How do YOU use the sim?

FSX I used everything, double engine props, Learjet, CRJ, airliners, small GA, taildraggers, etc. This sim so far I am sticking mostly with single engine GA aircraft and flying VFR and marginal. Until autopilots and avionics are fixed, IFR, ATC, AI Aircraft, and airliners, etc. - I will continue to fly GA. One day when this is fixed, optimized, and I increase my hardware I will be back flying commercial airliners on 2-3 hour flights IFR. I like to fly familiar places and sometimes visit new places. I fly short hops mostly but as a real-world pilot I’d like to get back into VATSIM or PilotsEdge/Pilot2ATC or one of those add-ons where you can use voice recognition to talk to ATC with real world chatter in the background for immersion. I currently use TrackIR until VR is implemented.

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I use the sim to practice various departures and approaches into airports that I will be flying to for the first time.

Trying to find a good procedure that helps reduce the workload.

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The add on is really good by the way. Some tiny “rectangular” textures in the water if you catch the wrong angle, but otherwise great

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I fly GA as realistic as possible, started by practicing circuits etc.
Now I use OnAir, its a great way to see places you wouldn’t normally think about and pushes your limits, Yesterday for example I had a long cargo run to do, Kracow to Instanbul, got to see the night fall over some gorgeous mountains in Romania, ran out of daylight so the next leg into Greece was pitch black though a thunderstorm, very challenging but great fun. It all makes so much more sense in MFS than in Xplane for example, purely down to the amazing scenery you can stumble across.

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I bought 3 months of OnAir Airline Manager after a positive experience in the trail version. I have really been enjoying it and there is much to learn. Luckily since you start with Cessnas and work your way up to bigger planes I have progressed to any broken planes in the sim yet. I have been playing for about a month and just bought my first King Air. The program is new so there aren’t a lot of tutorials that explain the nitty gritty but it gives you purpose when flying. It also works in conjunction with the sim and VATSIM. Between all three you feel like a real life cargo pilot.

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Sounds like you are at a similar point to me, I just purchased my grand caravan last week, was a bit ratty with 20k hours on the clock and needed collecting from France but she was Cheap!

I played with VATSIM a couple of years back on Xplane, never really got into it, but working it in conjunction is a great idea, maybe ill have a look into it.

I also agree there is a lot of learning by your mistakes, I thought it looked easy to rent an airliner and pilot to do a job with a massive payoff, didnt realise they wanted 1,800,000 deposit on the thing!

Also didnt realise about ratings and found myself trying to do my Turboprop rating from a very short gravel airstrip, managed it though (sort of)

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VATSIM is better than ever in my opinion for this sim. The east coast is constantly on, even into the early hours. Also you don’t need FSUIP or whatever those programs where that interfaced with the sim. Just use Vpilot and it cuts down on open programs. Last night I was trying to figure stuff out for so long on both OnAir and my new KingAir that I never left the ground lol.

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I’d put my self in the Casual Simmer category. Historically, I’ve flew FSX and P3D, mostly in tubeliners (PMDG 73x/74x/77x, FSLabs A32x, etc.) I never used VATSIM because I want to fly A to B at my own pace. (i.e. autopilot and put on a movie for inflight entertainment at FL360) Even with that statement though, I do take the time to read the manuals on procedures and aircraft specs and manuals of each plane I fly. Tldr: Casual in some ways and simmer in other ways.

With MSFS, I am waiting on proper study level aircrafts like everyone else. Unlike P3D, i don’t see myself having to buy a ton of sceneries anymore although they do look nice and are tempting; it’s a habit from P3D. I also started FSEconomy (got my account set up before the big rush/crash) so I’ve been doing a lot of GA flying. My most used planes at the moment (in order) have been TBM, 172, and CJ4. I few the A320 and 787 once each and said, I’ll wait for the payware and/or the community add-on (great job to Flybywiresim and other contributors, keep it up and make it known that payware companies got competition now!)

I’d also like to take this moment to say keep up the great work you are doing Asobo. I know there are a lot of criticisms out there at the moment but you guys are doing what I think a good job to fix the issues at hand. I am looking forward to all the future development you guys will be doing and am hoping this sim will last even longer than FSX did (until the matrix becomes IRL or something).

Thanks for reading and have a fantastic day/week/month/year !

