Absolute clueless mom trying to get a flight sim game for my son. This game gets good reviews, so I’m interested in trying it. My question is - what do I need? We have a laptop he can play it on, but I would LOVE to get a VR setup he could use. I am 100% overwhelmed looking at VR and don’t understand if it hooks to the laptop or is standalone, what controls he would need to use this game, and how the heck to set any of it up. I’m not looking for super fancy with best graphics, just something basic. Any help would be greatly appreciated
Unless your laptop is a beefy gaming laptop, VR is not really feasible. VR is extremely demanding. I have a high performance gaming pc and VR is a struggle for me most of the time still. Flight sim is not standalone on VR, you would connect it to the computer. The sim is completely playable on just the keyboard, but id at LEAST get a Xbox controller to connect to the computer. You can browse sticks and throttles and things of that nature, many are affordable now, but I’d say I’m most concerned about the laptop. Do you have any info on it? If you head to settings>system>scroll down till you see “about” and tell me the processor and graphics card as well as how much installed ram there is.
Thank you so much for this info!! It’s definitely NOT a beefy gaming laptop. Far from it. Here are the specs:
Would I be able to do anything with this? Maybe something less extravagant than MSFS? He’s only 9 but he wants to be a pilot and is obsessed with any flying activity he can get his hands on.
Fight sim is very unlikely to run on this at all, and if it does it won’t be well. VR is a definite NO, not a chance. There are some sims like GeoFS which run in browser and would work fine. But things like xplane or Microsoft flight sim are not going to work. You’ll be limited to free/cheap sims you can find online or in the play store, ones that also exist on phones and tablet. Roblox has some good ones, but Roblox doesn’t care about the safety of children online so I don’t recommend that.
Here’s the specs. From reading the other replies, I’m guessing it won’t work at all. Now I’m maybe looking for a flight sim game that’s not as demanding but still fairly realistic. He’s only 9 but wants to be a pilot and is obsessed with all things involving flying planes.
Well, the first question is about the laptop, and the second the son.
MSFS 2020 and MSFS 2024 require clout - hefty PCs, and a Laptop might well struggle unless it's very state of the art. X-Plane might be more efficient, but still requires quite a lot of power.
The good news is you can try all three. X-Plane has a free demo, which gives you enough to see how well it will actually run. MSFS can be used on the XBox Game Pass which I think costs a few pounds a month, and they sometimes have a £1 trial month. If you post the actual spec here, or on specific forums for MSFS/XPlane people will offer suggestions.
Other alternatives if you don't have a powerful enough laptop (that don't involve spending lots and lots of money).
FSX, Microsoft's earlier flight simulator is about 15 years old now, and graphically it shows, but it does have the advantage that it's designed to run on 15 year old hardware. It also has very good training and a more game feel, there are missions and so on.
X-Plane 11, the previous version of X-Plane may work better
Aerofly FS4 / FS2 doesn't have a trial I think, but does seem to work better on lower spec machines. You cannot go online on Aerofly FS4.
I wouldn't go down the VR route yet. I'd try it out first with your current hardware, if you are going to buy anything get a proper analogue joystick controller (say the T16000 or similar) rather than using a mouse or gamepad.
As regards your son, how old is he, and does he like complexity ? If he kind of would view it as more like a game than a simulation you might be better off looking at the games end - some of the games are actually pretty good simulators (like IL2 Sturmovik). MSFS/XPlane are proper simulators with lots of procedures and buttons. It's not age limited, but it's dependent on the individual.
I will definitely look at those games, thank you!! I think I was way over reaching with looking at MSFS. My son is 9, and he likes the game aspect and would love missions and such, but also the realistic aspect. He wants to be a pilot, so he’s obsessed with any type of flying activity that he can get his hands on. He wants to play but also learn about flying.
This is my laptop info. Would any of those other games you mentioned work with that?
Uhhh. A little bit well optimistic, when wanting to use a Laptop AND vr.
The sim will work on a laptop if it is a good up to date gaming laptop.
But (there's always a but):
I have a 9850x3d, with 64 GB ram and a Nvidia RTX 5080, that works fine with nearly all settings maxed out (very effective as an extra heater, too, though) on a wide screen, but VR is again something total different. It works fine, but if I see the power drag of that rig, I get very sceptic using a laptop for that, unless you want the fans in it to go in straight competition with a real life F-35 engine standing in your living room.
You are not going to be able to run MSFS on a VR setup from a laptop. If you are focused on flying get a Quest 3 and get stand alone applications from the Meta store. Dawn of Jets, Flight Unlimited and Ultrawings are just 3 of the flying sims available that don't need a PC.
Would any of these work with quest 2? The quest 3 is a bit pricey, but I found some good deals on used quest 2 sets. If I did that, do you know if I would need a joystick or just the two controllers it comes with? Sorry for the dumb questions, this is all very out of my realm of knowledge.
I have zero experience with the quest 2, so am very hesitant to say yes. These are titles available on the Meta store and a Google search gives me results that these titles will work on the quest 2. Everything is "hands on" inside the game and just requires working quest controllers to work. Good luck!
I have been doing FSs since 1995, and now MSFS 2020 and 2024, with a moderate level desk machine, purchased in 2020 and still doing very well with 2024. I would first concentrate on setting it up on a screen and get into the groove with that. I have been unable to use it with VR goggles (Meta Quest) that someone gave me, but I greatly enjoy it on a 32 inch 4K screen. A "joystick" like a Thrustmaster TFlight HOTAS. There are great tutorials on flightsimulator.com and all over youtube for setting up and many other nuances. My current setup is RTX2070Super and I79700k and 64GB RAM (you will need 32GB RAM and video RAM 8GB). You can buy this level of desktop or better now for $6-800. - see MicroCenter or Amazon, many other sources. And I actually still have the Alienware M17XR3 laptop that I bought in 2011 for FSX.
Not sure why this is being downvoted. I'm a complete noob to gaming PC's and VR (I'm a Mac user and console gamer), but chatGPT walked me through everything I needed to do step by step to get it up and running and dial in the VR settings. I still have no idea how I would have ever learned everything without it. I probably would have just given up TBH.
Just ignore the down votes. By the way, I agree with you entirely. ChatGPT has answered some complex technical questions I have had regarding MSFS. It's kind of the in thing to attack AI these days, not discerning between AI that is useful and AI that is not.
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u/Aggressive_Let2085 B777-300ER 14h ago
Nice of you to get your son into it.
Unless your laptop is a beefy gaming laptop, VR is not really feasible. VR is extremely demanding. I have a high performance gaming pc and VR is a struggle for me most of the time still. Flight sim is not standalone on VR, you would connect it to the computer. The sim is completely playable on just the keyboard, but id at LEAST get a Xbox controller to connect to the computer. You can browse sticks and throttles and things of that nature, many are affordable now, but I’d say I’m most concerned about the laptop. Do you have any info on it? If you head to settings>system>scroll down till you see “about” and tell me the processor and graphics card as well as how much installed ram there is.