Classic British Flight Sim

Despite using MS fs programs daily for the past 12 years I have never flown online. I was hoping to join nazca Steve to practice formation flying when his Sea Hawk is released possibly using 'Skype' (of which I have no experience apart from talking to family in the USA via Mrs Hobby's setup). My online flying preference would be for military aircraft.

Dave B tells me that he found that FS9 is a bit unstable for close formation flying with FSX much the better platform for such an activity.

I wondered if other members of the forum would care to pass on to us their own recent FS9 online flying experiences, whether these be in civil or miltary aircraft? Please have in mind that I have aspecial interest in close fpormation flying, not in the exquisite 'reds' style, but at an 'operational simulation' type.

Has anyone used 'skype' or other voice communication systems between aircarft in company successfully in Fs9?

I haven't done any online flying for a while but when I did everyone connected to a FSHost server and used Teamspeak for communication between participants. Using a server is probably more stable than trying to connect directly to another PC. And of course you need to open up your firewall/router to allow communication between participants.

For FSHost, there are free hosts out there as well as closed ones.

If Tom Clayton happens to read this, he can probably give you lots more detail based on his experience with Transload Virtual.

Online Flying is a great time.
Toby and I have done a number of sorties using FS9
And I've flown online many other times.. hours at a time..
it's alot of fun!!

FS9 works well , but it does have a few problems...
your flying partners aircraft willl apear as if it's sinking into the ground for one.
But all in all it's OK,.......... it's good enough for me.
Joe

Hi Ian!

Yep, there are a couple of issues to get through to make online flying a fun experience. I've never done any peer to peer flying. Everything I've done has been on FSHost servers. If you have a router, you'll need to open some ports. 2302-2400 and 6073 and 23456 all need to be opened to UDP protocol. Port 23456 is the "default" port shown on the Multiplayer menu, but some FSHost servers are set to use a different port. You'll need to check with the host's status page (there's a link to most of them on the main websites that run them) to see which port you need. If there another port used such as 23457, you'll also need to open that on your router. (If your PC is connected directly to the web, don't worry about opening anything.)

A good free server is Netwings. Instead of an IP on the multiplayer page in FS, just enter netwings.org and use the default port. They also run a TeamSpeak server. Again, instead of an IP, that server uses www.netwings.org to find a connection. (Note the added "www" for the TS connection.) BTW, Netwings is running the latest FSHost server that accepts connections from FSX, but I've never tried to connect my FSX to it. Heck, I haven't even flown it in better than half a year.

As far as stability, the biggest requirement is a fast, stable internet connection. If you (or your wingman) have a slow connection, you'll see the other plane dancing around the sky.

Here's a link to the Netwings status page:
http://www.netwings.org:8080/

This becomes more and more interesting. Many thanks for all pointers. I think that I shall go off tomorrow and start a Chipmunk refresher course. Start simple just as in real life. Last time I had control of a Chipmunk (1978) I was in the backseat in a 5AEF acft out of Cambridge, UK. My only flight in nine years service in the RAFVR(T). I always used to give offers of flights to the cadets who did not get as much flying as we did as cadets in the 1950s!