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I like the flight planning and execution aspect. I’ve developed a little role playing theme that I’ve stuck to since leaving alpha/beta:

I first did all the training flights in the area of KSEZ, then flew the 152 to Vegas where I’m currently living. Then I had the idea to fly across the country ‘in the same aircraft’ to the northeast where I grew up.

Each flight was planned and flown as I would in real life (VFR/IFR) only going for about 2 hours each leg because IRL I would probably want to pee outside the confines of a Gatorade bottle. I’ll land at an airport, then my next flight will always start at that airport I just landed at. If I want to go somewhere, gotta physically get my sim plane to it! This was really engaging with the 152 due to the lack of an autopilot and having to tune and fly VORs entirely by hand.

I set my first major destination was the airport I got my first flying lessons and switched to the 172, which was the airframe I first learned on. I’ve been flying the 172 around the northeast now, just flying into and out of airports near stuff I’ve visited our wanted to see.

My next goal is to travel the length of I95 down to Miami, then head back west, probably upgrading to the Bonanza when I get back to Vegas.

So far the Hobbs on the 152 is in the neighborhood of 26 hours, and almost 10 now on the 172. Curious to see what the profile page unlocks when I hit 50 flight hours.

One thing I don’t attempt to use is realistic ATC like VATSIM. I don’t want to sit at my computer talking to other people and doing everything 100% by the book. Plus it’s the only time I’d get to fly while consuming adult beverages.

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Basically airlining and a bit GA’ing for sightseeing.

Trying to follow real-world connections and have matching liveries for the flight. Trying to follow all the procedures (A32nx comes in reeeeally handy).

And then there’s always that one guy attempting to land on the tailwind runway when I’m spooling up my engines. Probably switching back to IVAO because of that. Downside of virtual networks is lack of general traffic imo.

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Flying GA out of KGAS to KCRW and KHTS and back and forth using manual cache for scenery. Looking to getting into scenery editing as the bridges are inaccurate, but not complaining. This is the FIRST sim that I can accurately fly VFR and know what the hell I’m doing lol. Point Pleasant Wv is my hometown and I love seeing a mostly accurate representation of land features… now I wonder, will the Mothman pay a visit during a midnight flight? :thinking:

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what I LOVE to do, is to visit new places, like everyone, but with a little twist. I search youtube for the towns I want to visit, I watch them to learn something about them, then I fly a 1-hour leg to that town, do some flyovers and then land. The next fly I would go from that Town to the next.
For example, 4 days ago I found a little town called Santa Clarita, in California. I found a nice youtube video from a guy explaining how good the town is, from the top of a little hill where you could see everything. When I started the sim and went there, it was like I knew that town, like it was my own town. Now I feel like I know a little bit more about Santa Clarita, California.

I am developing my Own airport right now, the game doesn’t work at all so I prefer to keep myself productive somehow. I started working on Sandspit, Canada.

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serious gamer / casual simmer but i’m getting there very very slowly.

only planes i’ve been flying in this game so far have been the 152, 172 and the tbm 903 if i remeber correctly. the fun part for me at the moment is to ask myself and sometimes others most likely stupid questions like those here because there is just way too much i don’t get yet.

so i basically plan a flight via simbrief and a little help from littlenavmap to get from EDDH to EDDM, get all of my navigraph charts ready to use, get used to the AMLU9G procedure and let the AP take over cause it is way better doing the job than me, hahaha.

in between, i then again start looking at the EXUSI 4A / LANDU 26 transition (is it even called a transition?) and very well look forward to that part from LANDU to DM 429 because i think it

looks kinda funny (weird humor of me, i guess).

in the meantime and while hector is doing the usual ATC chatters i get back to this youtube playlist because after having watched most of p gatcombs videos multiple times by now, i thought it might be wise to just get back to way more basics.

apart from that i’ve been evaluating proper and additional flight sim equipment, spend money left and right and try to get my head around of what the heck am i even supposed to do to get that ILS procedure to EDDM right, hahaha.

this is the flight plan i’m using most of my time at the moment.

IFR Hamburg (EDDH) to Munich (EDDM).pln (13,0 KB)

so, to cut a long story short: i use the game to have fun and get my head free for some time. it works so far pretty good.

