Okay, but those weren’t the things you were forking out big $$ for in FSX or pre MSFS, were they? Out of the box scenery and more or less stock airports up-to-date vs what you would pay a pretty penny for to get the same in FSX. Chuck in the included MB weather compared to ASN,REX, OPUSFSI. Don’t have to spend hours tweaking scripts or mixing and matching addons to get the visuals right either.
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I wasn’t “forking out big $$$”, I was on Gamepass at the time, and pretty much immediately uninstalled MSFS and ignored it for two years because I found the experience very frustrating at the time.
FWIW, graphics are not that important to me, neither in MSFS nor in other simulations.
Anyway, we’re getting off-topic.
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I got into flight simming since FS95. Oh how I miss Meiggs Field.
There’s actually a 3rd party Meigs Field which I’m considering to being back some memories.
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I could have captioned that pic “My insanity”!! 
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you’ve never seen an emergency medical air evac then…helicopters can get down in a hurry
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Cool topic 
I’m a casual tubeliner flier. My fav tube now is the Asobo A320neo. Really enjoy flying it. However - I only fly real life routes using FlightAware (FA).
I have two screens so I pull up the FA route on one and LittleNavMap (LNM) on the other.
I eyeball the route in FA and replicate it in LNM. I then use LNMs “Create An Approach” feature and generate a 10nm approach to the runway. This 10nm final leg is tacked on automatically to the preceding route. I then plug in the cruising altitude in LNM and save the plan.
Then I just load the desired A320 livery, the plan from the Map screen, plug in the initial 250kt speed , the cruising ALT+V/S into the airplanes systems and off I go (all this takes about 60 seconds). I spawn on the runway and slew to the gate cos I wanna replicate the real world taxi times but want everything running.
All my flights have been within 2 minutes of the real world flight times (and sometimes an exact match) and its feels great when I turn off the engines at the gate and time elapsed matches the FA data.
Nice to read the comments and see how we all enjoy the same game but in our own unique way.
Enjoy the virtual skies friends
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Randy, get us on the tarmac and find us the nearest LZ
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As realistically as possible. As a RW pilot in the 70’s (VFR) I fly IFR procedures as much as possible to take myself beyond where I was decades ago. When the weather allows (I always use Live Weather) I enjoy viewing new places in the world. I’m currently touring the South Pacific regions, such as The Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia, etc.
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It depends on what you mean by “realistic”. For starters, I always use Live Weather but NEVER live or AI traffic because they make the default AI even stupider than it normally is (I don’t use live ATC). Because I have limited time to fly at all and because I mostly fly FSE, I tend to start on runways rather than cold and dark, although I usually do park in a proper place and shut the plane down.
When doing FSE, I ALWAYS file IFR but, because I use the default ATC, I get to pick all my runways, SIDS, STARS, and approaches before I start the flight. I’ve found that looking at Windy.com gives faster and more accurate wind data (as in closer to what you’ll find in the game with Live Weather, regardless of what the real world is actually doing) than either the World Map or SkyVector’s METARs, which helps in setting up the flightplan from the get-go.
So I honor the real procedures and airways on most flights, with 1 major exception. When an airport has both an ILS and an RNP RNAV for the same runway, and the old-school ILS approach involves overflying the airport and then procedure turns back to final, whereas the RNAV has downwind/base/final waypoints, I will put the RNAV approach in my flightplan because I hate procedure turns. BUT, once on final, I will change the nav source to LOC and ride the ILS GS down to the lower minimums, which is sometimes necessary Nobody will ever know so why not? I figure this happens fairly often in real life, just nobody talks about it.
When NOT flying FSE, I’m mostly doing a regularly scheduled MP evening with a drinking buddy so that’s when I let my hair down. We’re usually pretty drunk and realism goes by the boards, EXCEP|T we ALWAYS start cold and dark. We’ll take utterly inappropriate planes into hurricanes or other forms of awful weather. Badbadweather.com is good for this. We’ll go explore the POIs of the latest World Update in a totally illegal manner. We’ll try to land atop buildings, inside stadiums, attempt to fly under all the bridges, etc. Maybe we’ll go Reno Racing. And occasionally, we’ll go barnstorm major airports trying to disrupt the approaches of airliner pilots who are trying to take things seriously. And thus get into impromptu dogfights with other folks doing the same thing and thus actually able to see us on “All Players” 
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I started with FS Version 1.x on an a single 5.25 floppy on an IBM PC Junior. Meigs Field was the default airport even back then.
I miss that, but not the 3 FPS refresh.
To keep relevant to the topic, it’s amazing how far “realism” has come over 40 years!
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I suspect people reply to questions like this by saying they fly more realistically than they actually do.
In the last day, I have flown cold and dark IFR and VFR routes, and also spawned stunt planes in several cities for some GTA style fun. Crashed a few times, too.
That’s fun for me. I don’t judge myself for doing things in an unrealistic way. Realism is great, but sometimes I also like to play.
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The next update will add that airport. 40th Anniversary baby!!!
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Simbrief has a fleet option I use. I actually have real flight numbers from Flightaware flying real routes from Navigraph in real weather and time using Live ATC. I have designed my own flight locator that
keeps up with where every plane is located in the fleet and verify this with the Simbrief feature.
Sometime I even try to fly the actual flight in real time with FlightAware. Either to fast to runway or real plane takes off and lands with me following behind.
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I didn’t know about Meigs Field being added to the 40th anniversary update, I’m looking forward to that one!.
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A wonderful part of the world, if you can visit there IRL I encourage it! Pre-pandemic I was there every year and now Im getting set to return to the Philippines. Its an amazing place to fly in and one day I wanna get a check out in a 172 or something and tootle about.
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That’s my goal as soon as I get a spec system with a bit of graphical headroom.
VFR rules!
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It’s just a game. I use it differently every time I fly.
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- cold and dark 100%
- live weather and real time 100%
- no assistance (except AI copilot ATC)
- real flight routes (if available) including flight levels and so on
- Little Navmap
Mostly GA / C208B / Kodiak (though I hate glass cockpits …)
Happy landings!
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It is certainly beautiful, though I must say I’ve been surprised at the mix of desert areas on some islands with rain forest environments on others. Also, I’ve lost count of the amount of volcanoes I’ve seen! I counted 6 cones on one island.
Though I fly IFR to maintain an all-weather capability about a 1/3 of my destinations had no instrument approach. This is where the remarkable WT NXi comes in, allowing me to set up a coupled visual approach to any threshold. I’m currently “in-training” on the Kodiak as part of this exploration and will soon be using it extensively to tour the Bush-flying environment of Papua New Guinea.
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Well, I mean group flying as in a free for all where people just fly close together. Too close together to be considered “realistic”, and not disciplined enough to be considered “formation”.
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