Overwhelmed choosing which amazing flight to fly next - brain overload!

[TakingKnot14333]

Okay flight simmers, I seriously need some professional help here!

Despite all issues - this sim is absolutely breathtaking! No game or sim have ever left me amazed like this one does. No matter flying an airliner at VATSIM or exploring the world with a small prop, those yaw dropping moments are always there. Yesterday I flew around in a Piper exploring the incredible detailed San Fransisco area partly covered in a beautiful marine layer during sunrise. And today I landed in Miami during the night with rain effects that are simply outstanding. The picture was photoreal. Cars driving below me in the rain. Amazing! Last week, 787 Heavy Division mod on VATSIM from Germany to Paris during moonlight under the stars, with the new night lighting from SU6, the scene is perfect. There are so many amazing things. I am so thankful to be able to experience this!

I am running an RTX3070 and on a pretty good rig. I have now tweaked things so it runs smoothly at 90% scaling 4k with 200-300 render scale on my 55 inch HDR TV with 30fps capped. Things are pretty! Yesterday I tweaked some settings and was able to increase road traffic to 100% with no major performance hit, and seeing those highways filling up with cars is another new detail to me that adds to the immersion. Wow!

BUT

So what’s the problem? Well, let’s see if someone can relate to this. This is the thing: In all this wonder I have raised the bar very high. When starting up the sim, I have the whole earth in front of me. Everytime I am about to select a flight, I find myself spending so much time choosing, that it becomes a bit, let’s say - exhausting! Do I wan’t to explore something new? Do I want to keep the realism high or just fly around? Is there ATC online? Is there a good scenery available? Photogrammatery cities around? How is the weather? Should I take off from where I landed on my most recent flight to keep some kind of realistic progress? The list goes on… My brain get’s almost overloaded of all the choices!
I often end up flying yet another familiar flight. Or not flying at all. I feel that I am not using the potential of this sim. Life is giving me all these opportunities and I can’t handle it! My brain wants to have it all at the same time. And I don’t want to disappoint it. So I end up playing it safe. Another trip at the west coast of America, another city pair in Europe on VATSIM etc… Or shutting it down.

One solution would be to just have some random flight generator to assign my flights. However, I feel that I would miss so many of the most interesting, beautiful places by doing this. After all, it’s the entire earth we are talking about, and our time is limited. So we have to pick carefully. One time I started to fly around the world. Some legs with airliners, some with smaller GA aircraft. It was actually quite nice! I felt that I followed something “bigger” than just random flights and it was actually really rewarding. However I was also left with a feeling of not doing every flight justice. Maybe spend more time planning next time to be able to put the areas I fly over into more context. However, it should be fun and not overwhelming, right? When possible, I try to start my next flight from where I just landed. If I just start at a random place in the world where I have no connection to, it, for some reason, does not give me the same satisfaction. It feels like cheating, or unrealistic. When putting all those parameters together it feels overwhelming, and takes away a lot of the fun. I feel that I need my own planning office that gives me these perfect flights or something

So to summarise. I have created some kind of list of things that I want to fulfill for every flight to do the experience justice and also justify the hours I put in it. This ends up being overwhelming and I end up doing the same flights over and over again, or not flying at all!

Is it just me? Maybe I need to seek help!
How have you solved this? Let me know your thoughts!

This amazing piece of software overloads my brain!

[XTCQuinn]

I understand your problem, I often wonder where I should vist next.

A few things that I find useful to alleviate that problem is to use a program like Skypark (others are available but I’ve not had expereince of them). That’s often set me up with a route that I would never have considered before and been quite spectacular.

The other thing I do is to look on You Tube for real flights in similar aircraft (or often the same) and then recreate them in the Sim, it’s quite interesting to see how close the sim is to real life, more often close than not in my experience.

[ClayishCoast9]

I use ‘OnAir’ and fly contract ‘jobs’ in GA aircraft, the DC6 and now the lovely JU52! I use a very easy setting … not too bothered with the game aspects of ‘OnAir’ itself, just use it for exactly the purpose you outline - to determine where to fly. Sometimes this involves quite long positioning flights, sometimes split into multiple legs. OnAir is very amenable to this.

