8 hours ago, Zylx said:

That is really awesome, I didn't know that was possible to to in air refueling.

You can but it's really badly simulated. You basically just need to be close enough and then the refuel will happen magically. The basket will never be visually connected to your aircraft 😕 Since you already have DCS, you can already enjoy realistic refuelling in that sim and you would be very disappointed at the refuelling in P3D 😉

Concerning the aircraft you can enjoy for aircraft carrier ops in P3D, there are many indeed. As far as I know, all the P3D military "navy" (whatever the country) planes are carrier ops compatible. The recommendation made above about the freeware planes from Dino Cattaneo (owner of IFE IndiaFoxtrotEcho) is very good. He is the author of the default F35 in P3D, and he was the author of the very first F-14 Tomcat with a virtual cockpit we ever got for FS9 at the time ! (20 years ago...). His Tomcat for P3D is very enjoyable, even in VR. We flew it a lot in multiplayer, trying our best at crashing on the aircraft carrier deck 😄 His T-45 is also very enjoyable as a trainer aircraft, by the way 😉

The recommendations for payware aircraft, mainly the Tomcat from Aerosoft and the SuperHornet from VRS, are also very good. These two are some of the best quality jets you can get for P3D anyways. I would also mention the Phantom by Milviz (now "Blackbird Sims"), which is also on the highest quality level, and became freeware.

I like to be able to use both sims, P3D & X-Plane for carrier operations as well as DCS World depending on my mood 🙂

So I tried to download the USS Nimitz package from flyawaysimulation and every time I try to extract the zip file, I get an error message saying the archive is corrupt.  Usually that just means it became corrupt during the download process, but I tried downloading it from 3 different times on different browsers and still the same error.  Sadly, I think the master zip file is corrupt and who knows if the developer will ever fix it.  I left a comment explaining what was happening so hopefully they see it.  The developer did not leave an email address in the readme file or anywhere else so I cannot contact them directly to tell them.

I did find a different version of the ship called Project Nimitz but it's much more basic without all the fancy bells and whistles the other one has but it does work at least.  I also downloaded the AI Carriers addon that allows you to place a carrier anywhere you want.

I've been doing some searching, falling down the rabbit hole, and found some other interesting things.  This is what I found:

• Here you can find free aircraft carriers, they are older, ranging from the 1940's to the 1970's as well as a few free older military aircraft:

Link: https://bravozulu.blog/page/2/

• Here you can find an addon called Global AI Ship Traffic V2 for P3D, there's also a V3 for MSFS.  If I'm doing carrier ops and flying over the water a lot, I think this addon would be a nice touch.  This site also has all kinds of freeware scenery for Norway and some for Sweden too and a bunch of other interesting addons.

Link: https://www.flightsimnorway.com/addons/default.php?key=ZVJPZk56M1R1cjg3bXc4MWl2Y2NkYXpkRDI4ZnlwZ3EvTlRpRXIrU2xDRT0=

• Here is a site by Simworks Studios and they offer a package that contains an entire battlegroup of ships, including a couple of aircraft carriers for ops.  The ships are Vietnam era but still very cool.  This is payware though, not free.  Here's what the Overview said:

Experience carrier ops like never before! This feature-packed rendition of USS Midway and USS Coral Sea allow you to see how life and war is on these vessels, in their Vietnam-era configuration. Two carriers along with a fleet of escort ships will allow you to operate off any place in the world:

USS Midway ('73)

USS Coral Sea ('65 and '73)

Four Mispillion class fleet oilers

Five Charles F. Adams class destroyers

Six Forrest Sherman class destroyers

Link: https://simworksstudios.com/midway-battle-group-for-fsx-and-prepar3dv234.html

• Also here's another aircraft carrier payware addon I found from Simworks Studios, it is expensive, but it really offers a heck of lot more than just a carrier if you read the description:

Link: https://store.flightsim.com/Simworks-Studios--Carriers-Extended-US-Navy-for-P3D-v4v5_p_4108.html

 

Looking deeper into this, I'm actually surprised at how many interesting addons there are out there for carrier ops in P3D even if it isn't as "good" as in other sims.

 

Edited October 8, 20241 yr by Zylx

You did your research very well 🙂

A small warning about AICarriers: there are two versions: one in Java and one in .NET. Use/install ONLY the .NET version of AICarriers. The Java version is a mess.

Another tip: with tools like JoinFS, the carriers your spawn with AICarriers will be visible to the other players in your session, so there you go for multiplayer carrier ops 🙂

13 hours ago, Daube said:

You did your research very well 🙂

A small warning about AICarriers: there are two versions: one in Java and one in .NET. Use/install ONLY the .NET version of AICarriers. The Java version is a mess.

Another tip: with tools like JoinFS, the carriers your spawn with AICarriers will be visible to the other players in your session, so there you go for multiplayer carrier ops 🙂

Thanks, it's always fun to search the little known corners of the internet to see what kind of add-ons I can find.  Like I said, it's like treasure hunting, sometimes you can hit the jackpot.

