No matter how expensive a home sim you make, it won't ever get be even a quarter of what an actual entry amateur plane costs to buy and maintain. It's not even the plane itself either, it's all the recurring costs like storage, maintenance, spare parts, fuel, certification fees, taxes, etc. The only cheap flight option for a recreational pilot is bushcraft light planes. And they will still cost more than the sim setup, while you'll only be able to fly it on certain places, during certain weather, at certain times of the year. The rest of the time you'll still have to pay all the storage and maintenance fees. Planes are incredibly expensive.
Yeah, you’ll be able to actually use it when life allows you, vs restructuring your whole life around being able to fly.
Now we just need one for where millionaires think their work is saving the world. Apparently the city building sims aren’t sufficient.
Well they keep triggering tornadoes and alien attacks and shit.
Yes and no. I bought a property with a double wide and a 5000 square foot hangar on it located on a private strip. The rent from the double wide and the other hangar spots I rent pays the mortgage and all the expenses related to the property. I own a j3 cub that I have about 30k into that I fly daily in Florida and maintain it myself for practically nothing. Affordable aviation is possible but you have to be very smart about how you go about doing it, and a good bit of luck is involved to get the right deals by being in the right place at the right time.
Plus I'm afraid of heights.
I have some fear of heights and for some reason it doesn't get triggered when flying on a plane, even on a prop-plane a km or two above the ground.
High up in tall buildings or mountain or coastal cliffs, sure, planes, not at all.
It's not exactly rational.
If you're not actually afraid of flying when on a commercial flight, I bet you won't either when at the commands of a poky prop-plane.
There's heights and there heights. The common fear is of heights that are large enough for a fall to cause serious injury, and not too large to be out of range for biological fall protection
I used to be afraid of heights, but trained myself out of it as an adult. I had trouble abseiling, walking on elevated walkways, standing near windows in tall buildings
Three things I never had a height problem with:
- Front seat of a plane (or any other seat, for that matter)
- Basket of a balloon
- On top of a tall hill
I looked into getting a pilots license and a plane once thinking maybe it would be more fun than flying commercial.
The license to fly just a dinky Cessna would be expensive af and I would only be able to afford a Cessna from 1982 or some shit anyway AND they only have a range of like 300 miles or some shit.
To actually go anywhere beyond my state I'd need a private jet license which is even more expensive takes a while and WAY outside of affordability.
Ah well guess I'm stuck driving or flying commercial
I fucking love the dedication people put into their sin rigs. Their joy makes me so happy, even more so when it's related to their real work. This guy is a trucker and recreated his entire cabin for his American Trucker sim. He's my fucking hero: https://youtube.com/shorts/EmpAJR5lNuQ?si=Z324Z-M_pGG_9Bp-
sin rigs
Let me guess, it comes in 50 shades of grey
Wet rental?
Wet lease? Yeah, clubs and leasing are an accessible option but depends on what you want to do. Flying a tiny 182 Cessna, sure will be as much as a nice Sim setup. For one flight, at $200 an hour, roughly 25 hours of flight or thereabouts and you're already over the price of the simulator.
Fly commercial jets, like the one this picture is simulating? No way. A small Citation jet starts at $50k a month. That's probably already 5 times the cost of equipment in that photo. And you can fly the big birds and do crazy stuff with them in the sim.
Indeed.
Back when I was making extra good money I got some flying lessons and started dreaming about it and eventually figured out the costs (bad enough the upfront ones, way worse the running costs) for a shitty-shit plane that wasn't even exciting to fly.
Also the physical setup in the picture looks like it's emulating large commercial passenger planes (don't really know enough to guess which, though) and those planes cost millions of dollars.
All that hardware and then just.. a chair.
Not to mention the Ikea table.
They're probably saving up to build a motion simulation rig.
Yeah you ain't gonna be buying a plane if you're using the cheapest office chair you found at a thrift store.
Unless this is to help save up for said plane.
Let's leave the chair out of this!
No neon trim and no cup holder even. Probably the kind of guy that wants to fight you if you call a flight Sim a game.
This is exactly what I was looking at. What the hell is with that?
Guy probably could have purchased an entire office worth of chairs with the money he spent on all that gear.... He didn't even bother to get one decent chair?
That's money he could have spent on more buttons and panels.
