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Tim,>

There’s no kind way of putting this: this week’s Flare Path was a disgrace. You’ve done some pretty unprofessional things in the past but slyly writing-off an ambitious work-in-progress flight sim because you’ve seen similar projects fail, and recommending a wargame that you’ve played for a mere two hours, sets new standards of irresponsibility. Where was the detailed TS2016 coverage and the piece on the imminent DCS: Nevada? I turned up expecting topical analysis of genre stalwarts and found instead multiple paragraphs on an obscure half-finished Dora sim! And the less said about that awful title pun, the better. You are aware, are you not, that Loos is a good hundred miles from the Ardennes, played no part in the Battle of the Bulge, and was never visited by a WW2 railway gun? Your Meuse seems to have deserted you on this occasion.>

Deeply disappointed,>

(your name here) … [visit site to read more]

There are good reasons why the likes of Canal King, Despatch Rider 1944, and Schwerer Gustav Simulator seldom get mentioned in The Flare Path.* The glaring absence of X-Plane, rFactor and iRacing coverage is harder to explain and justify.This week, in a feeble attempt to make amends for years of negligence, I mark rFactor’s 10th birthday by grilling Image Space Incorporated’s Tim Wheatley over a very low flame.

*Flare Path Games still lacks a coder, a budget, and a work ethic.

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Ready to discover once-and-for-all whether X-Plane is better than FSX? Whether Falcon 4.0 is better than Milk Float Simulator 2012? Ready to read the word ‘realism’ 46 times in a single hour, and spit feathers on discovering that the sim that caused got you through your divorce has been cruelly cold-shouldered by an idiot with a bus fetish and a sci-fi blindspot the size of the Crab Nebula? You are? Splendid. You’re in the right place.

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I sometimes fancy visiting the countryside in the driver’s cab of a virtual train, especially now I’ve seen the new Japanese DLC route inspired by Spirited Away>, but know I’ll never put the time into teaching myself to drive one from manuals and tutorial videos.

Almost as if they knew train simulators appear terrifyingly complex from the outside, Dovetail Games have announced they’ll tackle that with Train Simulator 2015. This year’s refresh will bring a train-driving academy teaching how to make choo-choos chug-chug, along with new base routes and trains–including a train from the future.

… [visit site to read more]

When a Flare Path Friday falls on Chinese New Year, it s traditional for all the stories to be Sino centred. Back in 1997 that meant coverage of Taiwan invasion TBS , thoughts on Ding Ding, a work-in-progress Hong Kong tramway sim, and an interview with Implicit Sextant, the team behind heavenly 14th Century fireworks sandbox, The Fire Drake of Fuzhou. Today it means Silent Service II patrols in the South China Sea, and a swift inspection of Just Trains’ new SS7C CR electric loco. (more…)

In Wuppertal black cats are cancelled out by white cats. Ladders are considered slovenly. The Umbrella Museum only opens when it rains. Chimney-sweeps double as gastroenterologists. Gastroenterologists triple as tripe inspectors. The word for school is also the word for kiln. Loneliness is next to godliness. Trees ache. Trams dangle. (more…)