Fly a circumnavigation with no GPS, no tracking, no AP, no nav aids at all and on Live Weather but free choice on time of day. That’ll hone up your navigation skills and flight planning for sure.
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Just keep going left. No?
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I wouldn’t call it “boredom”, per se.
For me personally, it just gets…overwhelming, at times, I guess?
That feeling of not being able to decide if I want to take out the A320, 747, something smaller like the ICON A5 or a Cessna or wanna go fast in the Darkstar or F18.
AND THEN trying to decide if I want to dedicate a couple of hours to a A to B flight or just a quick sightseeing tour.
It’s either deal with the anxiety from that, or getting ■■■■■■ off at sweaty 9 year olds on Call of Duty or cry myself through a couple rounds of Battlefield 2042…that I paid $120 for…or get on YouTube and cry some more watching videos of the Airbus H135 because we don’t have helicopters on Xbox yet. 
But, in all seriousness, once I do get over those hurdles and get up in the air, the Sim still takes my breath away.
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I also hit a ‘slump’ and was wondering what to do. I personally stick to GA (single and twin) and enjoy learning about navigation and putting this into practice.
I have just started a round the world trip using only GA. I have ditched GPS and am navigating VOR to VOR and the occasional ADF. I plan each leg before I embark on Skyvector.com.
I have decided to change aircraft every couple of countries to keep things interesting and my only rule is that once I have flown a particular plane, I can’t use it again. I flew the Piper arrow from London to Prague and am now making my way across Poland and Ukraine in the Piper Senica V.
I would also agree that taking a break for a while really helps. I was flying almost daily but found that after taking a break for a couple of days, the enjoyment levels shot up again.
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Get a glider. If you’re on PC, you can get the great freeware Discus 2C from GotFriends on flightsim.to. If you enjoy it a lot, you can buy the premium version as well. If you’re on XBox, the premium version got released on the marketplace yesterday.
It’s the plane I’ve been flying most recently, and it’s simply wonderful.
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My mistake, Victoria BC to Anchorage AK, not Vancouver. It’s been a while since I did this. But I totally recommend it.
British Colombia to Alaska
Victoria CYYJ to Stuart Island CYCM , 1.5 hrs
(Excellent weather for a first bush flight. Cruised over the channel and used the auto pilot for the long haul to destination. Not paying enough attention to gages and just looking at scenery, I ran one tank out of gas. Didn’t realize it and started to spiral downwards. Figured out my ignorance, swapped tanks and turned the key, fired it back up (whew!). I found the airstrip shortly after and it is a nasty little runway between trees with a short uphill landing on an island, it was quite a challenge with a cross wind to stick the landing, but I made it. I was hoping all of this wasn’t a premonition of the trip ahead of me.)
CYCM to CBA7 Scar creek, .5 hrs
(Good weather, small amount of wind and turbulence. Neat flight through mountains, lots of scenery with trees and craggy mountains. Found Scar Creek is buried in nowhere, just a runway without even a shack.)
CBA7 to CYBD Bella Coola 1 hrs
(Excellent weather again. Beautiful flight over massive glaciers with miles of glades with crevasses. It’s no mans land, truly epic. The depth of the scenery is definitely a sight to behold. I will fly here again a bunch in the future.)
CYBD to CBW2 Kitimat 1.1 hrs
(More epic flying over mountains with good weather. Had some scattered clouds, very little turbulence. It made for a nice scenic flight with lots more to look at.)
CBW2 to CZST Stewart 1hr
(Mountain flying is serene once again, started flying a later than I should have. Beautiful sunset. I arrived in a little too late to be mountain flying. The Airport at Stewart is very cool. Made it just as it got dark.)
CZST to CBM5 Telegraph Creek 2hrs (Great weather, some scattered clouds but beautiful otherwise. Arrived at the destination and circled many times looking for an air strip that didn’t exist. I wasn’t sure where anybody would set a plane down there. Due to Iskut Village runway CBU2 not existing and did not find a place to set down, could have landed on the street I guess, too many cars driving, a Heli could make it to a small clearing south of town. Gonna have to check this again to see if I was ignorant or if there just really isn’t a runway. Decided to divert to CBM5 Telegraph creek which wasn’t too far away.)