Most people mention the costs of owning aircraft vs a sim, but there's another possible reason: health. People come in different shapes and forms and not everyone who loves aviation is able to get II or even III medical class. So flight simulation is their only option to be a "pilot".
I mean, on VATSIM (popular aviation simulation network) there's a group of visually impaired people who have made a special interface so they can fly an aircraft even though they can't see!
Simulation (of any kind) gives many people what they can't get in any other way. And as with any other hobby, as long as it's not damaging to other aspects of your life, let people enjoy what they want
Wait, that's super fucking cool. Do you have a link to the way they're able to fly blind?
To go along with this is also risk to one's health and potentially death.
53 per 100,000 pilots was the death rate amongst pilots in 2018 according to The University of Delaware .
This doesn't sound like a lot, until you consider it was the #2 most dangerous occupation in the US that year.
Behind #1 Loggers (111 per 100k) and ahead of #22 Police Officers (14 per 100k).
So it's one thing to have a flight sim rig and at worst fall off your chair. A whole another thing to potentially make a mistake in an actual plane and pay the price with your life.
Adding a bit to that: you can do all sorts of stupid maneuvers in a simulation with zero consequence, like doing a barrel roll with an Airbus Beluga.
Plus, there are combat flight sims.
The double-standard on display here is just disgusting. Sure, it's perfectly fine to modify your home entertainment system into a fake airplane but I try a little remodeling to make work feel more like home and it's all "security will escort you off the premises" and "we're taking away your pilot's license". Boils my blood.
I know, right?
Modified your PC into a flight sim and no one bat an eye.
Modified your cockpit into a gaming rig and everyone losses their mind.
That's just a mid-range setup. The real simmers have at least 3 monitors.
Monitors are probably the cheapest part of a flight sim setup too
Man, at some point it might be cheaper to buy a plane.
A plane. A cheap, 2-4 seat prop plane. A full sim rig can fly ANY PLANE and spaceships too!
I am not in any way a sim gamer of any of these sorts. My inputs are keyboard, mouse, or controller. And I suck at everything I play, and I try to limit my gaming time (and expenditures on gaming).
But I kind of get it, you know?
Yeah but I won't die in a sim rig unless that panel falls and crushes me to death
Oh, the plane is cheap. Aviation fuel and maintenance are where they get you.
Some of those things for PC flight sims are straight up real cockpit pieces. Dude is simply buying his plane one bit at a time until he can assemble the whole thing.
I've installed Internet for a dude who had a setup this gnarly. And to top it all off, he lived on a piece of land attached to an aircraft museum. He really loves planes.
Some people are so dedicated to their hobbies and I love seeing it.
An extended family member of mine hosted a reunion at his house years ago, and he apparently lived in a neighborhood where many people have small airplane hangars attached to their houses instead of a normal garage. It was nuts. You're just walking through a normal-looking house in a normal-looking suburban neighborhood, go through what would otherwise be a garage door, and suddenly you're in a big hangar.
Building a plane one day at a time.
Do you know how much it costs to annual a Cessna 172? You could build 3 of these rigs a year for what the aviation equivalent of a 1988 Toyota Camry costs to maintain and fuel.
This. A full sim rig still costs a lot less than an actual plane, plus it runs on electricity and not leaded petrol so it won't send you loopy at 60.
For what it's worth, avgas is going lead free, and there's already unleaded options.
First time I got into one, this was my exact reaction: wtf this thing is like a 1980s corolla turned onto an aircraft. I was sure I'd get killed in that rickety pos.
The FAA and similar entities won't let pilots do all the fun and crazy shit they want to do that they can do in sim games.
Try buzzing a neighborhood in your plane, watch how fast you lose your pilots license, much safer doing this stuff in a sim.
I'd say good chance this guy does have a plane.
I'd put money that he has at least a small plane. I work in the motorcycle industry and there's a large overlap between pilots and motorcycle riders for some reason. Quite a few private pilots have pretty well set up flight sim rigs at home. Not to this extreme, but most have the basics for running MS Flight Simulator
I work in the motorcycle industry and there’s a large overlap between pilots and motorcycle riders for some reason.
I got a single neighbor who has two different cars, a bunch of e-scooters, and builds different e-bikes constantly in his garage. Some people are just enthusiastic about modes of transportation I think...
So they can fly the planes they want
Doing a PPL and I'm already considering getting at least a scooter. Easy and fast transport to the bumfuck nowhere area of the airport we fly from, I need to go regularly but never take any pax.
