When I first discovered flight simulation it was to make use of a new VR headset, I had a past interest in flying but never believed it was an option to explore. However I soon became hooked by the experience and it was not long before I signed up for a trial lesson and then continued to train for a couple of years.
What I find surprising is how few people seem to be interested in flying small GA aircraft. We are so lucky to be living through a period of personal computing power and software development offering such opportunities from our homes. All the information and tools both in game and online are there for you to effectively practice - with some accuracy - to fly GA from your desktop and yet it’s one of the least read or discussed topics on these forums. Indeed offline, an easy way to further your experience is through companies like Pooley’s who sell PPL book packs and tools such as flight computers for PPL students all of which can be used to enhance your enjoyment of flight in MSFS.
It’s clear that you can’t learn to fly 100% from your desktop but you absolutely can practice what you - or others - get taught and when you apply it all as accurately as possible to the sim I would suspect that you can successfully practice something in order of 80-90% of the sort of flying required to pass a UK PPL.
I understand there is more interest in airliners but - and this is probably how my brain works - you’re never going to be able to buy one and fly it but many of us - with the appropriate life changes and sacrifice - could buy a small GA/Microlight. Such an amazing opportunity yet hardly discussed and gains little traction in a flight simulation forum.
Back many many years ago, back in the early 1980’s when I had an Apple 2E computer, I had flight sim for it. I never used it. When I went into college, I needed to be able to dial in to do my computer labs, so I bought a Compaq DeskPro. I had the first version of Microsoft Flight Simulator for that. And truthfully, it just didn’t appeal to me. You took off and flew to see triangles and squares and such. I only used it a couple of hours and got bored.
It wasn’t until MSFS 2020 came out that I got interested again. And it wasn’t for the flying aspect. It was to see what the world looked like. I loved the bush trip missions to see parts of the world I would never get to. The appeal to me wasn’t the flying, even though it was a flight simulator. It was the exploring.
Then the announcements came out about 2024. They showed us the new visual changes. The new trees. I lost interest in 2020 then, because I wasn’t the more detailed environment for exploring. Like in 2020, the start of one of the Canada bush trips, you take off and are surrounded by trees, and the 2020 trees kind of killed the immersion for me. So I stopped using 2020 and waited for 2024 to come out. Then I was disappointed to find that 2024 did not include bush trips yet. I know Got Friends has the contract to implement bush trips, and I know they will do a fantastic job, so I am patiently waiting. But yes, I can’t wait to get back to exploring the world.
Yes, the majority of the flight sim population seems to love airliners. But there are plenty of GA flyers in the sim. There are varied reasons why people fly GA aircraft. But the thing is, they aren’t as rare as you are thinking. If they were, companies such as A2A, Black Square, Cows would not be so sucessful.
I appreciate there are many uses for the program and I believe there is a fairly large contingent that love the sim for the same reasons you do which is great. The wider the audience that Asobo can pull into a game the better the chance of further investment.
I also have had fun with the 2020 bush trips, not only do they introduce areas of the world to us, they can also be used to help with VFR skills using a number of techniques for compass, time, airspeed and altitude. Surprising to read they are still absent from 2024.
My MS Flight Sim experience decades ago actually got me flying real airplanes on a path to a PPL. I have used sims since the early days when we only had basically wire frame representations but it was when MSFS started showing at least parts of the Earth below in real detail that my interest boomed. I think it was the 2004 version. I lived in Phoenix at the time and, although the sim gave us the basics of valley below us and a few modeled buildings, it was far from realistic but they gave us all the ability to update the scenery. I went to public sites and found high resolution photos of the region and started toying with overlaying them on the surface. I noticed the mesh was not very accurate so I went to US geological sites and got high res mesh that brought out the details of mountains, hills and rivers. Suddenly the sim looked much like real life and I was hooked. I learned how to create 3D models, went out with my digital camera and took images of the sides of buildings, learned how to animate objects.
As I worked I shared my progress with the community and made some local friends that told me my efforts were nearly commercial quality so I improved things until they were and started my own company called Simulating Art and royalty checks began coming in. During that phase, one friend I made had his own Cessna 152 and invited me to go out flying with him. I got a few lessons for free which began my quest for a PPL. Soon, I realized that, while I could afford the lessons, my budget for actually getting or sharing a real plane was not in the cards.
Simulating Art only lasted through early FSX since those sim changes created a great deal of changes to my product and I now had competition from other larger companies that had their own Phoenix scenery.
In 2024 I love flying the Cessna 172, an aircraft I could take off and land in real life but I am now addicted to the airliners as well particularly the Fenix A3XX series, a plane I frequently am a passenger in flying on Easyjet from my home in Spain to the UK and other spots in Europe. While the possibility is absurdly low, if the flight attendants ever announce the captain and first officer are disabled and they need someone to land their plane, I have no doubt I’d pull off a great landing.