CB5M to PAJM Juneau 2hrs
(Started off good. More mountains and excellent sights. Then 30 min into flight came head onto a live weather storm, a wall of hell. Horrific flying conditions to put it lightly, I tried to climb over it and the Xcub couldn’t pull off the climb. Almost didn’t make it. The wind from different directions and the snow/hail Iced me up severely and I almost crashed multiple times. Sporadic visibility, I became totally reliant on the Garmin. The forced of wind coming over the peaks were super turbulent. At one point I had the aircraft pointing 30 deg downward and I was still climbing at 700’ a min! 
Without the Garmin, I would have crashed for certain. I should not have flown in that weather. I had set course originally to Taku Lodge TKL, didn’t realize due to poor planning that it’s a water landing. Visibility was 300 AGL with ice clad windows to boot. It VERY SLOWLY melted off and I began to regain control of the air frame again. Had to divert to Juneau, got denied landing. Tried their IFR and it almost killed me when they had me climb back into the storm. Iced up all over again. Finally just descended to swing it in and stuck a landing because I was almost out of fuel. The whole ordeal was gut wrenching. Lived so I could learn I suppose)
PAJM to PAYA Yakatat 1hr
(Nice cruise over the channel and some mountains. Great weather and visibility. I climbed to 11500 ft to clear the mountains and made a B-line cruise descent for Yakatat. This was an excellent ride with the plane going as fast as it was safely capable. It was a welcoming ride over yesterday’s horrific ordeal.)
PAYA to 4Z5 Horsfeld 1.5hrs
(Excellent weather. Wicked climb over big mountains, right by Mt Saint Elias, couldn’t quite clear the mountain in time beings its 18000’ ! Almost struggled to maintain altitude at 15000’ to go around it for obvious reasons due to aircraft of choice for this trip. There is some big flaws in the scenery just north of Mt Saint Elias. It still looked cool though. Made it over the snow covered mountains and found Horsfeld 4Z5. The runway is rough grassy unleveled field by residential shacks, no runway and one rough ■■■ landing, I almost balled it up. You’d be hard pressed to land anything but a bush plane there. )
4Z5 to PAVD Valdez 1.5 hrs
(Gonna try to beat a storm headed for Valdez. Had to climb to 14600’ to clear the mountains. The peaks are a legendary sight to behold. And once again it struggled to make it over, I just tried not to overrun the engine. Made a long glide approach to PAVD once I got past the daunting peaks. I however didn’t beat the storm. Got socked in the last 20ktm. Had to make a decent into the valley south of Valdez. Tried to dodge as many clouds as I could, ended up sinking into the abyss of a rain snow ice mixture and relied totally on the Garmin again. I iced up, but didn’t loose my cool, this wasn’t as bad as the last storm. Eventually managed to get low enough to run the frozen ice scale off the airframe. Raining pretty steady at low altitude. The cloud cover was 100’ AGL which made for white knuckle flying. Made a long slow pattern in the rain and terrible visibility. Managed to pull off a decent landing, got lucky again. Gotta pay more attention to the forecasters.)
PAVD to PAWR Whittier .75 hr
(Nasty fog and freezing rain. Wanted to get to AK 1 Butte Municipal to be in a closer range of Mount Denali, but was pretty sure I couldn’t make it through the dense fog and icing conditions. Decided to stay low and near the coastal region, headed for Whittier. Visibility at 400’ AGL, low and fast. Neat coastal views on this route. I found that PAWR is a very short runway, barely good enough for a bush plane. Not very level either. Managed to land in the pouring rain without issue.
PAWR to Anchorage PANC .5 hrs
Getting to the point where it’s too cold and too much water vapor in the air to fly this thing. I made it to Anchorage, although I was iced up pretty bad. This is probably where I’m done with the Xcub until weather warms up more. It’s been an adventure. I recommend anybody take this flight route from Victoria BC to Anchorage Alaska. If the weather and airframe is set on realistic, be ready for a ride and an adventure. I learned a lot, it was a great flight. Now I’m thinking about taking a similar route with the Daher TBM 930 from Alaska back to Victoria.
