flight simulator

Microsoft Flight Simulator X Acceleration Expansion
$19.99
This game entertains better than a circus show! Although the helicopter is hard to fly (physics problems).

Microsoft Flight Simulator X Standard DVD
$19.99
Ahhh... this runs a little slow. Compared to the view out the cockpit window this ran about an hour behind real time on my laptop.

Microsoft Flight Simulator X Deluxe
$69.95
I used to own a Microsoft Flight Simulator a few years ago. This is is a later version. I enjoyed the game then and I enjoy it even more now. This game is so realistic. I believe it is more fun than actually flying a plane. You can make mistakes and crash and get up and walk away. You can try things a real pilot cannot. The scenery is authentic. The airport at Kodiak, Alaska is exactly as I remember it. I flew out of there east to "Seal Island", a smallish Rock island inhabited by Sea Lions, off Cape Chiniak. I never expected to see it on a map.

CH Products Flight Sim Yoke USB ( 200-615 )
$149.95
I don't have anything other than the real thing (airplane) to compare this to, so maybe this is as good as it gets -- but I was disappointed in this yoke at the start and it gets worse as time goes by. I've owned it for three years now, using it with MS Flight Simulator, and it has degraded considerably since I purchased to the point of uselessness. I had hoped to use it for instrument practice, but no joy.

At the start it was usable, though poor and nothing like really flying. Now it seems to have dead spots that make it difficult to hold altitude or directional control, and you are constantly trying to "nudge" it forward with tiny bumps to get it to change and it holds-nudge-holds-nudge-holds-nudge-jump. The jump overshoots, so you are back to barely trying to nudge it again. Maybe I'm expecting too much from a under-$100-yoke, but disappointed.