Flight Sim Resources
Free Flight Simulators
Digital Combat Simulator: World
Far and away the most powerful and realistic free flight simulator on the market, DCS: World is the best air combat simulator out there. Its powerful mission editor allows for endless scenario possibilities, and it includes many military aircraft modeled in excruciating detail.
FlightGear
FlightGear is a free, open-source flight simulator that includes a large number of free flyable aircraft, such as the F-14 Tomcat, F-15 Eagle, and Mirage 2000. Some aircraft have combat capabilities. Please note that FlightGear requires an OpenGL-compatible graphics solution in order to run properly (if your hardware isn't compatible with OpenGL, expect 1-3 FPS performance, most discrete graphics cards support OpenGL)
Headtracking Software
AITrack: A Completely Free Headtracking Solution
From the Creator: "AITrack is a 6-Degree of Freedom headtracker designed to work alongside Opentrack for its use in simulators/games. AITrack uses its own tracking pipeline (based on neural networks) to estimate the user's head position with respect to the webcam and then, streams it to Opentrack, which in turn, transmits it to your games."
Supports Digital Combat Simulator, Microsoft Flight Simulator, and many other titles.
ViewTracker: A Webcam-Based Headtracker
From the Developers: "ViewTracker is a gaming utility that turns your webcam into a head tracking controller for games. Simply launch any supported game while ViewTracker is running and begin using the position of your head to change your view in-game."
Supports American Truck Simulator, Arma 3, Digital Combat Simulator, Elite Dangerous, Euro Truck Simulator 2, GRID, Kerbal Space Program, and X-Plane 11.
FreeTrack
FreeTrack is a free software that can take input from headtracking software such as ViewTracker and sends it to your games, such as DCS World and Microsoft Flight Simulator. Depending on your hardware setup, FreeTrack can be used as a standalone headtracking solution (requires LED lights on your head to track properly with a webcam).
OpenTrack
Opentrack is a free, open-source headtracking software that is compatible with numerous games such as Microsoft Flight Simulator, FlightGear and X-Plane 11. It is also compatible with a FreeTrack setup. This software requires a head mount, like FreeTrack, in order to work properly, such as a phone (I don't necessarily recommend this, a 2 or 3-LED mount is better).
Flight Sim Control Hardware
Here are some of the best flight sim controls for the budget simmer! Every single item I list on this website is one that I currently use or have used before, and purchased at full price. I also provide a brief review of each piece of hardware and links to purchase them on Amazon. Each item costs less than $100 US, and most provide enough functionality individually to allow simmers to properly control the essential systems of their aircraft.
Flight Sim Hardware
3D Printable Throttle Grips
F-14A/B Throttle Grips
For the Logitech throttle quadrant.
Known Issues: grips do not fit snugly on levers.
Basic Throttle Grips
For the Logitech throttle quadrant. Note: throttle grips are rather tall.
F-14D Throttle Grips
Coming Soon!