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Casual simmer. GA low and slow in the 172 mostly. I had always flown with FSE back in FS9/X times. I had purchased an airplane and 1 month after I last flown they put the maintenance stuff in and it depleted me to nothing and the system sold my aircraft so I’m starting over.

I have my 172 and started at my home airport. From there I start today where I left off yesterday. If I want to explore the Grand Canyon, I have to fly over there from the east coast US where I am currently. I am heading to DC following some bicycle trips I’ve taken to see the little towns I’ve ridden the bicycle through. Then I’m heading down the coast to the Keys and will fly cross country to the west coast. My flights are usually 30 to 60 minutes and I pick up a passenger or 2 or a small load of cargo in FSE while I fly and enjoy the sites.

The only time I deviate from starting where my last flight ended is with group flights where I’ll usually join in with the 152 or Savage Cub.

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hi, ga only, most of flights vl-3 free flight dawn dusk, some time day or night, almost all the time check parking place for start from cold and dark, without any planes or and arriving place, use nearest gps options and flight to the next after next after next, prefer not concrete short strips/field, islands, mainland, place where lived, where never was, in any way obviously not long range airliners, i can count on the fingers of one hand how many times i flew airliners in sims from 1996… waiting a2a and vrs fighters, will glad to flight something like lancair legacy too, but prefer p-51 in p3d v4 i had one military and another with gtn 650 both my favorites without questions and compromises

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i’ve played some sort of flight sim since the late 90’s up until MS FS X.

i’m more of a casual simmer. all those years of simming, and i’ve flown a jumbo jet maybe once (probably crashed it too, lol). previous iterations of ms flight sim, i would use the Learjet.
this version though, i wanted to go the prop route, and found the King Air to be best for what i want to accomplish. most of my flights are “continuous”, are parking to parking, and done with live everything, meaning wherever i just landed, that’s where i’m departing from next time. vast majority of times it’s strictly VFR with no flight plan, just a general idea of where i want to go or what direction i want to go, and then go from there once inflight. depending on location and time of day, that VFR flight may be a low altitude sightseeing trip (1-2k feet) or may be a 4 hour flight with a cruising altitude of 28k feet, or maybe a combination of both.

there’s also times where i’m in a gamer type of mood. that means low high speed passes at local airports, crazy landing attempts/angles, aerial acrobatics, and fun, white knuckle flying down 7th avenue in Manhattan between the skyscrapers.

and, for the first time, went on a group trip yesterday down to machu pichu. was awesome, but unfortunately something came up and i had to leave before our first landing and only after 1/2 hour. will definitely do it again though, was really cool being up in the air with around two dozen other planes.

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I like your idea, GordonGreig!

So, I snooped around “for a minute” and found Trip Happy. I will try and use this website (free) and will report back if it works out or has any issues. This planner can be private or public. Go ahead… Break into my house while I am gone. I will be upstairs and loaded for bear. :slight_smile:

My first few legs of my WWT (World Wide Trip): The World in MSFS 2020 | Travel Planner Map | TripHappy | ID(2202116)

GA and CS user. I think I will fly the trip using the TBM since it does it all.

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I fly everything but in VFR just looking around and enjoying the world.

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I use it to fly planes.

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I love flying airliners! Back when I used FS9 and FSX, I mostly used Project Airbus A32X series and the TDS 737 series, downloading real airline liveries, mostly tour operators like TUI, Thomas Cook, Jettime, Novair etc. and other airlines that I know is flying charter flights, as I love to go on these myself IRL, and it was a perfect opportunity to catch that holiday feeling everyday.

Within the last year or so, I decided to make my own airline, design the livery, paint some aircraft and create a full weekly flightplan. And as I couldn’t keep up with the full timetable myself, I chose my “homebase” and then made AI versions of my fleet and made my own AI flightplan to fly out of the other hubs, so I had the full experience of “owning” an airline, without it being too serious.

Now that I solely use MSFS, I can’t use my old PA and TDS fleet, but only use the default A320neo with a plain white livery to fly the routes from my homebase, and also not being able to use my created ai traffic.

I’ve never wished to be a 100% serious simmer, or to go all in on study level aircraft, as I’ve spend the last 15 years being happy using a 2D panel, my mouse and keyboard.

I hope to see more “basic” airliners in the sim in the future without any study level panels and hopefully being able to add manual AI traffic.

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