It just works.
Pilots and sports car owners too. Tbh I think pilots just like to go fast, on the air or on the ground
Only a single monitor, and then it's not even an ultrawide?
What kind of a low-rent setup is this?
The Alienware ultra wide oled is one of the biggest upgrades I've ever felt when upgrading my computer. Absolute game changer.
I’m doing the same with my work from home set-up. I even have a mannequin dressed up as a “boss” who hovers at my shoulder while I try to get stuff done .
“boss” who hovers at my shoulder while I try to get stuff done
A cat would also work for this.
Should upgrade to a sex doll so you can rage fuck it when your boss pisses you off.
Why so few monitors??
Lol first thing I thought of, 4/10, cool control panels, but not even a large curved display
Fuck curved display. You either build a dome or you have three large displays (TVs) arranged in a 270 degree square around you.
I'm going to take a guess that this sim setup is mainly for IFR or instrument flying. I know some people that do virtual airline stuff and they follow real life as closely as they can, so after taking off its auto-pilot on and using instruments for navigation instead of visual landmarks.
The $20 chair is definitely a statement of priorities and my favorite part of the image.
It's not even a full motion setup, you can go way more expensive and still be cheaper than an actual plane
Chair isn't even articulated, 6/10 tops, I wonder if he even has force feedback.
https://thewarthogproject.com/
It's amazing.
That's wild! At that point is the hobby flying or building/designing sim cockpits?
TBH, I think you're right about it and the building is the part they really find fun.
Pretty cool with the overhead and side panels.
Yeah but what percentage of them are actually functional? In MS Flight Sim half the buttons in the planes do nothing.
Half the buttons in a plane don't do anything as long as everything is working. 90% of my numbers are made up on the spot
Someone posts something kinda cool.
Doofuses of the internet: we must find all the faults to prove how much smarter we are
This is probably a work in progress. And this person may not have the same preferences and priorities as you for their own personal setup.
just buy a plane
Yeah, I don't think you can get a Mig-29 or a F-16 off e-bay, amazon or craigslist.
You can probably get a Cessna.
The cheapest Cessna (say a half-a-century old Cessna-150 with only a thousand or hours left on the engine before mandatory refurbishment) will set you back maybe $20k.
Then there's the maintenance costs (one every 50 flight hours, a bigger one every 100 flight hour and so on as well as the yearly one), plus insurance and fuel.
Oh, and flying one of those planes is not really excitting (except for landings, those are cool) mainly because it cruises at 90 knots airspeed (about 160 Km/h) which at the minimum flying height per flight regulations (except during takeoff and landing) which is 1000 feet (around 300m) does not feel at all fast.
Absolutelly, spend $30k (if you get it as a kit and assemble it yourself) and you can get something a little more excitting ... or spend $2k in that setup (I'm guessing, assuming you assemble it yourself) and let the Suspension Of Disbelief save you the rest of the money and you can even fligh planes that cost many millions of dollars (which, judging by the controls, is what that setup is simulating).
Mind you a Commercial Pilot License is "only" 1000 flight hours so you might get it for less than $100k depending on which country you do your training in and hence the cost per hour in the air (or, if you do like my Amateur Pilot Trainers in the UK and give lessons for the flight hours, which can be done with only an Amateur Pilot License) though you'll get a lot of "special moments" with trainees at the controls (did I mention landings are exciting ;)).
Indeed they are.. (picture 14)
😂
Very cool but you can have the entire cockpit to detail in VR, with a fraction of the cost.
Without the tactile experience.
I can make do without the tactile in most places but a good force feedback controller for setting trim would be sooooo nice.
Maybe I just want to try that obviously terrible approach to check if I'm right about my skills you know?
The one with all the wind on that god awful little mud hill?
Have to land that Harrier vertically on the side of a dam.
Flight simulators are a pretty niche hobby. Spent a lot of time playing the Microsoft Flight Simulator - comes handy if you wanna study aviation or become a pilot.
A friend of mine makes force feedback controllers and he has like so much business from guys like that.
How do we know that this room isn't in a plane? :-P
It's plane-ception?
Why do some people love an array of hundreds of knobs?
...would you not want an array of hundreds of knobs, if you could have one?
If one is simulating a specific plane, one needs the knobs that plane has
Just about any plane sim needs a radio stack
