Free Flight Simulator Helicopter Available Download Online
One suggested free download is the FMS freeware RC flight simulator for anyone to use. It's not quite as user friendly nor does it have as many features as commercial helicopter flight simulators that are available for a price — also on the Internet — but they work and they are fun. The FMS works very well with a 4 axis joystick and you will feel like you are flying inside a helicopter. Plus the transmitter interface is as easy to assemble as twisting some wires together. The simulations of the flight characteristics for the helicopter are quite good, hovering, forward flight, turning, banking, and landing. Simple helicopter aerobatics feel very natural.
In order for the free RC transmitter (not joystick) interface to work, your transmitter must be in standard FM mode and your parallel port must be set to use Printer Port IRQ 7 and I/O Port 378h.
Most computers use this as a default setting. This is really easy and the instructions are clear. You may not have to reset anything.
Most of these free flight simulator helicopter software programs are for people who have sophisticated 3D video interface cards, such as TNT2 or Voodoo based cards. These two examples use the Direct-3D platform for graphics. There are long descriptions on the Internet —almost White Papers.
These free flight simulator helicopter packages are great for pilot training. In all cases, the information and data learned will assist the ambitious beginning helicopter pilot. The serious helicopter pilot student will probably want to go forward and purchase a full package to quickly obtain his/her license. These free packages seem very real and may suffice.
This free helicopter simulator software is also compatible with most free radio control (RC) packages such as Aerofly. This free RC software can be downloaded from – www.higgy.de – this company has created a new simulator model for the FMS and you can also download the Free Pod / Boom helicopter model from this same 'higgy' site. Another site is the Phoenix Professional Model Flight Simulator. Phoenix is a bit more complex, however once past the initial learning warm-up, it is user friendly to the student pilot.
The future student pilot may want to buy a mini-helicopter and practice flying outdoors. Helicopter simulator software comes with these RC Helicopters so you can practice on the computer before going for the actual flying, and there are also many other free flight simulator helicopter packages that can be downloaded and used with the new RC.
Once enrolled in a helicopter flight instruction school, the student pilot will appreciate the hours spent on the free flight simulator helicopter software practicing at a computer workstation.
