I can understand why people would find the cruise part boring. That’s not a thing for me though.
It depends on what one wants from the sim. For me, it’s the voyage that counts. The real time experience in a sim that models the entire earth.
I mostly fly airliners. My longest flight, I think, is over 16 hours. Sometimes I’d spend hours looking out of the window or in drone mode, amazed at the awesome view and watching regions of the world I’ll never visit. Sometimes I’d go to sleep and just be there when it becomes relevant. That’s how I grew up, since my capital city is 11 hours away from my oversea region. So it makes sense to me.
I don’t even know how to speed up the sim, and I don’t want to know. ATM I’m circumnavigating the globe in the TBM, at low altitude, my hops are usually 2 to 4 hours long. If I sped up the sim, that would totally destroy the experience. I can’t even recall how many times I’ve done this, long before FS2020 came out.
So yeah, for those who fire up the sim for some action, it’s totally understandable. No argument there. For others, that time spent is exactly why we’re here.
Thought I’d share my 2 cents here.