Pheonix vs Real Flight

[Gixxa600]

Forgive me if this topic is overdone, but I'm slightly confused on deciding wich one to go for? It seems there's a lot of controversy online between these two sims as to which one is better!
If anybody could shed some light on this for me I would appreciate it!

[GIXERMAN]

its not so much a case of what better, but any sim is a good learning tool. if you can stick at it which i can't.
not had real flight. but had

phoenix
accurc
Next

and still have Next but haven't use it, hopefully will over winter. depends on what machine your using on phoenix works on pretty much anything and accurc is more demanding on graphics. unless theres a update

[Gixxa600]

Thanks for the advice! I've looked into accurc and it looks quite impressive but very new to the market? my system is high end so should handle it, I'm just worried it may be a little over complicated configuring the heli's etc, as I'm still quite new to that side of things. I haven't looked into next but will check it out. I think I'm swaying more torwards Pheonix as you can't argue with free updates!

Thanks again

[GIXERMAN]

phoenix is fine to be honest, i bought Next to try find my sim mojo, and Accurc is ok if you like fiddling.

[robocog]

My ancient PC will only run Phoenix nicely
I found the others I tried were 'jerky' or 'glitchy' due to my PC being steam driven

I find Phoenix is very usable, stable and easy to setup

Regards
Rob

[myxiplx]

Phoenix is the most polished for the initial setup, it's a great, easy to use simulator that just works. Phoenix took me from total beginner to competent 3D pilot, although once you're in to 3D flying like tic-tocks you start to spot areas where it's just not as realistic as the other two you mentioned.

RealFlight is a piece of cake to use if you buy the version with the bundled TX, a bit more fiddly if you want to use your own transmitter. But it flies tons better than Phoenix and has an enormous selection of models plus a massive online forum with even more models and airfields to download. The camera and scenery is very nice too, in terms of overall experience it's definitely the closest one to feeling like you're actually the field flying.

AccuRC is newer, but flies the best in my opinion, although you really need to be a pretty darn good flier to spot the difference. It's got a much steeper learning curve, and while the software is very pretty, there's little by the way of documentation for a new user. If you're prepared to tinker though you can learn an awful lot from it. The fact you can setup the models just like a real helicopter means you can learn setup skills risk free. I learnt a ton about the way helicopters work, and about how to tune flybarless systems just from tinkering in AccuRC and the skills really did translate straight to my real models.

Ultimately all three are good (and neXt and Heli-X are also good contenders), they all have their strenghts and weaknesses, but you can learn a huge amount with any of them. But it has to be said, it's rare these days I fire up anything other than AccuRC.

PS. All the AccuRC updates have been free too. :-)

[SGD]

Real Flight over Phoenix an neXt over both. I've currently have all three plus Accurc and Aerofly 7. But my go to sim is neXt as it does what it says on the tin extremely well! But a sim is very much down to personal preference and you can only find out which suits you best by trying them, hence the long list of mine

[Gixxa600]

Phoenix is the most polished for the initial setup, it's a great, easy to use simulator that just works. Phoenix took me from total beginner to competent 3D pilot, although once you're in to 3D flying like tic-tocks you start to spot areas where it's just not as realistic as the other two you mentioned.

RealFlight is a piece of cake to use if you buy the version with the bundled TX, a bit more fiddly if you want to use your own transmitter. But it flies tons better than Phoenix and has an enormous selection of models plus a massive online forum with even more models and airfields to download. The camera and scenery is very nice too, in terms of overall experience it's definitely the closest one to feeling like you're actually the field flying.

AccuRC is newer, but flies the best in my opinion, although you really need to be a pretty darn good flier to spot the difference. It's got a much steeper learning curve, and while the software is very pretty, there's little by the way of documentation for a new user. If you're prepared to tinker though you can learn an awful lot from it. The fact you can setup the models just like a real helicopter means you can learn setup skills risk free. I learnt a ton about the way helicopters work, and about how to tune flybarless systems just from tinkering in AccuRC and the skills really did translate straight to my real models.

Ultimately all three are good (and neXt and Heli-X are also good contenders), they all have their strenghts and weaknesses, but you can learn a huge amount with any of them. But it has to be said, it's rare these days I fire up anything other than AccuRC.

PS. All the AccuRC updates have been free too. :-)

Thank you for taking the time to explain in such detail! Very helpful

[Gixxa600]

Real Flight over Phoenix an neXt over both. I've currently have all three plus Accurc and Aerofly 7. But my go to sim is neXt as it does what it says on the tin extremely well! But a sim is very much down to personal preference and you can only find out which suits you best by trying them, hence the long list of mine

Yes it seems I'm going to have to experiment abit. To be honest I don't think I'm going to notice the difference between them as I'm not at that skill level, just want something for the long run. Thanks for sharing your experience

[Tom Owen]

Hi,

Tried them all, neXt, RF4.5-RF7, Phoenix, Aerofly the works! Best one for me has been NeXt purely because i have a mac and it's the easiest to load into.

The best one personally which feels the most real is Realflight by far, also the online is great along with a real great selection of helis/planes and scenery. If you have a windows PC i would go with Realflight, if you have a mac then use NeXt

[Gixxa600]

Hi,

Tried them all, neXt, RF4.5-RF7, Phoenix, Aerofly the works! Best one for me has been NeXt purely because i have a mac and it's the easiest to load into.

The best one personally which feels the most real is Realflight by far, also the online is great along with a real great selection of helis/planes and scenery. If you have a windows PC i would go with Realflight, if you have a mac then use NeXt

Thanks for sharing your experience with the sims. I am prodimntly a Windows user. I do like the look of RealFlight, however I want to use my DX8 and there is a lot of people saying it is a pig to set up? Do you have any experience with this?

[myxiplx]

It's not that hard really, just plug into the interface, calibrate your channels and you're off. It's a bit of a fiddle to work out the first time, but it's something that you only need to do once.

The Interlink edition of Realflight would probably work well for that. And if you want to be fancy, check the link in my sig, for a little extra and a few minutes of work you can connect wirelessly to it :-)

[bladeboy400]

i like the phoenix because you can have a ground in view, it helped me gain the perspective, when using it, it maybe a little boring to use but it saves you a fortune plus you go online and join other flyers, plus watch for others stick movements and practice tutorials on it. it is great for giving confidence at the field.

[tomatwalden]

neXt has the advantage if you're a Mac user, it's the only one that runs natively on MacOS without needing a Windows install at all.

[Ruston]

Aerofly is also available for the MacOS