There are of course quite a few similar add-ons you can choose from. OnAir is subscription, others are one-off payware or free. All seem to get pretty good reviews, so plenty of choice!

[hendis55]

@TakingKnot14333

Is it just me? Maybe I need to seek help!

If you, so do I.

I invested in The Skypark to help me out, but that only means that I spend a lot of time searching for a job that gives me what I want:

• bespoke or available freeware airports
• a distance matching the plane I want to fly and the time I have
• interesting and suitable airport procedures available
• and more…

Aaaaargh

[FlashedUnicorn1]

I would agree with you re MSFS

One way ito get some ideas for flights you could undertake is to select flights and their respective flight plans is to go to your international airport and follow a real time flight in:

then click the flight to get its flight plan

Alternatively just load the Airports real time departure and arrival data in the sim and you have lots of ideas from them;

[TidalPopcorn618]

@FlashedUnicorn1

then click the flight to get its flight plan

I had no idea you could do that, thanks for the tip!

[OliDee]

I use Neofly. Although there is a career element and ability to earn money and grow a fleet of aircraft, the biggest benefit is being taken to places I would never normally visit.

I regularly fly 30-50nm legs in small GAs - it doesn’t take long before you are in a completely different environment to where you started.

I have purchased an aircraft in Australia, Europe, NW USA and also working down into Africa. Always using live weather for added variety.

[TakingKnot14333]

Thanks for your replies so far! I am happy to hear that I am not the only one. I realise when I read your responses, that even though I guess these addon programs might be really good if you want to find a reason to do a specific flight, and make it more into a game with specific missions etc - that’s not a 100% what I need. But this really helped me realise that. I guess a program might be the solution, but rather one that are focusing on delivering suggestions based on a series of rules that I set. For example, I give the program an interval length of the flight, aircraft type, whether or not it should pass nearby photogrammatery areas, if ATC will be online etc. However this sounds like a pretty complicated little software and would need to sync with a lot of different sources. It would also be good if it could suggest routes based of if it passes interesting areas, beautiful scenery etc, so maybe some kind of user based rating system would be good. Phiu! Well, developers, now you have something to work on

I did a quick search and the closest I get is this: https://flightsim.to/file/6146/letsfly
Maybe a bit limited, but I like the idea…

Anyway, is there any map suggesting beautiful or interesting routes for the fs2020-earth? I know there are pages suggesting nice places but I like the map based interface. It would be good start.

I also realise that maybe I need to put up my own rules a little bit clearer. For example:

• always start where I recently arrived.
• Always online ATC (this adds a lot, but VATSIM/IVAO is unfortunately too inconsistent in it’s coverage to make this work, and pilot edge is only US and not suitable in my time zone)
• Always plan my flight in advance and read a little about the country, areas to connect a bit to that area and get some context.
• etc…

But once again, I want to find rules that not makes it overwhelming.

Well, let me hear your thoughts!

[GhostlyFrend]

This certainly is one of the greater posts here. Thanks for making me laugh.

What you suggest here sounds a lot like Komoot. This is an app that I use all the time for hiking. It has all the options you suggest, and more.

So what we need is a Flight Sim Komoot!

[KnarfeX]

Can you specify? I`m only curious ofc

[ClayishCoast9]

As an illustration … here’s what I’m working through at the moment. DC6 (one of several aircraft that I ‘own’ in OnAir) is at Erie International with a fairly small amount of cargo from several ‘jobs’. The screen shot below is the OnAir interface showing the final destinations for my current load. I’m heading to North Carolina, then working my way back up the East Coast to Canada; before I finish these tasks and embark on the crossing via Greenland and Iceland back to Europe, to pick up some new jobs (My endurance is rather shorter than the DC6 can manage ) This way, I’m using OnAir to decide where to fly to.

