Oh, hello! Here is my Top ten Simulation games.
On this thread, you can make your own top tens of simulation too. Enjoy! :)

10.RollerCoaster Tycoon 3- Not as much scenarios but can be a blast!
9.Cities XL 2012- Great graphics and a great game.
8.Railroad Tycoon 2- Awesome game, not lot of campaign but a heck of a lot of scenarios!
7.SimCity 3000-Fun, Great graphics, and addicting!
6.Transport Tycoon- A very fun game with nice graphics
5.SimCity 2000 SE- Awesome Urban Renewal Kit, Fun, great music, and addicting!
4.RollerCoaster Tycoon 2 Triple Thrill Pack- Fun, nice graphics, and challenging scenarios.
3.SimCity 4-Fun, lots of additions, also very addicting
2.OpenTTD-Like the first TTD, it's fun, lots of good data to download, and Multiplayer!
Drumroll please....
1.RollerCoaster Tycoon Deluxe!- Fun, lots of fun scenarios, huge replay value (like the others RCTs), and very addicting!

Enjoy? COMMENT!

Well there's construction/managment sims and then there are vehicle sims, which can further be subdivided into racing and other vehicle sims (mecha, space, flight, etc)

For construction/management my favourites are RollerCoaster Tycoon and SimCity 2000.

For pilot sims, the only ones's I've played are MechWarrior 2, Freespace, TIE Fighter, and X-Wing, and I love them all. I recently bought the Independence War games here on GOG, and I plan to get the Freespace games eventually as well.

Oh! How could I forget? Civilization and all the other games!
Bonuses (equally good):

1. Caesar 3
2.Independence war
3.Civilization (any)

10.Harvest Moon series
9. The Guild
8. The Guild
7. The Guild
6. The Guild
5. The Guild
4. The Guild
3. The Guild
2. The Guild
1. The Guild

SimCity and Rollercoaster Tycoon.

Infantry combat: Arma 2.
Flight: X-Plane.

I can agree with that. Also FSX if you've got the addons and stuff.

I'm not much of a simulator gamer; I like vehicle simulators (IL-2, Gran Turismo), but even then I'm held back by the rubbish hardware I have access to. Sure I would like a proper HOTAS controller and a racing wheel, but those things cost a fortune and I'm not sure if I can convince myself they are worth the price.

Gran Turismo falls under more of the racing category.

The developers claim it's a racing simulator. I'm going to take their word for it since the games are so much more realistic than any other racers I have played so far.

I'd say.

I never owned a Playstation, but I did play Gran Turismo a lot at a friend's house back in the day. On the arcade-simulation continuum, Gran Turismo is definitely near the simulation end.

Just compare Gran Turismo to Burnout, the difference is like that of Independence War vs Rogue Squadron. Both Independence War and Rogue Squadron are space flight combat games, but one is a simulator and the other is an arcade-style action game.

I can't speak for racing wheels, but if you play flightsims, get a HOTAS and rudder pedals and don't look back. Going from my little Saitek Cyborg to an X52 Pro was like going from catching rats in dumpsters to being fed filet mignon and highballs by playboy bunnies. Well. So I imagine. Big big big step up, anyway.

I can't plug my Quickshot Skymaster into my computer anymore so I recently bought a Thrustmaster T.16000m. It's a great joystick with magnetic hall sensors. HOTAS is overkill for me, especially considering that the flight/space/mech simluation genre has been dead for over a decade...

BTW, does anyone else find it sad that only mech simulation games in the past decade were not even released for PC? Those Steel Batallion games would worked very well with the controls available for PC. Of course, a PC version of that [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Steel_Battalion_controllers.jpg]awesome controller [/url]would have been nice as well.