders of magnitude worse at times and cheap is cheap. As long as the instruction is certified and oversighted for accuracy and bad habits caught in time simulators have an excellent place in instruction, far into the future, making places like this necessary if niche. Where else can you find all of Andy’s old thoughts and ruinations but here? Old pilots are becoming scarce, there needs to be new blood, it is what is scaring the aviation industry even as bad as Covid-19 and was scaring it beforehand.

So be of good cheer, we are a small population, but we are knowledgeable and well-heeled, generally speaking. We have been driving an industry worth MILLIONS for years, it is NO accident MSFS is back, not an accident at all. Aviation is not dependent on time so much, good info is good info. Stick and rudder still applies and Andy’s common sense approaches to BFM will have an audience again, even if only a small one. Maybe the form will change but info is info and simulator info will tend to lead one here or whatever it morphs into.
Now I’m off to play with my latest acquisition, a complete TCA setup with four quadrants of airbussey goodness.

Salud!

I thought it was sh*t eh?

This is quite an epic post. Thanks for sharing.

I believe Tigard is where Thurstmaster has their corporate HQ or at least they used to?

This description pretty much nails me too ...

52 here. To think, I was still a fresh-faced 30 something when I first clicked that join button!

Well, I'll make you guys feel young again.
I'll be hitting 80 before the end of the year and yes, I still have one of my old slide rules.
My old wings sit in a memory box.
It blew my mind the other day when I realized my old airline had retired every airplane I flew for it.
Don't think I bounced them that hard.
But then, I haven't seen a Bronco or a Mohawk flying in a while.
The only heavy metal I flew not in a museum is the B-52.

It's been a while since I hitched a ride with my son in a Caravan for a last flight.
He now flies folks around in a C-177 and he's the one that introduced me to MSFS, Combat Flight 2 and 3.

I am working on my grand-nephew who joined the CAP a couple of years ago.

I wouldn't be surprised if B-52's are still flying by the time i hit retirement age.

They are currently estimated to remain in serve until 2040

I have a B-52/SimHQ story for you all lol...

I'd met up with another SimHQ member a few times who lived about 40 miles away from me. Haven't seen him here in years, and lost touch personally years ago too.

We went to an air show together around 2005 and there was an aircraft museum with planes outside at the air force base. We were checking them out before the air show started, and one of them was a B-52.

Well my friend had served 4 years at that base, and we saw this guy opening up the plane and going inside, and my friend recognized him. So we went up to say hello. They start talking, and while I was looking at another part of the plane I hear the guy say "Oh, you've never been inside this thing? Well come on in!"

This airplane (the interior that is) was not open to the public, but we got a tour. There was graffiti inside that thing saying things (crude things lol) about various missions it'd been in in the Vietnam War. Pretty trippy experience.

But here's the kicker - my friend (again, a SimHQ member) was Russian. I thought "How funny is this? I'm an American, getting special access to the inside of this thing, that basically fought against Russia, because of a RUSSIAN, who served 4 years in the AMERICAN air force, who I met through SimHQ!".

My deceased grandfather would have got a big kick out of THAT story!

A customer of mine who runs a catering business was pleased to have landed the lucrative contract for catering service when B52s were deployed to Fairford here during Gulf One in 02/1991. The airfield facilities having previously been mothballed.
He lost an awful lot of crockery, shattered by reverberations and blast shaking his trailers when these monsters took off, eating into his profit margins.

Oversexed, overpaid and over here!

Think the Buffs that are left are the H models with the "new" (for the 1960s) bypass engines.
Yes, they would shake up things if you're too close to the source.

Wonder if parachutes are still being used to slow down military planes?
Even as civilian airliners went to reverse mechanisms?
I think so...

Oh wow, this is hilarious. I'm 28 but don't put me on the graph, I'm not really here anymore.

I'm curious how there's any mystery where my age demographic group went. Back when I used to frequent the forum we were public enemy #3. #1 was the minorities soaking up all the welfare and menacing genteel white society. #2 was the Gays and the Trans, guilty of perverting the children and the media with their insidious attempts at normalization. The youth were guilty of being weak, infirm, lazy, decadent, and by far the worst of all tolerant.

I used to ignore being insulted by the dregs of the boomers because there used to be some pretty cool people here who were a blast to fly / fight with, but they all left eventually, probably because all the topic forums transitioned to toxic ceaselessly negative cesspools. So you've got a situation where at SimHQ the sim conversation has all the mirth and entertainment of a ulcerative colitis autopsy, and the general chat just PWEC lite, and PWEC is generously speaking, a gathering of everyone's racist uncle playing soggy biscuit over a printed out ultra-con copy pasta. In other words exhausting and disheartening, not really high up on the vacation spots of the internet. I don't even want to imagine how far this place has sunk into the murk during the Trump years.

Also a parting shot as I ride off into the perma-ban sunset. Young people aren't avoiding sims any more than when I was a kid. Youtube and Discord are awash with teenagers and twenty somethings arguing about performance of various aircraft on War Thunder much like the energy vs turn threads that used to fill this place. The new MSFS and Squadrons games offer even more gateways for the casual person. The kids aren't avoiding sims, they're avoiding this place because it's a sad shadow of what it used to be, and there are innumerable superior options out there.

Ever notice how its always a certain "type" that makes the mud slinging accusations against other members as they slam the door behind them?

Does this really qualify though? How many teens and 20 somethings are discussing Falcon 4, DCS, IL-2 and Flanders Fields on Youtube and Discord? We all know that War Thunder is flight sim "lite" and that's putting it mildly.

War Thunder has as at least as much depth as the lighter sims most of us played in the '90s and early 2000s.