What I like about OnAir, is that your aircraft position, loads, crew etc. are all perpetually tracked in their database, so you have the flexibility to make multiple stops, run jobs over several sessions, and even dodge off to do another ‘mission’ in the middle of what you’re doing at the moment if you want. If you employ crew, you can of course also have them fly legs offline if you want (at least in the ‘easier’ settings). OnAir is a subscription service (around 35EUR a year), so not what everyone wants. I play on the second easiest level so I don’t really have to worry too much about the money side … although you can make it pretty challenging if you want!

There are a few other really good similar add-ons, but I’m not aware of any that have the same level of persistence as OnAir (if that’s incorrect, I’m sure someone will correct me).

Just like @TakingKnot14333 , I start from my last destination (OnAir takes care of that), Plan my flight (using the amazing LittleNavMap) - low level and VFR, using an ingame ‘historic’ navigation log that I’ve been coding myself, Then fly the whole trip in VR. What could be better!

[JWATTS0275]

I use simbit A pilots life (based on airlines) where you get a contract, air hauler 2 for GA planes also use Worldwide Virtual airlines as well. I totally understand the predicament the OP is in, I use to spend ages looking for flights…and also what plane to fly in my hangar…that will become more difgicult as more planes will be released from 3rd parties.

[MichiganBill222]

You might also want to check out this addon: Grand Tour Flight Planner » Microsoft Flight Simulator

Bill

[KnarfeX]

Thank you for a excellent answer! I`m interested now

[cdphotovideo]

Something I like to do is just find the sunset or sunrise line around the world for whatever time it is in the real world when you jump in. I then find an airport along that line and decide whether I want a sunrise or sunset flight accordingly. It gives you different places to check out.

[KatanaDV20]

Here are some ways to deal with this.

1. Fly Zara Rutherfords around the world flight which is in progress at the moment
2. Use the random flight generator website
3. Go on flight radar and look at the live map of airborne planes and pick a route
4. Go on flightware where you can search by airplane type and also filter by route length. For example you can choose to show all A320NEO flights and then filter again to look for 1 hour A320 flights.
5. Bizzjet flights are easy - go anywhere you want
6. Search flightaware for Grand Caravan flights. These are most usually fun FedEx feeder routes.
7. Go on airliners.net and look at the pics there from around the world. You can get an idea of where to fly
8. You can stay in a country or region for a week. For example you could spend all your time in S.E Asia flying around India, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, VIetnam, Laos, Philippines etc. The following week move onto to Japan and do the same.

Zaras route

My Journey – FlyZolo

Random flight generator (you can just select airplane type and flight duration)

Taegukgi Korean BBQ House

Flight aware search by airplane type

All Airborne Aircraft (by aircraft type) - FlightAware

Flight radar

Live Flight Tracker - Real-Time Flight Tracker Map | Flightradar24

[StanTGM]

If I want a new place, I fly there. That sometimes takes a bit of time, but it creates a sense of purpose, and besides it gives me better appreciation for distances…

Recently I had visited Poland. After purchasing the Hawk earlier this week, I flew all the way from EPKK - Krakow to EGOV (with some refueling stops of course), in order to try my luck at the Mach Loop

[BostonJeremy77]

Your answer might be The Skypark if you are on PC.

[KnarfeX]

If you ever spread your wings to Norway i suggest to take a trip from ENTC/Tromsø to ENAL/Aalesund. You can take a break at ENVA/veearnes/Trondheim.
From ENAL you can fly to Oslo gardermoen/ENGM or Bergen ENBR/Flesland.
If you like fjords and beautiful mountains it is worth a trip.

[somethingbrite]

On PC I use OnAir. It has some fairly simple mission types (cargo/passengers, sightseeing, fighter tours) but it provides the backbone for a little role play. - I’m presently doing a bit of small Bush flying into and out of small dirt and grass airstrips in Africa.

I used Volanta and Little NavMap to track my progress visiting every airstrip in Denmark. There are a few which aren’t even in the sim which I found simply because they appear on other resources. I visited those too.
(For this project each trip had to start at the last visited airfield. No skipping.)