I guess I’ve been an exception to the rule – I enjoy GA more than I do airliners and I am mostly active in GA-related topics here on the forum. I feel so much more connected to a small aircraft than I do a highly automated people/goods carrier. I have raved about how much MSFS 2020 (and, now, 2024) have allowed me to learn my native state of California from the air, so much so that I can navigate it by sight now. I find this to be an incredible accomplishment of technology available at one’s home.
Granted, I do fly airliners on occasion (I’m in the midst of a flight in the PMDG 737-800, as I type this) and am more interested in the earlier iterations of airliners with more pilot input (F28, 146, DC-6, Stratoliner, etc.), but I love aviation so much that, similarly to music & food, I cannot simply limit myself to one type.
When people say computer games are a waste of time they should be directed to this post. Well done indeed, love reading stuff like this.
All I would add re your buying / sharing a plane is in the UK I was able to rent a Comco Ikarus C42 for around £150 per hour including fuel. If I flew that twice a month then in 2 years that’s 48hours logged, you only need 12 logged hours to keep your PPL current. So I suspect that most - not all - would be able to adjust their home life to accommodate that outlay per month.
Well, I left out the detail that I was paying to go back to school and my marriage was shaky at the time so flying took a back seat. One of these days I’ll book another lesson here in Spain to see if I get the bug back but lots older now too. VR flying in the sim is satisfying the urge so far.
I too love flying small GA planes in MSFS, in part because I love looking out the window at beautiful scenery and in part because if I got my **** together I might be able to fly some of them IRL if I tried.
Absolutely no idea what the appeal of flying airliners in a simulator is for people! But it does seem to appeal to many people; to each their own…
When I started (in 2022) on Xbox, I learned on the 152 and 172, and spent quite a bit of time with the MSFS 2020 flight training. And I was surprised by my own interest in the airliners. I think it was a combination of 2 things:
At the time the scenery (at least on Xbox) was relatively generic, so after a while, quite a bit of it just looked the same. And, with the release of AAU1 and AAU2 updates, learning to fly planes like the Longitude and 787 were irresitable (to me) - I think I liked learning how to flight plan, load fuel and weight, procedures, and ATC, and it was/is satisfying.
Recently I’ve moved to a new PC, on MSFS 2024, so that I could have 3 screens and a more immersive experience. So finally, with much more interesting scenery and the fleet of first party planes starting to get MSFS 2024 optimizations and compatibility updates, I’m finally learning to enjoy low level GA flying again - and really looking forward to flying the coastlines and mountain ranges up close. I spent my piggy bank on the PC and am saving up for yoke and pedals next, which will make GA flying a lot more fun.
AND… as MSFS 2024 finally becomes stable and enjoyable again, I’ve always wanted to learn to fly helicopters. I’ve got my eye on cyclic and collective peripherals. That’s the next challenge.
I love flying GA as well, I’ve been flight simming for over 30 years, and it wasn’t until 2020 released (in 2020) that I started to focus on mainly on GA, then getting my PPL, CPL, and Instructor ratings in real-life.
In the sim however, I do all my flights in VR, and 80% of them are GA, for me it’s about actually “flying” the aircraft. I find airliners just boring, not the operations, but sitting there in VR not doing anything once you hit the autopilot…. When I do fly an airliner, I fly the 737 because IMHO it’s a pilots aircraft, not a “computer”.
That being said, I am looking forward to Majestics Dash-8 when ever that gets released, because other than GA, I enjoy regional flights to smaller airports where the scenery (especially in the modern sim) simply amazing. What a grand and amazing planet we on, and such a pleasure to be alive where we can experience it as real as possible without having to spend exorbitant costs to get there.
I was just a glider pilot with about 400 flights when I started flightsimming with FS2 and bought most of them up to FSX. During that time, I trained and became a full real world UK PPL but a few years later, I had health problems that even made using a PC difficult for a while and gave up on simming in around 2016. Them bigger screens came along which made my eyesight less of an issue and FS2020 which got me back into simming again.
Have been on FS2024 now since just after launch and loving it, mainly for GA flying. Back in FSX days, I could use airliners OK with a bit of practice, but these days, they have bcome so much more complicated, so I tend to stick with GA most of the time.
With my current health and eyesight, I can never get my PPL back, so simming is now my main hobby (though I have a few other hobbies and interests).
Yes, this is me as well. The scenery is my VFR navigation, I like nothing more than using real life data to plan a flight and then executing it in MSFS. All by hand and all by eye.
I love GA - it’s extremely rich in both scenery and challenge and my FS world is almost entirely devoted to it.
