Any PC flight sim fans out there?

[Barryboy]

Hi... Thinking about taking the plunge as I have acquired a Black Widow joystick controller and have always quite fancied trying this out.

A couple of questions... Firstly I can see that there are a lot of different programs available, with Microsoft's 2022 edition being by a long way the most expensive at around £100 which is way outside of my 'toy' budget. There are quite a lot of older second hand versions of the MS program available quite cheaply on the net, but I'm not sure they would run OK on Windows 10 - I recently caught a cold with a ColorMunki monitor calibrator with this problem, which pi$$ed me off big style.. :-( I have been told by someone who claims to know what they are talking about (but we all know these guys, eh?) that the 'Flight Gear Flight Simulator 2022 X Premium Deluxe' is a good alternative, and readily available for £15 or less, which is more in my price range.

Secondly, would I need to source drivers for the joystick or is the joystick controlled through the sim software?

Any thoughts/advice please?

Thanks
Rob

[Jubal]

https://www.flightgear.org/

Or just download it for free. It’s freeware/open source.

[ryanb741]

Microsoft Game pass. £7.99 a month and gives you access to a huge library of games including MS Flight Simulator

[Matt London]

As above, try Microsoft Game Pass for FS2020.

Have a look at DCS. It is combat oriented but you get a couple of planes and a map to keep for free. You can also access other planes for a free two week trial.

[Kingstepper]

Don’t know about the others but you need a powerful PC (CPU as much as graphics) to run MS FS with decent settings.
Bought my copy for reasonable price (~£50?) on foreign (possibly Brazilian or Turkish, can’t remember but same English language product) MS store after heads up on HotDealsUK - worth keeping eye out for any deals esp. this Black Friday. Also on Steam of course.