back to article Ultimate flight-sim crashes into living rooms for 36 grand

Flight-sim enthusiasts often spend fortunes building mock-up cockpits in their homes. But who needs to construct anything when you could simply buy one of these badass bubbles? The OVO-4 Home Flight Simulator might sting the wallet - and then some - but it is, it's claimed, a fully enclosed flight simultator that moves and a …

COMMENTS

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  1. 0laf
    Facepalm

    £36k

    For that money I could just go and buy a small plane.

    1. seven of five

      even if you could (and you can´t), this thing "flies" wherever, whenever you like and aborting to go to bed is not really an option with a real plane as well.

      1. Chris Parsons

        Yes you could

        I have just looked at the first item for sale in Afors, a Piper PA28 180, for £29500. I know which I would rather have, which is why I learned to fly.

    2. Marvin the Martian
      Linux

      It's that or a loft extension.

      ["Small plane" indeed, it's going to be a ULM not a fixed-wing one there. Or a canvas-on-wood glider. With a traffic jam, daylight hours, and horrible weather to further restrict your enjoyment. On balance, a simulator makes sense.]

      Bastards! This I can just drop into the attic and play, costing only fractionally more than putting an extension in (and without all the headaches of planning permission, neighbourly consent and works disruption while working at home).

      Choices, choices; and the missus to convince.

  2. Bronek Kozicki
    FAIL

    Microsoft Flight Simulator X ?

    Someone is being silly, Microsoft laid staff 2 years ago and the software is dead now. They should have used X-Plane.

    Well the price is silly too, but I imagine if you have enough space at home for the setup then it probably doesn't matter.

    1. Marvin the Martian
      Stop

      Yes and no?

      Aces studio closed in 2009, but in 2010 a new version was announced:

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Flight

      and

      http://www.microsoft.com/games/flight/

      Now, It's anyone's guess in how far this is vaporware just to destroy the new flight sim studio founded by some of the ACES people.

  3. JDX Gold badge

    MS Flight Sim

    I never knew they were still making that! Actually looking at the requirements, I'm not sure they are?

  4. ElNumbre

    Flacid Jet

    Seems to be setup as a light aircraft. For that money, I want a heavy or fast jet setup.

    There is always the option of the Sony HMZ-T1 and 'Red Dwarf' style manual movement option for about £800.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      I'd want fully operational guns!

  5. Craig 12
    FAIL

    I'm sure the movement is spiffy, but it looks like they cheaped out on the displays big time. How about smaller bezels or a decent projection system (surely easy to achieve in a white enclosure)e)

    1. NoOnions
      Go

      Google '747 cockpit'

      Pretty big bezels in the real thing!

  6. Garry Perez

    For that price, better throw in some hottie hostesses

    1. TeeCee Gold badge

      They should have big bezels too.

  7. Turtle_Fan

    Nice...

    A few corrections first:

    @0laf: 36k for a plane? At best it will be a 1970's Cessna 172 with about a week's worth of remaining airframe life.

    @Bronek: Yes, MS abandoned the Flight Simulator. However, all FS's are just game engines to drive third party applications like custom airframe models, sceneries, AI traffic etc. As an underlying engine it's great and its support for up to 64 CPU's and 64-bit memory will see it being useful for a good few years yet. FS9 launched in 2004 and wasn't really playable until 2007 due to hardware demands.

    @JDX: The requirements are trivial nowadays and most probably met even by run of the mill dells. The thing with FSX is RAM, CPU speed and storage throughput. GPU's don't really contribute to much of anything.

    Very cool set up indeed. And for those that think the 36K is preposterous (well, it IS) note that enthusiasts can spend more than half as much just putting together silly wooden models and stack tower boxes side-by-side. A fully implemented, turnkey solution could well be worth it to them, especially if you account for the endless manhours most of them devote to their models.

    And no match for the cost of a real sim. (Current costs @~£500 per hour).

    My only gripe (and probably any serious enthusiast's too) is that the cockpit is set up very meagrely

    for a Cessna variant instead of having a full blown 4-throttle stack and integrated Flight Management Computer. So this would restrict users to flying on the "small-fry" instead of the big beasts.

  8. SkippyBing

    £36K

    You could pretty much pay for a commercial pilot's license and get paid to do it for real*.

    *Subject to individual competence, some people can throw money at the problem all they want and still not be safe to taxi a glider...

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    For £36,000, a simulator that goes up and down when you yank the joystick. Even the geeks must be able to think of something better than a "flight" simulator

  10. Michael Dean

    Can it be 'modified' to run X-Wing?

  11. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    does it have an ejector seat?

    Hope the ejector seat isn't faulty!

  12. stu 4
    Boffin

    5k and do it for real

    I've been flying parmotors for 6 years. Got 3 in the garage.

    5k gets you the cheapest plus a wing.

    no licence required.

    why not do it for real ?

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-_Dw_gmsch0

    stu

  13. TheLogger
    Thumb Up

    MS are still creating a flight simulator - Mircosoft Flight. Looks VERY nice.

    http://www.microsoft.com/games/flight/

  14. JDX Gold badge

    "Why not do it for real"

    You could also enlist in the army and get paid to do it for real, rather than playing COD:MW3. Oddly, most people don't want to.

  15. druck Silver badge
    Happy

    Don't be a sad geek all your life

    Don't be a sad geek all your life, the best flight sim in the world doesn't compare with flying even the most modest training aircraft yourself. Get down your nearest flying school and take a trail lesson, you'll never want to sit behind a monitor again.

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