What is a sim, what is not...

[Robotic Pope]

Originally Posted by Madfish

I believe anything can be a sim if you allow the bending of real world laws of physics etc.

However, the way I define a sim is this: A simulation follows real world mechanics as closely as possible.

This means that for example Flight Unlimited isn't a sim anymore to me as the flight model is now arcade. The same goes for many older games and even IL-2 1946 will lose it's "sim" status at some point. This is simply because these games cannot simulate flight in the highest achievable fidelity anymore.


Many other games are following a different approach though. For example simplifying the flight models on purpose. Those are clearly arcade.

So my definition for arcade is clear. My definition for a sim changes over time.

I don't think you should start calling an old flight sim an arcade game just because something has since surpassed it. An old flight sim will always be a flight sim, it may seem to be less realistic than it once did obviously because of technology advances, but more "arcade" is the wrong word.

The original IL-2 will never become an arcde game.