What sim for 3D?

[Mr Twister]

Afternoon all.

Winters coming
And the heli is away for now so need a sim for practice/learning and keeping my eye in.
Ive been flying for over a year now and confident enought to atempt 3D.
Ive had a few tries a and thanks to "safe mode" managed to keep my 230s in one piece.
Anyway, i have all winter to practice with a sim before trying again.
But what sim?

As ever, all input appreciated.

Rich

[cycled]

Sims are boring

They'll all do 3D, AFAIK. Some differences that may come up are things like bogging, overspeed and tail hold. NeXt is the only sim I have and doesn't do very well at these, but you can still fly 3D with it.

[TheLadThatFlys]

I would say next is the best rc heli sim for all flying styles. It has loads of helis drones,fpv and free updates, the only thing it's missing is planes but that doesn't bother me as I don't fly planes

[feathering]

They are all quite good really.

At the moment I would classify simulators into two groups: (1) simulators that provide good overall user experience: great multiplayer support, good selection of helis, quick loading, etc... and (2) simulators that provide good physics with realistic feedback. In (1) I would put neXt and Phoenix and in (2) AccuRC, RealFlight and Heli-X.

[myxiplx]

I would say the top three right now for 3D are NeXt, RealFlight, and Heli-X. RealFlight has been around for years, it's got a ton of models and a huge community, and the default camera views are among the most realistic I've tried. NeXt is newer, but very popular at the moment. I haven't flown it myself, but by all accounts the handling is superb and definitely on a par with RealFlight. Heli-X is similar, it's main advantage is that it has some good training modes.

Phoenix is another one, it flies ok, but when you get in to 3D flight there are some subtle details where I could never get Phoenix to behave properly.

AccuRC is also out there, but it needs a high end PC to run, and it's developing at a much slower pace than the others. The one big advantage with AccuRC is that you tune the models just like a real heli (with servos, blades, pitch gauges, etc...), so you can use it as a tool to learn how to setup and tune a heli, as well as to fly them.

I own Phoenix, AccuRC and RealFlight, but these days RealFlight is my go to sim out of those three.

[Peteski]

I own Heli-X and NeXt. I used NeXt to start with for about 12 months and it was great, but as I got better I started noticing that it wasn't particularly realistic and the models all feel very small compared to real life. Then I switched to Heli-X and found it much closer to real life and even the smaller models fly reasonably well. So I only use Heli-X now and it really helped me with learning funnels and knife edge orientations (NeXt was particularly poor for learning funnels). The free Heli-X demo is not very good though, it uses an old Logo model (flies in slow motion) and a poor quality background field, so you don't get a very good first impression. The NeXt free demo is as good as the full program, just time limited. They both have a decent selection of models to choose from. I would give the nod to Heli-X, it's the only sim you'll ever need and not very expensive. NeXt is good, but not as realistic overall. The one thing NeXt is much better with is sound effects. Heli-X is poor on sound and some of the models sound downright irritating - like the demo Logo for example!

[acidla]

Heli-X

[chrisleematt21]

I have pheonix, next and accu rc. I have used realflight in the past version3.5 and will be buying version x when it is released. Next has the most uptodate models as far as i know. It's the one i use the most and find the most realistic.

Pheonix is fantastic to start with but as i advanced i found it too easy.

Accu rc is a nice sim and I think it has the potential to become one of the best, I find it harder with some things than real life (both planes and helis). The models are not very upto date and the load times are very annoying. It runs nice with a high end machine but everything seems to take longer to load compared to the others. It has a lot of options to play about with but not as many as I'd like.

They all let you perform 3D and any other style of flying but for me Next is the most realistic and its easy to tune a heli to your liking and fast load times.