Back when I started MSFS I used to choose a location in the world I wanted to go, a local airline that flies the A320 (for the Fenix) and have a go. US, Europe. Asia, Australia, everywhere.
Then I bought my first payware airport, and then my second etc, and I realised how much better the immersion was on these. It is beyond unbelievable how good these payware airports look nowadays.
So I decided to stick to a region (the US) to maximize the no. of flights I could do between these airports, filling the gaps with freeware from flightsim.to.
Now I miss exploring elsewhere. Luckily freeware is usually decent, but it’s not as high quality as most payware and definitely not to be found for all corners of the world.
I’m curious how other’s feel about this. On the one hand flying KSFO-KLAS is absolutely stunning with the corresponding payware, on the other hand I miss flying elsewhere because default airports absolutely stink imo.
Try bush piloting for a while. There’s an awful lot of remote airstrips out there that will challenge your skills and reward you with natural beauty.
Yeah I hear what you’re saying. Recently I’ve been buying more scenery (not just airports but more wider spread stuff too) but it’s impossible to get everything unless you’ve got more money than you know what to do with.
I’ve also stopped buying scenery until I know it will work fine in 2024. It’s not all bad though… I still have tons to do and not enough time so
I have over 500 airports from various parts of the World, purchased and downloaded from Flightsim.to. I rarely use autogenerated airports. When I do it’s usually by mistake, when I forget to enable a handcrafted version before launching the game.
I’m the opposite. I have mostly stopped buying custom airports because I realized I just don’t care most of the time and too many of them kill my FPS. Plus, the world is so big, there’s only a bare handful I visit more than a handful of times. How much to I want to pay for each time I land? Kinda comes down to that.
One example stands out. During the summer sale (I think?) I picked up the air force base near Las Vegas. It’s well done. I love it! It has the Thunderbirds there. Still, I’ve been there 2 or maybe 3 times max in all that time.
It’s not just boring, they are useless. Taxiways and parking spots are wrong and don’t match Navigraph charts. Also apron lighting is not existent, so when you land or depart at night everything is dark like the airport is abandoned.
Unfortunately, the default, non-Gaya etc airports are so bad, I learned how to create scenery to fix the airports I fly into (or add the non-existent ones). It got to the point the only flying I was doing was to check out the airports I was developing to figure out what else needed to be done…
sigh.
I think I’ve got 15 or so airports in various states of repair, on top of the 15 I’ve already released, maybe more.
So, yeah, I can’t stand flying from the default airports. The super tall hangars (60 - 80 ft tall t-hangars for instance), the taxi lights in the middle of aprons, the totally wrong taxi path labels, etc., etc., just kill me.
I hope everybody reading this helps push for better training of the AI that renders airports as well as more robust and user-friendly World Hub tools to fine-tune the things that are incorrect. The taxiway thing is going to be tough without integrating a third-party database as that info isn’t stored anywhere readily available to the public.
As for the hangars, runway markings and lighting, taxiway lights - these could all be improved with a little expertise in the “ear” of the AI that scrapes it. Some of it seems like it is really low hanging fruit and it just hasn’t been publicly acknowledged that it’s even a problem.
How hard would it be to limit hangar height? To create a vegetation exclusion zone off the end of a runway? To exclude taxiway edge lights from any selected pavement (apron)? To standardize runway end lights so half of them aren’t in-pavement? To correct the 500’ markers and runway number designators for US airports? The latter are so tiny it’s almost laughable (and super immersion-breaking).
I honestly can’t imagine any of these things are that difficult to implement, but without acknowledgement, it seems to be shrugged off as unimportant, with focus on the large airfields. Folks need to understand that in the US, General Aviation happens mostly at the several thousand mid to small sized airports. And a couple small QoL fixes will make them feel like the home they are to so many of us, rather than a sterile, scaled-down international airport in Europe (and I mean no disrespect to Europe when I say that - it’s just different on this side of the pond and stands out like a sore thumb if you’re used to the US stylings).
I lost count of how many times I landed at a custom airport only to realize, to my horror, that I forgot to install it and I’m at defaultland. The sole sight of the typical default building makes me nervous.
I agree with the OP that I like to fly all over the world and discover new places. I also can’t stand default airports. Therefore I’ve bought a lot of airports and downloaded a lot of the better freeware ones.
Apart from Africa, Russia, and China, I have airports all over the world and can fly many routes, short and medium haul in my Airbus.
I try not to buy airports that are very close together, it’s more a case of trying to fill holes in the map. Of course there are some areas that are quite densely packed.
I don’t buy lots of planes because I enjoy getting flying the same ones so I can get very proficient at them. I get annoyed at myself if I suck, which is near inevitable if always flying different birds. As a result the money goes more on scenery, world, and airport upgrades.
Yeah I too used to love flying all sorts of random places in the world, even using an online random flight generator for ideas. But then I few into a couple of the world update airports before a marketplace sale then started me on the slippery slope of buying a marketplace airport. I’m on XBox where 3rd party airports are a very expensive hobby so I don’t own many but it has led me to get into the habit of flying between the same airports all the time
While default airports are invariably horrible, the biggest issue for me is that you just can’t fly into them at night. Taxiway and gate lighting needs to be significantly improved. There’s an airport light enhancement mod in marketplace by 4simmers I think it is which makes runway lights look absolutely amazing and I think also seemed to add lights around airport buildings that helped a lot but as soon as you got to an airport with more than one runway it was an absolute stutter-fest
I’m doing a Globetrotter tour for my VA which involves landing in every country in the world. I’m currently working on the Africa portion and I second “Africa To Go” as a great addition
i have to say i can relate to this. I find myself (without wanting to) flying more and more from one star airport to another one. And if none are available, i choose a different area. Maybe 2024 will deliver improvements on the default autogen airports?
