x-plane rules. u really need a joystick tho, and some knowledge of actual flight is required. although u can still just cruise and design fantasy planes. (any real air or space craft - X-plane now is compatibile with earth, mars, and all the space in between - can be modeled to 95% flight characteristic accuracy). x-plane.com is actually having a half frice sale for the soon-to-be-discontinued version 7 so act fast gryph. actually i'm pretty pissed because xplane 7 has a massive compatibility error with my graphics card (jaton nvidia geforce fx5600x-256). the damn program crashes on startup, and because the entire thing is programmed by 1 dude, tech support is sporadic at best. still, xplane rules. I don't have any flight knowledge...just that you're supposed to get in the plane, not on the plane. I basically just wanted to design fantasy planes with I don't have much aerodynamic information. And I don't have a joystick...well actually I have a crappy OLD 1998 2-button joystick that might still work...