Flying the Friendly (or Not So Friendly) Skies

Before I became a Sims 3 Fanatic I was a flight-simmer. I started out on Flight Simulator way back in the 80s. I was a teenager, I wanted to become a pilot and well, what better to spend my leisure time when not being forced to do homework (which happened to be most of the time) was pulling out Sublogic's Flight Simulator and idling away my time in the skies.

In 1983 (when I first got Sublogic's Flight Simulator (it came out in Dec of 1979) and I had my first Apco II (an Apple clone), I'd rush to get done my homework and study for six hours and then play for an hour before lights out. There wasn't much resolution or features to this game, just a couple of dials on a very basic instrument panel and the graphics...well, they were line-drawings. Our imagination filled in the rest. While I sat and flew SLFS and dreamt of owning Chuck Yeager's Combat Flight Simulator

My next purchase when I was much older; working in real estate, was Falcon 3.0 and MiG 29 after spending nearly 10G so that I could get a computer at home to ostensibly access VanDat and work quicker. Yeah, that worked out really well. My best year in real estate was when I fell three sales short of achieving Medallion Club and that, folks, was the summation of my career in real-estate (raises hand - no points for it being in a tough market in Vancouver...?) So frankly, I preferred enjoying my flying time in-game over getting told. "NO, you're going to carry me out of my house in a coffin...". Yeah. I didn't like cold-calling.

These were my two enjoyments after coming home from a hard day of trying to sell real estate. Understandably, my enjoyment of flying hadn't abated even after realizing that I would never be a pilot.

I picked up Falcon 4.0 (the follow-up) in the first quarter of 2000 (the year I would get married).

And that would be it for the next 21 years, until just recently my wife bought me FSX.

Now I just need a system that can handle it and DCS(World) - I've downloaded DCS Steam Edition and I'm aiming to get Heatblur's F-14 addition. The Tomcat has always been one of my favorites. (thank you, Tom Cruise/Maverick and Top Gun (1986))

As soon as I pick up another copy of Photoshop and Premiere Elements, I'm going to go back in and deal with re-creating this mount for FSX and hopefully pick myself up a pair of HOTAS controllers, preferably with an F-14 Grip.

I can make do with a Warthog (A-10) throttle and pick up the VKB or Virpil F-14 Stick. Frankly, I like the design of the Virpil a lot better. The G-limiter paddle looks more authentic squeeze that limiter and over-stress your airframe. Just like Maverick did to the F/A-18E in Top Gun Maverick.

Throttletek has an authentic looking F-14 throttle but at $800.00plus, I think that's a bit steep for anyone but the most addicted flight-simmer. Not unless I hit the Lotto Max $70M am I gonna think about getting that.

Hopefully one of these days, I'll get a chance to fly those flight sims again. but for right now, I'm happy playing Cities Skylines, SWTOR and The Sims 3.

...and well, whattaya know. Microsoft has just come out with Flight Simulator...and it ain't your grandpappy or Daddy's Flight Simulator

DrVenkman3876 - flies this beauty of a "Ace of Spades" F-14 in MSFS. I so f*ng want one.

Welcome to the Blog (Again)

After operating this blog for almost seven years, I think it's about time for a fresh start. Frankly, I've been busy trying to figure out just what direction this Nikkei_Simmer blog is going to go. Am I going to generalize and make it a strictly gaming blog and talk about new games that I might be interested in getting down the road? My main two games are The Sims 3 and Star Wars The Old Republic (an MMORPG).

My posts are now archived at Nikkei_Simmer Sims Archive and as such, that archive will be added to every month with the posts that accumulate over here. But I'm hoping that I can make these posts a lot more meaty than this one. For now, I'm hoping to go in-depth into searching out new games to play; mostly simulations (gotta keep to the theme of Nikkei_Simmer Sims) but branching out into new and other games.

The Sims 3 will always be my main game, but it's time to try new things...maybe better things. With life-simulation games such as Life By You (Paradox) and inZOI (a South Korean company who is creating a photo-realistic life-simulation game, the life-simulation game market is now heating up, which means that Electronic Arts is getting some serious competition for the life-simulation buyers' dollars. In a way that is a good thing. We'll see EA get off its ass and maybe make something that is tolerable to consumers.

Because the Sims 4 is not cutting it for me.

So far Life By You has got me interested...especially with their expansive customization options and the fact that they literally put the controls of how you want your game to develop right into your own hands. So if you're good with cc, you can plug everything you want into the game with the developer tools that they're putting into the game. That's going to mean this ol' boy at 53 is going to have to learn how to mesh.

inZOI is so photo-realistic, you'd think they were real people walking around in your computer monitor. I can't wait to see how this turns out. And what sort of facial creation features this game will have.

The future of life-simming is bright. In comparison to the games that we had when I was growing up, this is leaps and bounds above anything I could imagine.

Folks, Nikkei_Simmer Sims...has reached the ripe old age of SIX!?

Tuesday, February 21, 2017 was when this blog came to being.

Almost seems like a lifetime ago and it seems to be that this blog is going to need to undergo some revamping.

Over the next little while, you're going to see some posts disappear and reappear elsewhere. I will be making an exclusively Sims related blog as I have done with my Star Wars the Old Republic Blog and Nikkei_Simmer Sims will become the Hub (landing site) for all those blogs. This Blog will deal with game news...and other things that happen around the gaming community in terms of new games. After all sims can not just only be for Sims 3. I'm going to look at it in the bigger context of simulations. Because I don't have joystick/throttle controllers to play FSX or any of the other games that I have patiently waiting for me, I'm going to stick with two different blogs for now. One exclusively for Sims 3; one for SWTOR - the two games that I play the most of. Over the next few months, I will be moving and shuffling posts to each of the blogs and deleting some posts that I feel, no longer have a home and I will be putting up new content up here.

Hopefully, once everything is done, Nikkei_Simmer Sims will become a much more stream-lined blog.

For those of you who are nostalgic for my old posts...well...they're all lovingly archived in my new archive blog Nikkei_Simmer Sims Archive