The Best Flight Simulator Games

Flight simulator games can help to deal with the fear of flying. This is not witchcraft or snake oil, it is an intelligent solution to an awful phobia suffered by many people. I discovered this completely accidentally through my sister-in-law, who was afflicted with aerophobia all her life. But when she started playing flight simulator games with my wife and I things started to change little by little for her.But, to give some context to the story, I have always been interested in air travel so when computer flight simulator games started appearing on the market some 15 years ago I naturally looked into them and tried out a few. They were pretty disappointing for a long time either too convoluted or too buggy for somebody without a qualification in computer science.The combat flight simulator games were the best but I was not interested in that area. I wanted to fly normal aircraft in the same way, to the same destinations, and under the same circumstances as regular commercial pilots did. Flying training in real aircraft was out of my reach both physically and financially so I was searching for flight simulator games that would give me the same experience. Spin ahead fifteen years and now you can fly an airplane at home. The developments in flight simulator games have been among the best publicly available tech advances around. You can now pretty much play on a flight simulator the same as those used in flight schools to teach pilots. And you don’t have to wait for a CD in the mail or some guy to give access to his server (when it is running), you can download an on line flight simulator game pretty much instantaneously now and be taking your first steps towards flying in a few clicks of your mouse.Flight simulator games are photo-realistic and kinetically realistic these days, if you get a quality one. (And quality is not that expensive anymore). Whether it is the fleet of aircraft available to you, or the background scenery, or the accuracy of the cockpit, or the lags and responses of the controls, everything is a lifelike recreation in a high-quality game. You can actually step into a real cockpit, recognize the controls, and feel familiar with using them after you have been playing flight simulation games for a while.  I eventually did get the opportunity to take some flying lessons and I was amazed at how familiar it was to me after playing with flight simulator games.But what happened with my sister-in-law? Well, these phobias usually don’t come alone and fear of flying is often allied with other fears such as fear of heights or fear of crossing water. This is how it was with my sister-in-law. She also had a fear of heights and experienced flying as being suddenly and uncontrollably yanked off the ground and dragged to a great height. When she learned how to control and navigate a plane that sense of helplessness started to reduce and she began to feel in control of what was happening in the air. The more she understood what was happening and could recreate it – from starting, to maneuvering an aircraft and understanding how to navigate it – the less fearful she became.

(Click here to see the flight simulator game that helped her.)

The good news is that although she is still not a happy flyer but she has become a competent one. She is no longer in danger of having panic attacks on planes. The better news is that she has become an avid player of flight simulator games and she, my wife, and I spend a lot of time flying happily together virtually these days in multiplayer mode.