Training

Rolling Your Own Sim? Build a Powerful PC

While you weren’t looking, computer graphics and new hardware kicked home flight sims up several notches, but lots of processing power is a must.

Jason Montijo
Verified

Edited By:

Omar Filipovic

VelocityOne flight control system
The VelocityOne flight control system shown here is priced around $380 and is compatible with Windows 10/11 machines running Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 and X-Plane 11/12, to name two popular platforms. These virtual flight controls are only part of a DIY flight sim. You still need an efficient PC and fast internet speeds.

We use them for ratings training, recurrency, familiarization of the flight environment when planning a trip and simply for virtual aviating when we can’t strap into the real airplane.

If you haven’t looked at hardware and graphics in a while, you’ll jaw-drop at the capabilities and realism of new software. But the real challenge starts at selecting the right computer platform to support the latest virtual capabilities.

Jason Montijo

Contributor Jason Montijo is an IT professional based in Rhode Island. He’s logged more turbine and Garmin G1000 instrument sim time than any student pilot we know.