Im not sure what the point of this post is, but it’s bothering me. Anyone ever bring up the globe map and just sit there looking at it because there are so many location options to fly in, you can’t decide on one? I cant ever seem to commit to starting a flight somewhere. If I do, it is usually at my home airport in MI. So many times I have waited for this sim to start up (30 minutes), and then after spinning the globe around a hundred times, I say screw it and just close the sim and go do other things. I just did it again. I could not decide where to fly, so I just closed out the program.
And always in the back of mind there is always some apprehension, because I know there is going to be some kind of problem or glitch with the sim causing it to act stupidly. It always does. I rarely have a glitch-free flight with this sim.
Idk, probably a stupid post. Apologies, if annoyed by it.
Look into some of the economy mods. There are several - I use OnAir Company. You run an aviation company, starting out with a small single engine airplane. You choose cargo or passenger flights and earn money to buy more capable airplanes. It give you a sense of purpose to your flights and can fly around the country going to places you would never have chosen otherwise (always use live weather, as well).
Having done that since FS2020 came out, I just decided to take a break and fly a Piper Arrow from Barrow, Alaska down to Antarctica. I’ve made it to the southwest U.S. after a couple of days.
Turn on multiplayer label and fly Kyiv, so many people fly there the last couple of days the skies were black. I just sat at then end of the runway yesterday, and watched 50-60 F/A 18’s take off in less then an hour not to mention the ‘liners’ and GA stuff as well.
As for glitches, well thats the charm of the sim, and belive me this sim has a lot of charm! bahahahahah…
Picking a flying goal of some sort is a good way to learn and understand AND have fun. I picked a goal of going around the world west to east. I started in Death Valley USA. I used the C170 and C208. Learn all the systems, landing and tacking off, flying in all sort of weather and navigation. It took me about 160 hours of flying time. About 17,0000 miles. I’ve landed at around 150 different airports. Today I’m flying up the west coast of South America. Actuality today I’m trapped in the Andes Mountains in Peru. I flew my C208 into an airport at AGL 4800 ft in a valley. I’ve cashed four times trying to climb to 12,000 to get over the mountains.
Just download some new free scenery from Flightsim.to and explore it.
Download some free flightplans or bush trips and follow them, or do the built-in bush trips.
Ummm… just open google maps on your phone, shut your eyes and randomly zoom out, spin around, zoom in, open your eyes and use the middle of the screen as your starting point
If I’m not in a multiplayer event, I always let NeoFly generate missions and pick a one that’s going in the direction I want to go. Ever since I began doing that I’ve stopped at so many airports that I would never have even remotely considered. I keep aircraft in areas I’m interested in, and use them as FOBs. I’ve got 787’s flying trans-oceanic routes, H135’s/145’s doing VIP and EMS missions, bush planes and DC6’s in Papua, float planes, etc.
Missions like the vip transport, firefighting, skydiving, search and rescue, banner towing, etc, keep it interesting. Then there is the daily exploration point which will could be anywhere on the planet.
Visit the worldtour.flights website to select and download world wide flight plans to MSFS. It’s community driven by members who upload flight plans to the site and I’ve used it a number of times when I want to venture out beyond my usual US based air routes. Within the application you can select routes by different criteria such as Mountains, Shorelines Landmarks, ect. I downloaded a flight plan that was called the Grand Canyon Tour, loaded the route, flew in VR, and the immersion factor was spectacular. Good luck.
I had a similar problem. I thought an economy mod would help, it just became tedious.
Suddenly i stopped thinking about where i want to go all together. When i fly VFR I pick the first city i see, pick the first plane i see and see where it went. Sometimes the flight would be 15 minutes before i get bored, sometimes i’d fly two hours. That’s just part of it. Sometimes the game glitches out and sometimes it doesnt. I’ve accepted that the game has its own RNG that decides whether the game works in that instance.
For IFR, the VA i’m in is very relaxed. It has pre-generated flights i can choose from so it makes it to pick a destination within my time needs in the moment. If I only got a couple hours, i can pick a place with a flight time of only an hour and a half for example.
My solution to the endless options available is to fly the bush trips. As a dad I only have about 30 minutes at a time. Many bush trip legs are short and the longer ones can be resumed with the auto save. So the only choice I make is which country do I feel like flying today.
I agree, go find one of the career options add-ons. They provide you with a “go here and make money” activiy. I personally use NeoFly.
You basically start with an aircraft and fly missions to make money. When you are at an airport it will give you a list of “missions” to other airports to go fly to based on the capabilities of the aircraft you own.
Earn money, buy aircraft with better capabilities, get more money.
You can start with a C172 and work your way up to flying airline routes if you want.
I have used the program to find airports and have covered 48 of the 50 states and 113 of the 241 countries. Right now I have a mission from Venezuela to Brazil to add that country to my list.
Before the Kodiak came out, I used the DA62 and occasionally the TBM to fly air taxi flights. I’d pick up imaginary vacationers at one airport and fly to a destination like Key West, or just about anywhere in the Caribbean. There were also trips where my imaginary passengers were corporate executives that needed to be in Dallas or gamblers going from San Diego to Las Vegas. Now with the Kodiak (and sometimes the Twotter), I’ll do custom cargo runs, like taking a load of shrimp from Port Aransas on the Texas coast to a restaurant owner in San Antonio.
Hey, OP, you make an excellent point about where to fly. For that very reason, and combined with my overly inquisitive mind, and my love of aviation history, have for very many years of simming focussed on airports with interesting history, stories, locations etc. I usually Google them and research them and look for relevant maps, old pics etc etc. Now with the great MSFS scenery, I am documenting them in YouTube. So if you are interested in that sort of stuff, and if you will permit a bit of self-promotion, look here for one new video per week. You can just focus on each video or extend the area of interest for yourself around what is in the video. Hope this helps - if not, others seem to be coming up with some useful suggestions. BTW, I do not seem to suffer from the long loading times and glitches you mention - strange how these things are so different for each of us! Cheers.
A friend was doing some history surfing about the air war in the South Pacific during WWII. He mentioned a lot of islands that I had never heard of so I hopped into my TBM in FS2020 and did some island hopping. Very educational but it also got me thinking of all the historical places we all hear about but can’t visit due to lack of funds or time so that is what I am going to be doing for the next several weeks. FWIW
I had exactly the same problem as the OP. Until a year ago when I started using FSEconomy where you fly to raise virtual dollars. You can buy an FBO, which runs the fuel and passenger side of an airport or not, as you choose. You can purchase and/or fly many different aircraft types in FSX, P3D, XPlane and MSFS20. The accounting is done autromatically in nicely laid out spreadsheets and it shows your cash, bank balance (attracting interest on the first 1 million v$). You can transfer cash to/from others, buy/sell aircraft and FBO if you wish. You can rent and lease aircraft, get virtual loans, any scenario you choose.
You first join a Forum as per below then ask for an account to be generated. The program is totally free and on the go approx 15 years with its own database run by a Dev and volunteers, same as the Forum.
After a year I now own 3 aircraft, lease 5 aircraft, rent occasional aircraft. Own and run 7 FBO in Turkey, 7 FBO in Madagascar, 3 Seaports in Florida and 2 FBO in the UK. Currently a running balance of v$700,000 and an estimated value of v$6,000,000 to v$7,000,000 with all assets. Have bought and sold millions of assets on the FSEconomy Market Place and travelled in many countries. Historically flown NZ to Madagascar and the UK. Several times the old WWII route from the USA via Canada, Greenland, Iceland to the UK in a light plane.
