Aviation Video Games, EAA and NEW NET

Aviation video games and flight simulators are an interesting subset of the electronic gaming world and of real-life simulations.

The weekly NEW NET (Northeast Wisconsin Network for Economy and Technology issues) gathering for June 5 will take place at 6:30 p.m. at the EAA Museum and Headquarters in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. They have offered to host the meeting, show the NEW NET participants their flight simulator and lead a session focused on aviation video games and flight sims.

In preparation for the June 5 event, I did a little online research on the topic of aviation video games and flight simulators.

To begin with, flight simulators (the realistic cockpit type hardware/software combinations) and flight simulations (personal computer video simulations of flying a plane) have a ton of enthusiasts and information online. Here is a sample of the websites related to this topic:

• www.avsim.com
• http://simflight.com
• www.flightsimworld.com
• www.flightsim.com

Like most other topics you can imagine, there is an entire online world dedicated to flight simulations, including forums, conventions, news and reviews. If you wonder what that world is about, spend a couple hours browsing the above websites, contact a few of the people on the forums and you may find yourself sucked into a new experience.

On the topic of video games that have a primary focus of aviation, there are both personal computer games and video console games. Aviation video games include:

• Ace Combat
• F-15 Strike Eagle
• F-22 Raptor
• Falcon 4.0
• Skyfox
• Combat Flight Simulator
• Chuck Yeager's Air Combat
• Battle of Britain II Wings of Victory

Many more aviation games are listed in Wikipedia and other places online. Because I'm not an experienced flight sim user or experienced aviation gamer, I won't even attempt to explain why various ones are popular or better than others.

If you want to know more about aviation video games or flight sims, or want to share your knowledge about this topic, come to next week's NEW NET meeting.

Before the June 5th meeting, I'm going to get out Skyfox and a few other aviation games and play them to get into the spirit of the EAA-hosted gathering. If everyone who comes brings a couple of their favorite flight sims, we may end up sequestered in the EAA museum until the wee hours of the morning trying out each others' games...

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