“GA” as a term is a little hard to pin down, though. It could be thought of as anything that’s not airline (part 121) or air taxi/charter (part 135) ops, and that leaves lots of other operations. It’s also not available world-wide, and where it is, it can differ widely from region to region. The lack of real-world exposure and the overall barrier to entry might detract some folks from exploring the notion of GA farther than cruising around with no real sense of objective or rules. However, real-world GA is rich in rules and operational considerations - and when executed well, is very rewarding, considering the proximity to scenery and the relative “freedom” of navigation it offers (versus that of an airliner).
The hard part about simming GA is doing it somewhat realistically because at the end of the day, realistic GA is pretty complex. It doesn’t have quite the same routine, “canned” operational pattern as the airlines, nor does it have the relative safety of high-performance and redundancy built into airliners - for instance, we can’t just fly into and out of icing conditions, go around weather, or clear high terrain at will - it takes planning and consideration. And in many cases, a GA plane isn’t going to do all the things just by hitting buttons (though modern systems are getting pretty close to that). Doing it realistically takes a level of seriousness that incorporates a lot of disciplines, and would be even moreso if the sim had more realistic consequences .
Thus, despite the caveats and limitations of the sim, to pull off all the permutations of “aviate, navigate, and communicate” accurately and “safely,” while making good aeronautical decisions, it could be argued that flying realistic GA requires a fairly broad aviation understanding. Again, that’s not to say you can’t ignore the rules and just fly around, having fun in the sim, but to me, that’s not really “GA” - it’s just flying around (heck, we can do that in any plane). Following the rules, planning the work, and working the plan, manually, are the parts of GA that are a big part of the fun of the sim.
I got my PPL after flying flight sims for quite some time. I build my home field CKK7 Steinbach South in Flight Gear so I could practice. I was sitting with Harv (of Harv’s Air, the owner) on my first visit just chatting with him about flying. It was rainy and no planes were going up. Suddenly we hear this roaring overhead. I said that sounded kind of low. He said it sure did, and we stepped outside. All the flight crew were outside grinning from ear to ear. There, just over the trees, comes a P-51 Mustang buzzing right over our heads. Turns out a local farmer has one, and he was having a blast. I picked the right place to learn.
GA planes felt a bit too small and slow after I finished my training. I took my son up for a flight, and I did a check out ride in a Piper out of Buttonville one time when I was in Toronto. Then I lost interest in flying and sims for 20 years. We are very lucky to have Microsoft Flight Sim again.
The great thing about most of the modern flight sims is that they cater to petty much all tastes…ga, business jets, airliners, helicopters, military fast jets, gliders, etc etc. I dabble in all of them…and am definitely master of none
When my career moved me 250 miles from home I started looking for something new to do, having been active in a number of pastimes. I read an article in the local newspaper about the local flying club, enquired and was caught hook line and sinker! Over a period of many years I accumulated over 1000 hours flying GA up to light twin level but really couldn’t justify what it was costing. Eventually I started a business in aviation and have to say looking back that is when I started to lose interest as a hobby. Fast forward and after dabbling with early flight sims on early computers it sort of got lost as life went in other directions.
Then I found MSFS2020 and I was suddenly rehooked. I took time to relearn my old piloting skills then did what I’d always fancied and that was to move up to the big boys toys! I’ve thoroughly enjoyed learning new piloting skills - and also spent a lot of cash on upgrading PCs plus the usual ancilliaries. I still keep a stable of GA aircraft that include most of the actual aircraft I flew back when, but nowadays I tend to fly world sight-seeing trips that I’ll now never have the chance to do in real life.
I would like it to be a fun easy to use simulator for aviation enthusiasts whether pc or Xbox without the fraud that Microsoft is happy to submit to the market place i.e. msscenery
Indeed, this is what creates the sense of something that is often discussed in training and that is pilot workload. Flying the aircraft to its POH, following a tricky flight plan while hitting all the numbers followed by a successful landing which in the UK at least involves flying a good circuit of an Aerodrome you may not have visited is all very challenging and satisfying- at least if you succeed. Live weather in the sim allows us to use the UK aviation briefing service to access charts 214 and 215 in order to determine the true track required to fly. The sims scenery further allows for accurate validation of that track using CAA UK Charts as you navigate. But this just scratches the surface of the knowledge and skills you can aquire for GA using the sim and I would have thought this sort of discussion would happen more as it’s quite ground breaking to have all this at home.
I almost never fly GA in the sim, only airliners and business jets. So I can answer what is the appeal for a person like me - it’s the systems and complexity of the airliners. I love programming FMC’s, working with the autopilot, sticking to the IFR, flying complicated approaches, pretending that I carry people or haul cargo, dealing with aircraft of different dimensions etc. etc.
As you said, to each their own. But on the contrary, I understand people who love GA flying and what they like about it. I hold PPL although recently I struggle to keep it valid.
