This morning I was mid-flight from CYVR to CYEG for Virtual Air Canada in a CRJ9 (which I love), and then just realized what a great time to be a flight sim lover. Beyond ATC giving instructions, ATC-Chatter babbling away in the background, Navigraph charts incredible visuals outside the window, a ground crew waiting for you ate the arrival gate and on and on.
Of course there are problems, bugs, annoyances but coming from the FSX days, I’m still in awe in what home flight sims have to offer. The only thing missing for me personally, right now, is VR. I had 3 great years with the HP Reverb but it died suddenly.
In the meantime, I am simply loving all of this.
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Absolutely agree,
I think with all the expectations out there, we sometimes forget what we are getting here. I started back with FS2002 and knowing where we are coming from and what we are looking at now software- and hardware wise and that all of that would have required a multi-million Sim Platform 20 years back.
I just looked at a FS2004 Screenshot yesterday and thinking about what we were considering high end state of the art back than makes me really think that sometimes we don’t appreciate enough what we get into our hands today and what amazing times this are for simmers like us.
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I’m sometimes critical of the nitpickers, but I understand that they are in part responsible for the endless pursuit of perfection that is helping turn the sim into what we have today, and in the future.
I say “in part” because, like you I appreciate all the hard work and passion the developers put into this project, and sometimes I don’t think they get enough credit for it.
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That’s partly due to the world we live in where almost everything can be had instantly, 2 day free shipping, streaming whole seasons of shows back go back etc. So when a dev team like PMDG says it’ll be a year or more to release a product people aren’t used to waiting.
But yes I do like to take screenshots and generally look around. As someone who flies irl it’s amazing how close the sim gets sometimes. There will always be issues and always people who aren’t happy but I love to fly around in golden hour with 3rd party aircraft and scenery and just appreciate how good the sim can look
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I agree with this sentiment. I do low level GA flights almost exclusively and I am hugely enjoying the current state of the sim. Yes, there are some minor irritations, but by and large the graphic quality (in 4K on a 32" monitor with a mix of ultra & high settings) while flying all over the world continues to take my breath away.
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For the first few months, I constantly displayed the FPS panel in developer mode and got frustrated trying to achieve perfect performance, hunting down those annoying little stutters.
I almost forgot to do what MSFS is all about: flying and enjoying the experience.
But for the past few weeks, I’ve deliberately chosen not to display the FPS panel, and it’s made all the difference: instead of obsessing over green, yellow, and red bars and stressful numbers, I just fly, have fun, and enjoy myself.
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I started with the very first version of Flight Sim. And I look at what we have now in awe. I love to take long flights over new scenery area’s I have only heard of. Really helps in understanding the real geography of our world.
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Yeah, I like to go on long, multi-hop trips, never in airliners. I do a lot of low-level GA flying, but right now (as in, as I type this) I am flying (or rather, the autopilot is flying) a Citation Longitude. I’m in Brazil now, which is big enough that it makes sense to use jets to get from city to city.
When I do this, I like to pretend I’m really flying there. I dress my avatar up appropriately for the weather, for example, and I read up on the places I’m flying to, on Wikivoyage, etc. I’ll look up POIs and such on Wikipedia, so that I understand what I’m seeing, and once I arrive at a place I take “local transportation” (i.e. typically a helicopter or the Got Friends Astro One) to visit the sites, where I take pictures (including “selfies” with my avatar in front of the POI. I’ve got quite the photo album now of my travels. I will sometimes even go as far as to cook food appropriate to where I’m flying (I’m something of a foodie as well)–so for example next week I’m going to fix feijoada, because I’m in Brazil (and because it’s yummy). I’ve done brats and kraut in Germany, ratatouille in France, curry in India, etc.
I think that if I had a kid whom I was homeschooling, and who was interested in flight simulation, I’d teach them geography this way–the only better way to learn about the world would be to do it in real life, and this is much more affordable!
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WOW, this is next level! Great to see someone getting this much enjoyment out of the sim while using it to this extent. Respect to you.