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Theres two ways to deal with this.
Take a break from MSFS.
- Play other games, pursue other hobbies. Sometimes we all need a refresh!
Other ideas
- Fly in other parts of the world’. Many MSFS users naturally tend to fly around their home patch. Fire up Google Earth and find a country you’ve never been too and buzz around there. For example my CFI who trained me in California got a stint flying King Airs in Cambodia and had the time of his life there buzzing around to Vietnam, Thailand etc.
- Watch YouTubes of real world vids and you’ll be inspired to try the same in MSFS
- Make MSFS multiplayer friends and do trips together
When I want a break from flying, I go and play my guitars, which is my other hobby.
The other option is join multiplayer group flights. There are a few groups run them and also quite a few streamers you can fly along with while they live stream the flight.
The scenery in MSFS cries out for a long trip in a small (slow) aeroplane. Check out some of the aviators of old for inspiration ie Amy Johnson, Lady Mary Heath, and repeat their amazing feats. I have done this but imposed rules on myself to make it even more of a challenge, real time and weather, no passage through war torn countries, compliance with airspace, although I did allow myself the luxury of ignoring this rule at times! And finally abandoning the whole trip in the event I should have a serious crash or “controlled flight into terrain”. Thankfully the most serious mishap I had on my trip from Inverness to Australia and back, was neglecting to put the handbrake on and running into a wall during start up. I found the “rules” really focused the mind on completing the task, especially when you’re near the end.
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I am also at the please give me a rest from this torture, but I am plodding on anyway. I have had every version of MSFS since it first appeared on a 5 inch floppy disk. Without question the latest version is awesome but I spend more time trying to fix it than use it. I hope someone can help me with the Windows error code 0x80004005 that keeps me from launching the game. I have tried a few things and failed to fix it. My computer guy says to uninstall Norton 360 and try that, or reinstall MSFS WHICH CAN TAKE HOUR AFTER HOUR. Any assistance would be welcomed…THX
Get in the pitts and do some aeronautical flying.
Or
Learn to fly a traffic pattern, and nail the landing every time. Dial in a stiff crosswind….
Join a good online flying club. I’m in thepilotclub.org and it’s, well, awesome. Lots of interesting group flights and recommendations for places to explore. It’s own Vatsim official training school to get the P1 (Vatsim PPL) rating
They also have a VA based on the OnAir career platform that has transformed my flying. It now has real purpose and interest: I have loved using the Kodiak to fly jobs all over the Pacific NW finding places I would just never know about. Having to plan based on weather and time constraints. Now I’m having fun developing airliner operations in the PMDG 737.
I still like to go do my own thing too, taking inspiration from IRL pilots
And if you are ever really bored, take up trying to program peripherals for complex aircraft using Spad.next. By the time you are done you will be glad to just go fly (I love my SPAD. Couldn’t do without it).
Finally, the great thing about MSFS is that it is a largely a blank canvas onto which you project your own desires. For me it is like the sport of rock climbing and mountaineering: there are many different style of game played within the discipline. Self imposed frameworks of ethics set the ‘rules’ . The laws of physics are the only arbiter. But at least in MSFS treating gravity lighty does not have the same consequences.
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Well, whose gonna be the first brave person to click on that link!
I will try a glider tonight.
Loaded up the two Cessna jets last nights and had issues with both glass cockpits. Probably need to update some WT glass.
Let us know how you liked it 
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I think the Longitude uses the G3000, so yes, you’ll want the latest G3000 mod from the WT website. From what I understand, you also want the @Dakfly0219 flight improvement mod from flighsim.to.
For the CJ4, it has it’s own FMC, so you just need the latest aircraft mod from WT. This plane is very polished for a free mod.
Last night both planes just showed white screens. I need to test and troubleshoot further but until I isolate the issue they aren’t of much use.
I’ll probably take the HJet up tonight since it just got an update and I haven’t been experiencing those issues with it.
But I am quite enjoying flying these planes from the on screen instrumentation you can pull from the options. And my Bravo works fine for AP functions, so they are quite flyable with the broken glass.
I just need to quell a bug… and you know how that can eat a day.