Software & Accessories

The hardware is only half of it. What you fly and what you fly it in matter just as much.

Microsoft Flight Simulator is where most people start, and rightly so, because the scenery and the aircraft depth are unmatched out of the box. X-Plane holds its ground on flight modelling and is the choice of a lot of people training toward a real licence. FlightGear is free and open source and runs on hardware that would not attempt either of the others.

Around the software sits the equipment that does not fit anywhere else. A Stream Deck gives you fifteen programmable keys with screens on them, which is a genuinely good answer to the problem of remembering forty key bindings. An aviation headset adapter lets you use a real headset with your PC, which changes how the whole thing sounds. Dust covers matter more than they sound like they do, because a yoke sitting exposed on a desk collects everything in the room.

None of this is essential. All of it is the sort of thing you buy once the core setup is settled and you start noticing the small friction points.