I basically would like to retract my previous claim … as the sim clearly can NOT track flight time correctly.
I just took the drone cam for a spin to search for the ground cracks at KPHL … I never even touched a single button in the aircraft … nor did I turn on the engine etc. … and now it tracked 5 minutes of flight time … and the sim did that on two occasions.
Now … I think I can guess what is going on here. In both cases I did “crash” the aircraft (according to the sim). So it is most likely a misguided if-then-logic in the sim which say … well … if the aircraft “crashes” then it must have been flying … right? … so lets log the time. (OK, still no landing or takeoff counted, but just a “magic” crash flight)
What actually is happening here is this …
Moving the drone away from the aircraft at some point removes the 3D scenery from the GPU … and at that point the aircraft “crashes” … even when it is parked “cold and dark”