Thanks for the advice for AI Carriers.  I've honestly never tried multiplayer, I'm not even sure how it works.  I'll have to check it out sometime.

The multiplayer in P3D is unfortunately a mess, at least until v4. Not sure if they improved anything in v5 or v6 but I doubt it. I pretty much immediately had to switch to 3rd party tools like JoinFS (which was freeware) to get some usable multiplayer environment for the kind of flights we liked to do: military jets,  'wish-it-were-close"-formation flights, carrier ops, and sight-seeing in helicopters 🙂

We had quite some fun. Unfortunately, at that time our internet connection was pretty bad for all of us, which resulted in lags which were sometimes annoying. And sometimes we just couldn't join, couldn't see each other for no reason. Frustrating to say the least, but when it was working, it was a joy.

12 hours ago, Daube said:

The multiplayer in P3D is unfortunately a mess, at least until v4. Not sure if they improved anything in v5 or v6 but I doubt it. I pretty much immediately had to switch to 3rd party tools like JoinFS (which was freeware) to get some usable multiplayer environment for the kind of flights we liked to do: military jets,  'wish-it-were-close"-formation flights, carrier ops, and sight-seeing in helicopters 🙂

We had quite some fun. Unfortunately, at that time our internet connection was pretty bad for all of us, which resulted in lags which were sometimes annoying. And sometimes we just couldn't join, couldn't see each other for no reason. Frustrating to say the least, but when it was working, it was a joy.

Sounds like it was a lot of fun.  I never tried multiplayer in any simulator before, maybe I'll have to give it a try some time anyway.  Who knows, maybe they did improve it since v4.

Speaking of multiplayer flight simming, Microsoft recently pulled the plug on multiplayer in FSX:SE about a year ago.  It is completely removed from the UI screen, now there's no way to join a server.  Last I checked before they did it, I still saw people on their still flying multiplayer in FSX, I found that a bit surprising that people were still using it though it wasn't as active as it used to be.

Btw I just wanted to mention I noticed the Simworks Studios' Carrier Extended package I previously mentioned is not available for sale even though it's listed on the Flightsim store, in fact, all Simworks Studios products are listed but not for sale.  There's no purchase button to buy 😪

It makes me so sad, I really, really wanted that carrier package, it looks so awesome.  Looks like Simworks Studios must have went under or something.  I'm so disappointed, I can't really find anything else quite like that of that quality anywhere for P3D.

Edited October 9, 20241 yr by Zylx

On 10/5/2024 at 3:46 PM, Zylx said:

I just thought of this question, I wonder why nobody ever tried to make a combat flight simulator out of FSX or P3D?  I'm sure it would be technically possible. like being able to encounter AI enemies and have air to air combat with enemy AI aircraft, or air to ground, have special scenery for combat areas, explosion animations, damage models, etc.  That would be really cool I think.

That's what VRS TackPack gets you 😎

On 10/6/2024 at 2:22 PM, Zylx said:

Wait, there's a T-45 for DCS World?  Where can I find it?

It's a free mod.

Links to download are in the DCS forums. A quick Google should bring it right up.

It also can handle smoke bombs and smoke rockets (training rounds), just like IRL 😎

On 10/6/2024 at 10:56 PM, Daube said:

You can but it's really badly simulated. You basically just need to be close enough and then the refuel will happen magically. The basket will never be visually connected to your aircraft 😕 Since you already have DCS, you can already enjoy realistic refuelling in that sim and you would be very disappointed at the refuelling in P3D 😉

Concerning the aircraft you can enjoy for aircraft carrier ops in P3D, there are many indeed. As far as I know, all the P3D military "navy" (whatever the country) planes are carrier ops compatible. The recommendation made above about the freeware planes from Dino Cattaneo (owner of IFE IndiaFoxtrotEcho) is very good. He is the author of the default F35 in P3D, and he was the author of the very first F-14 Tomcat with a virtual cockpit we ever got for FS9 at the time ! (20 years ago...). His Tomcat for P3D is very enjoyable, even in VR. We flew it a lot in multiplayer, trying our best at crashing on the aircraft carrier deck 😄 His T-45 is also very enjoyable as a trainer aircraft, by the way 😉

The recommendations for payware aircraft, mainly the Tomcat from Aerosoft and the SuperHornet from VRS, are also very good. These two are some of the best quality jets you can get for P3D anyways. I would also mention the Phantom by Milviz (now "Blackbird Sims"), which is also on the highest quality level, and became freeware.

Curious if the Aerosoft Tomcat works in v5?

On 10/10/2024 at 11:06 PM, UrgentSiesta said:

Curious if the Aerosoft Tomcat works in v5?

Hey just noticed your question here when I was looking back at this thread, it does work in P3Dv5 from what I've read.  I do not own the plane but if you do a web search, you will find forum posts with people saying that it does work.  There is one minor issue, the fx files don't work so you don't get any engine visual effects but seems everything else seems to work.  I saw the Aerosoft F-14 Tomcat on sale for much cheaper a few months ago on simmarket and I passed on it because there were other add-ons I wanted to buy at the time, ever since then I've been regretting I didn't buy it on sale when I had the chance.