I never know where I want to fly, mainly because I don’t have more than 30min/day available (2 babies ) and I want to fly everywhere to discover the planet.
So I often see myself in front of the World Map and spend a lot of time choosing where to go!
I did a world tour for 9 months and frankly I made it shorter than I intended to (more than 400 legs on all continents) because I figured out I didn’t always want to start from where I landed last time. Some days you want to do a night liner flight from your hometown, the day after that you feel like you would do some aerobatics between Tokyo skyscrapers listening to Jumpseat Media player.
A feature like RandomFlightGenerator would be a great addition to the core sim…
Please take a look at my (free) flight planner. It can generate short or long random flights by country or US state, can let you systematically visit each of the world’s capitals, and has other ways to generate short flights. You can also generate a flight plan from scratch to visit most any geographical or man-made site from the nearest airport. There is a User’s Guide and an (out of date) video guide.
Great question. I practice landings on an airport nearby.
In most other cases, this forum plays a role for me. Most times I’m on the forum before I enter MSFS. I encounter some nice screenshot… or a question about something… then fly there to check it out myself. When there is no location, I put a personal message to ask coords
Sometimes the daily news provides me with places… I see an image online, check it out…
I tend to do 2-3 hour flights to a new destination in the C152, then when I get there I spend a few flights just staying local and taking in the sights.
When I’ve seen all that I want to I’ll do another 2-3 hour flight somewhere new.
I started at EGNM Leeds Bradford in the UK and so far I’ve got to southern Italy flying this way.
I love taking in as much as I can of the local areas before moving on to pastures new.
I’m planning on getting around the world. I’m in no rush though.
You asked this question at AVSIM, so I’ll post my opinion here as well.
There are some very nice 3rd Party tools available such as Skypark, NeoFly, FSE just to name a few for GA. OnAir, Airhauler or the many Virtual Airlines for Jets.
However, those are all external, some come with additional cost and are do not fully integrate with the Sim, it’s specific airplanes or sceneries.
I hope Microsoft will look into this. it may be a long way to go considering the current state of the Logbook. how little attention they put into this doesn’t give too much hope.…
For unknown reasons there does not seem to be a huge voice for such features. But not only for beginners there should be some purpose, guidance and reward.
The world is big, Not everybody knows what, when, why and where to fly.
The discovery flights and activities are a good start. I hope latest with further expansions such as helicopters, a career mode will make it into the Sim.
Tree distance seems to be much more important than a purpose to fly…
I Plan to start Streaming soon so my flights are the route I plan to stream. Which will be starting at my Home Airport and flying the Gulf Coast, up the East Coast, across the Northern Border, down the Pacific Coast and Finally across the Southern Border to my Home Airport (KIKG). Mine are basicly based on future Streaming Ideas that I am planning.
30 minutes for flying… ouch. That gets my Airbus from the ramp to the runway Flying around the world in 30 minute flights, that’s gotta hurt!
I have different approaches:
Open Skyvector.com and pick any airport that catches my attention (could be for any reason); then select any other airport within my available flying time and start planning
Fly a tried and true routes from and to large international airports (KLAX, KSFO, KDEN, KORD, KJFK, …)
Fly a trip a friend is doing in real-time (and follow it through flightradar); recently flew a trip to Berlin a friend was doing, the exact SID/STAR/Approach, and landed within a few minutes of the actual plane… that’s just cool
Fly my route to work and dream about how much more efficient that would be
Revisit places I’ve been in real life (it’s weird ánd cool to recognize a place)
Look up difficult/weird approaches and (try to) fly them
Plan a flight in a country/countries I wouldn’t actually want to be in
Do some random island hopping in the oceans (hurry up because sea level increase will swallow them all)
Find real-world storms and fly through them (MSFS seems pretty forgiving in that regard)
Look up aviation incidents where a human error was made (or similar), and then fly the route or environment where they happened to learn about why and how mistakes were made; I did https://youtu.be/K5vIECqSsSc a few days ago (not a human error, ‘just’ a very difficult situation)
I could go on and on. I only feel limited by time really
MSFS is not the best simulation it could be (getting there, some time in the future), but it is definitely thé best world explorer sim.
I recently discovered NeoFly and am using that most days for my flight planning. It is free and it is excellent in my opinion. Other than that I often plan my flights before to suitthe aircraft I want to fly in.
This is how I do it as well. Pick a random start location then choose an arrival airstrip the correct flight time away I have available, then off I go. I might add in a POI or flight along something interesting but that’s it.
For my longer flights I’m currently making my way east low level along interstate 80. Cut up the legs into hour long jaunts. About half way through. The change in scenery is breathtaking.
Another way I find alot of places to depart from is to keep an eye on the Group Flight Streamers Groups that I belong to on Discord. Although I am not really comfortable due to my lack of skill to join the flights as yet, I do from time to time go to a location they are flying in at a later date. I even keep a journal of the places complete with airport designations for future use.
I usually make up a scenario like an air taxi or small charter. For instance, load up the Caravan with a full passenger load and make a gambling charter run from Sacramento to Reno. Or you’re at a café on Antigua and you meet a couple of party people lamenting about how there’s the party of the decade over at the Sunset Bar and Grill tonight, but they’re stuck here with no way to go - and you just happen to have your DA62 parked over at VC Bird.
I often open up Windy to check out prevailing winds and the cloud base, as I enjoy daytime VFR more than anything else. I don’t always pick a flight plan based on that information, but if there is weather involved it helps me pick the correct “weather capable” aircraft to fly. Don’t want to be in a 152 in IMC…
i like to fly short, VFR flights mostly between upgraded (non default) airfields, mostly regional within the western States of North America.
There are exceptions - I love Scotland, England near the Cliffs, and Norway.
I fly the landing challenges just to get a look at other parts of the world to see what’s new and often add new airstrips based on those findings.
This sim seems to perform best (at least for me) when I use GA planes on these 30-60nm regional flights
I like to fly flights that I’ve photographed, I have a database of the shots I’ve got that have been flown by aircraft in my hangar (pretty much all A20N at the moment) and use a random number generator to determine which one of them I fly.
My technique changes over time I guess but right now what I find myself doing is basically like little bush trips. I’m flying each and every airport and airstrip in Denmark right now. Started off out of Kastrup Copenhagen and have flown short hops across the map trying to visit every airfield big or small along the way. It’s a small country, the distances aren’t huge and you can get in a couple of short flights when you have limited time.
You can use LittleNavMap or Volanta to track progress - or just check your MSFS2020 logbook to see what field you were at last, chose that as your origin and set the next nearest field as destination and get airborne.
) and I want to fly everywhere to discover the planet.
Flying around the world in 30 minute flights, that’s gotta hurt!