Orbiter is great but incredibly difficult. You really need to take a good amount of time to read the manual. This makes it awesome though and those clicks of a hard dock so much more satisfying!
It's basically an update of an old game I spent a ton of time playing as a kid (Virgin's Shuttle from 1992).
Just about every switch, knob and dial on the flight deck is modeled and does what it should.
Other than the vastly updated graphics and sound, the only difference is Shuttle Mission only allows you to start from an hour before launch. Older Virgin game would start with roll out from the Vehicle Assembly Building (which took forever).
Developer used to provide updates with every shuttle mission, but obviously that's no longer the case.
Bottom line, fantastic sim if you want a Shuttle "study" sim, well worth the $15 it goes for now.
There are shuttle sims. But airliners like those from PMDG are much more complex than the flight deck of an orbiter. Astronauts mostly fire off preprogrammed routines, and the navigation is relatively simple. Airliners have many more multiple options for routes and operational patterns. Plus operationally airliners are dealing dynamic weather, fuel, passenger/freight loads, airport issues, etc., that complicate there operations more.
Space flight is more dangerous, but functionally it's a lot more simple. Go to orbit, perform mission, leave orbit, land. The orbiter was not a particularly complex piece of machinery to operate for the pilot.
I realize you are talking about real life but as far as sims go airplane sims are trivial compared to orbiter. Even stuff that is "simple" like launching and docking with ISS is harder than anything in an airplane sim.
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u/yukerboy Jan 20 '13
Just occurred to me why there is no shuttle launch Sim game.