I’ve been flying in this sim since Christmas 2020 so it’s coming up on 2 years. It’s been an amazing journey. I most enjoy flying the GA aircraft. For these 2 years it’s been a fun journey learning flying, seeing the world, and becoming proficient with all the equipment in each type of aircraft. I’m an engineer and can spend hours just learning what one instrument does and mastering how to use it properly. I think I’m pretty good right now. All the different varieties of aircraft and all the different systems have kept me busy.
For the last week I’ve been flying the helicopters. I’m loving them and notice they’re changing what I love to do in the sim. I’m enjoying learning this style of flying like before but what I’m also noticing is I’m loving the sight-seeing aspect of the sim much more.
In GA aircraft I fly between cities and enjoy the terrain. I like to fly through mountains and along coastlines and enjoy the beauty of the world. But in helicopters I’m having fun flying in just one city. I can zip around a town, hover to take in the view or focus on an interesting aspect of the city, and then move on to the next thing close-by. It’s a totally different thing flying in one city and looking deeply at the buildings and layout of the cities. Or study how the rivers and roadways flow throughout the landscape.
So I’m surprised at how much I’m loving the helicopters. It’s really changed how I fly and what I do while flying. I know I’ve got lots of new things about helicopter flying to learn but I also know I have lots of cities to revisit and will look at them in a different manner than before. I’m happy for this unexpected change and thought I’d share my excitement with everyone.
Well said, me too. It’s made me more closely explore some of the enhanced city packs I bought at a slower pace (Singapore, Dubai, Cape Town) and like you said just revisiting cities (especially the newer PG locations) but seeing them from a different perspective while learning to better control the choppers is a lot of fun.
If you’re on PC and your system can handle it, I recommend the HPG H145 and Action Pack. It’s a bit pricey but the missions it gives opens up yet another way to play. You’re visiting cities but really have to be aware of your surroundings as you do the missions, then return to actual helipads at nearby hospitals etc, and it takes you to places you may never have gone on your own terms. There is a ton of extra free content available (for PC) that adds even more detail to this stuff too.
I’ve been putting a lot of hours into the Cabri since it came out and think it’s really very nice indeed.
If you are on PC you might be interested in my Top Airports thread, as I’ve recently added a bunch of helicopter related stuff there. Let me know if you can’t find it and I’ll drop a link
If you want a real challenge, the Flyinside Bell 47 heli will test and tax your skills. I also have the H145 and Action Pack and thoroughly recommend them. Just yesterday, I flew the maintenance crew from EGPD (Dyce, Aberdeen) out to the Kittwake Platform in the North Sea. Fun…
Totally agree. The first thing I did (after watching a bunch of YouTube videos of real helicopter flying and practicing many, many lift-off / set-downs) was to fly around a city I know very well, finding and landing at all the hospitals with helipads.
EXACTLY, and I have to say, NOW I see the benefit off Photogrammetry. Its absolute insane the view 500’ and above, AND you can follow the heli charts in the big american cities with total fidelity. I am abolutely astonished.
Nothing beats a helicopter for the low and slow sightseeing!
Especially with some of the nice add ons of all kinds, landmarks, city packs, vessels, etc. on top of the photogrammetry, which is better in some places than others, but I always keep it on myself.
I have been augmenting my flying with also watching youtube travel videos about places where I fly.
I’m at 786 logged hours as of today and feel like I’ve learned so much about the world, how big it is where things are, and enjoying the sights as I see and learn more about the world.
I remember Jorg mentioned about what a lot of people are doing in flight sim is a new kind of tourism, and I would say that accurately describes what I’ve been doing and enjoying, a new kind of tourism.
Do you know about Bushtalk Radio? I use it often for a similar purpose. If you don’t know about it, it’s a community project where people bookmark famous landmarks all over the world. You can add this database in your community folder, then when you fly near a POI it will read wikipedia type information to you about that POI. It’s pretty cool. It’s hard to use in VR because it runs through a website, so you have to find a way to have acess to the web page while flying. I bring a desktop window with me or just periodically peek under my headset.
Just tonight on a TV show the actors were in Santorini Greece. My wife proudly stated she’d been there. I replied I’d been there also. She asked when and I said “last night in the sim”! She laughed at me but there is something to it
Totally agree with you about enjoying the sight-seeing. I also like hovering near a busy airport with FSLTL - FS Live Traffic Liveries to watch airport activities while doing something else on another monitor.
Anyone knows if Asobo have in plans to introduce some kind of effects? It seems quite artificially when you take off from the grass and not a single blade of grass moves.
Hi. I tried joining and whilst I am a member of 6 groups, when I tried to join yours I am directed to the App Store on my iPhone and it won’t join. Otherwise I would be interested
Edit: It’s ok I uninstalled and the installed again so joined
That’s a good point. I hope to one day see grass, trees, smoke etc. affected by wind, prop wash, and rotor wash.
Does anyone know MSFS’s plan for photogrammetry? I mean, will it eventually cover the whole world or is it only invisioned as an enhancement to certain places?
What we need now is a lot more helipads. In most major cities I see a lot of H markings on buildings, some of them are landable but others are not. It would be nice to have a lot more of them that were landable and showed up in the sim as helipads so you could spawn on them. Wish the vendors of the landmarks and city packs would update them with some new helipads, that would make the sight seeing even more fun. I’ve picked up lots of helipads from flightsim.to and some payware like the IniBuilds Hooper Heliport in LA which is nice, but still we need a lot more of them.
