Best Sim for learning 1st/2nd/3rd Generation Jet Fighters

[Cadmus]

For a while I've wanted to get a broader understanding of air combat history. Earlier this year I tried War Thunder, that game can take you from biplanes to 5th gen. If you have lots of time (or money) to throw at it that is. I got my fill around rank III, which is late war prop planes. For modern 4th gen there are more focused sims like Falcon BMS. I'm hoping to get some recommendations for a sim that covers 1st, 2nd and 3rd gen fighters, which is the blind spot in my understanding. Ideally one sim that covers all 3, covers both red and blue teams and doesn't cost an arm and a leg.

Strike Fighters Project 1 has some early American jets, is it worth getting or does Strike Fighters 2 (with mods and DLC) do everything that 1 does? It's hard to get a read on what the modern IL2 has, it seems to have a lot of DLC. I have the old disc from the 2000s but they are different games. I know DCS has at least some of what I want, but I know that it's not cheap.

Are there any I missed? Do any stand clearly heads and shoulders above the others? Any help to rid me of my analysis paralysis.

 

[yakarov79]

as for SF2 - you can have just a base game...and with all mods here on CA...you can have lot of fun. DLCs? Maybe some. But guys here modded everything that was about to mod. And sometimes making stuff better than in the DLC or in the original game.  And they are still modding and have some work on their hands.

[daddyairplanes]

SF2 was pretty much a Windows 7 upgrade of the original WinXP based Wings over series aka SF1. however it works well going on into Win10, and most of us dont have issues with it in Win11.

and as mentioned, the base game is basic and Vietnam based. but the mods will take you almost anywhere you want to go. theres folks making the latest Chinese stealth fighters, and another working on seaplanes from the Spanish Civil War. and theres alot of everything in between

Edited Saturday at 03:36 PM by daddyairplanes

[streakeagle]

There is no other combat flight sim that will allow you to fly aircraft over such a vast range of technology. If you buy the complete SF2 $100 package, the volume of flyable and AI aircraft is unmatched out of the box. When you add in the available mods, there are almost no aircraft you can't fly. The only restriction is that if you want a WW1 experience, you should get First Eagles 2, which revises the Strike Fighters 2 game engine to better match the WW1 aircraft performance and scale. The game was not designed to go past early 1980s avionics nor was it designed to support Soviet style avionics, but that didn't stop modders from finding ways to make decent modern aircraft and flyable Soviet aircraft.

The big disadvantage to the SF2 series is that the terrain engine was obsolete compared to contemporary flight sims from the day SFP1 was released. So, you are not going to see high resolution meshes of mountains, hills, canyons, etc. Also, the stock maps were imported scaled down from 1 mile to 1 kilometer, approximately 2/3 scale. I believe this was a design choice to make distances shorter on historical maps because air-to-air refueling is not available in this game. However, using a dated terrain engine has its advantages: performance and file size. You can have multiple terrains covering all major historical and hypothetical air combat situations without buying a 4 TB drive and run them at high frame rates. User mods for the terrain textures can help make the terrain look better, but at a cost in hard drive space and possibly performance.

When SF2 development ceased, I migrated to DCS World. Over time, DCS has expanded to include aircraft from WW2, Korea, Vietnam, and all the way to 1990s/2000s level of technology. Officially supported payware modules only cover a limited range of aircraft compared to SF2. Even adding in free mods, the flyable and AI plane sets are a tiny fraction of what SF2 has. To play DCS and have all the payware aircraft and terrain requires not only a lot of money to buy all the modules but needs a high-end PC with 32+ GB RAM and a 4 TB drive with the strongest GPU you can afford, especially if you want to fly in VR. As much as I enjoy DCS World and flying in VR, SF2 is the only place I can fly an F2H-2 Banshee over Korea or use an F-101 to shoot down Bears with nuclear Genie missiles. IL-2 Korea is going to add aircraft carriers and the F2H-2 in Q1 2027 (supposedly), which will scratch my Korean War itch. User mods already support the F-104C, F105D, and F-106A. The F-100D was recently released and a payware F-104G is nearing early access release. So, my days of keeping SF2 on my harddrive are numbered. But for the time being it is still there and I can even get it to work in a basic VR mode using VorpX.

[streakeagle]

From the Third Wire web page for the complete SF2 package you can go from a WW2 P-51D and Meteor F.8 up to the F-16A:
Player Flyable Aircraft
    • A-4A/B/C/E/F/G/H/K/L Skyhawk
    • A-7A/B/C/D/E/H/P Corsair II
    • A-10A Thunderbolt II
    • F-100A/C/D Super Sabre
    • F-105D Thunderchief
    • F-4B/C/D/E/EJ/F/J/K/M/N Phantom II
    • F-8C/D/E/E(FN)/H/J/K Crusader
    • F-14A Tomcat
    • F-15A Eagle/Baz
    • F-16A Netz
    • Harrier GR.1/3
    • Hunter F.1/2/4/5/6/50/58/FGA.9/73
    • Kfir C1/C2/F-21A
    • Lightning F.1/2/3/6/53
    • Meteor F.8
    • Mirage IIIC/CJ/CZ/EL/O
    • Mirage 5BA
    • Mystere IVA
    • Nesher
    • P-51D Mustang

If you download the full SF2 Korea package, the flyable aircraft count increases dramatically. There are similar comprehensive mods for Vietnam, NATO, and Desert Storm. But each of these mods is a separate install. They are not designed to be intermixed. I tend to keep a Korea and a Vietnam install, but at times I also had the NATO install. I never tried the Desert Storm mod, but people who prefer more modern scenarios and plane sets love it.

Edited 16 hours ago by streakeagle