There’s a certain kind of flight sims that hits the sweet spot: it’s not an arcade shooter, but it doesn’t expect you to go through a 300-page flight manual just to take off.
These games give you complex aircraft, real-ish physics, and a mission structure that makes you feel like this is the real deal. But they’re also perfectly okay with skipping a few checklists if it means letting you launch a Sidewinder without needing a degree in avionics.
| Game | Release | Genre | Developer | Video | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 | F 16 Multirole Fighter | 1998-10-06 | Simulator | NovaLogic | |
 | MiG 29 Fulcrum | 1998-09-07 | Simulator | NovaLogic | |
 | F 22 Lightning 3 | 1999-04-30 | Simulator | NovaLogic | |
 | Wings Over Europe | 2006-05-24 | Simulator | Third Wire Productions | |
 | Tiny Combat Arena | 2022-02-22 | Simulator | Why485 | |
 | Nuclear Throne | 2015-12-05 | Role-playing (RPG) & Indie | Vlambeer | |
 | Nuclear Dawn | 2011-09-26 | Tactical & Shooter | GameConnect |
Let’s take a look at some of the best military flight simulators that respect realism, but don’t worship it. These are games where you can learn something about actual planes and tactics…but you’re there to have a good time blowing stuff up from the sky for the most part.
F-16 Multirole Fighter
| Release date: | 1998-10-06 |
| Genre: | Simulator |
| Developer: | NovaLogic |
If you’ve ever wanted to jump into an F-16 without being yelled at by a virtual instructor for forgetting to press the parking brake release button, iF-16 is your game. It gives you enough buttons and switches to feel like you are flying something serious, but doesn’t overwhelm you with stuff that would need a flight school to understand.
The game totally nails the vibe. You’re flying a modern jet into real-world hotspots, armed to the teeth, and you’re there to get stuff done. The campaign feels grounded, but isn’t afraid to throw you into high-intensity dogfights or low-altitude bombing runs. You can tweak your loadouts, get a sense of radar behavior, but the learning curve is more of a gentle slope than a wall.
MiG-29 Fulcrum
| Release date: | 1998-09-07 |
| Genre: | Simulator |
| Developer: | NovaLogic |
This one’s a love letter to one of the sleekest Soviet fighters ever built. Unlike many sims that default to NATO hardware, this one gives you the chance to slip into the cockpit of a Russian legend and go to town with it. You got that Cold War flavor, but without Cold War headaches.
The MiG feels different from American jets—rougher, maybe a little more feral—and that gives it a distinct edge. The missions have just enough variety to keep you hooked, and while you aren’t flipping 20 switches just to launch a missile, there is still some finesse to mastering your plane’s quirks.
And really, how often do you get to say you flew a MiG in a sim that didn’t punish you for not memorizing Cyrillic cockpit labels? MiG-29 Fulcrum gives you the tools, gives you the enemies, and lets you do your thing. It doesn’t sweat the small stuff, it just asks if you want to dogfight at Mach 1.5 (and that’s what you totally want to do).
F-22 Lightning 3
| Release date: | 1999-04-30 |
| Genre: | Simulator |
| Developer: | NovaLogic |
The F-22 is the kind of plane that looks like it should come with its own soundtrack. In F-22 Lightning 3, you get to fly it in all its fifth-gen glory, but with gameplay that leans more towards excitement than accuracy. You have stealth, speed, and enough firepower to turn any battlefield into a crater-filled slideshow.
In many ways, this one’s your standard Novalogic fare, very similar to the games described above. But there’s one thing that they lack: nukes. Yeah, you can totally blast your enemies into oblivion with one of these babies during missions specifically crafted for this kind of scenarios.
It’s a very rare thing to encounter in a flight sim, though this list features another game that has been build around the concept of messing around with atom-based ordnance.
Wings Over Europe
| Release date: | 2006-05-24 |
| Genre: | Simulator |
| Developer: | Third Wire Productions |
Wings Over Europe is where flight sims meet that “I grew up playing MicroProse games” nostalgia. Set during the Cold War, it puts you in the cockpit of F-4 Phantoms, MiGs, and other glorious aircraft of the era. It’s serious enough to keep your attention, but never so serious that you’re stuck reading tech manuals on radar lock ranges.
The game’s modding community definitely deserves a shoutout. These folks turned Wings Over Europe into a full-blown retro sim playground, with extra aircraft, missions, and scenarios. The game feels like a simulator designed by someone who loves planes, but also loves blowing things up more than ticking off checklists.
By the way, if you pick up this game, you might experience framerate issues. There’s a fix for that, so be sure to give Wings over Europe a go, as it’s a fun game that you shouldn’t skip.
Nuclear Option
| Release date: | 2011-09-26 |
| Genre: | Shooter & Real Time Strategy (RTS) |
| Developer: | GameConnect |
Now here’s one that feels like the spiritual successor to all those fun-but-not-crazy-detailed sims of the ‘90s. Nuclear Option is still in Early Access, but already shows massive promise. It drops you into fictional future war scenarios with made-up—but very plausible—jets and weapons.
You get complex systems, sure, but the game doesn’t make you suffer for it. There’s a balance here—it respects realism but isn’t chained to it. You can hop into a sortie quickly, fire off a few missiles, dodge some radar locks, and feel like you’re in a modern warzone, all without consulting a manual the size of a phone book.
Also, the dev clearly understands what makes air combat exciting. It’s got that gritty, punchy energy of a game that wants to be fun first and realistic second. Perfect balance. And you got ‘em nukes here. Nuclear Option certainly makes you feel their destructive power that instantly vaporizes enemy forces and levels entire cities to the ground.
Tiny Combat Arena
| Release date: | 2022-02-22 |
| Genre: | Simulator |
| Developer: | Why485 |
This one’s a love letter to early 3D flight sims and it’s absolutely charming about it. Tiny Combat Arena looks like something that would have lived on a DOS shareware CD, but underneath that blocky exterior is a surprisingly solid combat flight experience.
The graphics are low-fi on purpose, which makes the explosions pop even more. The dogfights are frantic, and the controls are tight without being fiddly. It’s the kind of game where you don’t need to learn to love it. You just start flying and you’re already having fun. It feels like a game that remembers what it’s like to be a kid drawing jet battles in the margins of your school notebook.
And while it keeps things simple, there’s still depth to the whole thing and enough weapons and mission types to keep you busy. It doesn’t go too crazy with realism. It just says: “Here’s your plane, there’s the enemy, go blow something up.” Sometimes, that’s exactly what you need.
