Superb old engineering simulation games, now open source and easy to install on linux

Long before VR headsets were consumer products, hardcore flight and racing simulation games conjured up intense experience in realistic 3D worlds. Back then, the spell was cast with realistic physics modeling that fused the driver’s reflexes with a vehicles??? simulated response. According to one reviewer, winning against human and AI competition in these challenging environments was as hard as learning to play the violin, and just as rewarding. How best to use these potent sims? They can provide the experience of team sports if you play with your friends while exercising on a treadmill or exercise bike. The only hardware you need is a joystick or, better yet, a flight yoke, which keeps your legs free to exercise even with a driving game. Like any other VR experience, it isn’t for everyone. These hardcore games required dedicated study, and were most popular with motorsports enthusiasts, engineers and technical professionals. Over the years dedicated fans have added gigabytes of user-generated content to these games and publishers have made free open source versions available. Thus these sims have aged like a fine wine. But dozens of hard-to-find patches make the games hard to install, documentation is spotty, and compatibility with modern versions of Microsoft Windows is not guaranteed. Fortunately, the excellent Windows compatibility layer for linux, called ???wine???, provides a solution. Installation on linux can be done once, then that installation can be cloned on other machines by simply copying over and unpacking a single tar file! To try out three of the best old hardcore simulation games on linux, download esports-for-engineers.tar.gz. from github at this link: https://github.com/bencaddigan/esports-for-engineers. This tar file was tested with Ubuntu 18.04 LTS linux and wine 4.0. The games included are Grand Prix Legends (free demo version), Mig Alley (open source) and Free Falcon (open source). All three games are 20 years old, and have been improved over the years by dozens of community-developed add-ons.