Flight simulators

[qsrvbas@xxxxxxxxxxxx]

I have no idea what I'm playing with, but I 
downloaded/installed/started up the Flight Gear open-source flight 
simulator a couple weeks back. Anybody played with this?

Photo gallery:

http://www.flightgear.org/Gallery-v0.9.10/

Downloads, etc., are through the home page.

Very interesting project.

I was only looking for stuff to check my graphics and other 
components of a PC I built. This seemed as potentially fun as any 
benchmarks I might run.

So far, I've managed to confuse myself no end. I think I got the 
brakes released on the 737 I started out with. (I'm restarting with 
a much simpler plane.) I definitely learned that I needed a 
joy-stick to avoid keyboard/mouse control. Waaaaayyy too many 
controls and commands. The joy-stick was $25 from TigerDirect; seems 
far more than I'll ever actually use. (I haven't used a joy-stick on 
a PC since... ummm... well... Commodore-64 days, and they ain't your 
grandfather's joy-sticks no more!)

Just wanted to see if anyone else has ever made progress with it.

Tom Liotta