I just purchased a flight stick and Elite Dangerous (remind me not to drink on pay day). What other flight games/sims should I be looking at? Doesn't matter if it's new or not. I haven't had a stick since the 90's, thus haven't played many space/plane/helicopter games. Throw me all of your recommendations

You can download the DCS base game from Steam which is free and has a few aircraft to try out. World of Warplanes is also free, so you can check that out.

There is also some great flying both rotary and fixed wing to be had in ArmA 3, but even though the learning curve is steep the flight models aren't that realistic. Bohemia is due to update the rotary flight model with ROTORLIB which should be interesting. That update is in beta right now. Arma 3 is one of the best games I have ever played, but it is a PC-ass PC game and you need to be prepared to invest a significant amount of time if you want to get anything out of it.

An older game that you may not have played is IL-2 Sturmovik which is regarded as one of the top flight sims of all time, and there is a sequel coming out soon.

rise of flight is really cool, and there is a very good quick look of it.

I'll second this. IL-2 Sturmovik is an amazing game.

I really like Episode 1 Pod Racer with a flight stick but it's super arcadey so probably not what you are looking for.

Freespace 2. It's the Super Mario World of space shooters.

There are enough mods out there that a game from 1999 still looks pretty good.

I also like Wings of Prey, it's an arcadey remake of sorts of IL-2. It's $20 on Steam, but I got it for $5 during one of the sales a year or two ago. Worth picking up if you can find it inexpensively and don't want to delve into the full IL-2 experience.

It should be note that this game was done by Gaijin Entertainment, who also made War Thunder, which is more or less a F2P/MMO adaptation of Wings of Prey.

I like Evochron Mercenary. It's not the best thing ever made or anything, but I've enjoyed all 300 hours or so I've put into it. Takes a bit of time to get used to the flight controls, but once you get them down they feel good.

Just looked at the quick look for Wings of Prey. Wow, it's straight up War Thunder. I had no idea WT was based off of an older game. I may pick that up, as I like War Thunder a lot.

IL-2 Sturmovik looks pretty good. I see that it's pretty cheap as well and they are working on a sequel.

Downloaded DCS and actually had some fun with the free plane with my keyboard (the stick just shipped today). I'll give a few of those a whirl.

Watching the quick look for Evochron Mercenary now.

I appreciate the suggestions. These should all keep me busy for a bit. I totally forgot about Freespace 2. That was pretty much the last game of its type that I played. It should be fun to hop back into it. I've actually got my original disc somewhere around here.

i'm gonna be the one to post the crazy comment of playing battlefield with it. I remember doing this in Battlefield 2 which is probably the last time i had a flight stick hooked up to my computer. It made for an absolute crazy experience when flying.

@oldmanlight: I played tons of sharqi peninsula flying helicopters with a flight stick. You can get a ton of points really quick if you are playing with a friend that is good at being a gunner.

- DCS World

- Enemy Engaged Comanche vs Hokum

- Freespace 2

- Diaspora

- Falcon BMS (you need a copy of falcon 4.0 which is near impossible to find though)