Saturday, January 15, 2011

Micro Flight Version 5

I initially played around with one of the older versions of HangSim a few years ago. Last year, I downloaded Micro Flight Version 5, which was an improvement on HangSim.

Micro Flight allows you to fly various different types of aircraft. But it's specialty is ultralights. It includes Hang Gliders. It comes standard with 1 hang glider, which is a medium performance hang glider. You can download additional hang gliders from the Micro Flight website.


Pros
  1. The scenery is very good. It allows you to select multiple locations. It comes with France as a country, which has many different mountains to launch from. As with the aircraft, you can download additional scenery from the web page.
  2. The in-flight characteristics are very realistic. The stalls, turns, sounds, etc. are very much like a real ultralight aircraft.

Cons
  1. Landings and takeoffs aren't very realistic. I am willing to cut some slack here, because It is very difficult to simulate running down a hill properly. On the training hill, hang gliding students have to learn how to walk, jog and run while holding the glider, and to continue running into the first few seconds of a launch. It's not uncommon for students to fall down on their first or second runs on the small hill.
  2. The hang gliders are generic. It would be nice if they were modeled after specific gliders. This would allow people to do "virtual demos" for gliders, or allow novice pilots to get virtual experience before transitioning to medium and high performance gliders. Many of the ultralight aircraft are generic, while the general aviation aircraft are specific.

In all, I like it.