Depends on the mood of the day, in the weekend longer flights with some cold beers and people around to have a chat and enjoy the scenery.
When nobody is around short flights to relaxe and discover some great scenery!
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We once had Airmanship now we have Simmanship 
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When I played FSX on PC I attempted a world touring flight. Rules where simple. I had to fly along all coasts of all continents. Pretty good fun. Take off from one place and land in the next, take off from there. Every flight may be in a different plane. Real time only. I had no fun in these long flights, forgot about them, my pc crashed or whatever made it impossible.
I ended up in flights that were too long and did not interest me. Now I make it a bit more fun to make it a Europe Tour. Same rules, Every EU country has to be landed in at least once. Keep real world weather, and if possible live time as well. I plan routes of 1 to 2.5 hours. I work from home some times so I take off, setup the flight + autopilot and start working. Monitoring the ATC and flight every now and then.
When I play in totally free time I fly the same flights but lower, slower and with a lot of off airport landings. I return to some places too to make better landings and whatever.
AI piloting will fail to landing
Listening to an already known movie or to nature documentaries is beautyful while doing matching scenery flights in that location.
I get a lot of cleaning done during long flights.
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There’s plenty to do! Treat it like a real flight:
-Take this time to go over your departure. Was there anything you missed? Is there anything to improve on?
-Get familiar with your instruments. No safer place to practice IFR than at 16,000. Can YOU do a full IFR flight, when the only VFR, is at minimums on landing?
-Study charts. I personally love picking a new airport every arrival, and learning all of the arrival/departure procedures, runways, taxiways.
And when all else fails… There’s always Youtube…
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So ive only really been playing about with flights that have a maximum of 1-2.5 hours, so normally keeping within and around Europe.
For those taking longer global trips how do you manage it? 6,7,8+ hour flights. Do you save at intervals? Do you have it running in the background?
Im keen to hear of your experiences!
Since I’m fortunate enough to be able to work from home, I’ll set up a long flight in one of my career style add ons and let it go while I’m working. Pop in now and then to check on progress when I need a break. With my Fenix and PMDG add ons, I’ve not had any issues with longer flights of late. I do have problems with some of the free long haul add ons.
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Just started my career in “It’s a Pilots Life - Chapter 2” flying for CargoJet. My first flights are basically from one side of Canada across to the other and back.
Maybe 3-3.5 hours? so not too long, but I usually get setup, into the CRZ, make sure Volanta is on and then go elsewhere in the house to do other things. I have a laptop lying around, so I log in to Volanta on that as well and can see my flight progressing without having to go and check the PC every 5mins. Its great lol.
Sometimes I’ll sit through the whole flight if its an area of the world I’ve not seen before, but when I have, I do the above.
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Most of my flights are hand flown, VFR, no autopilot, and under an hour. Most of the time I don’t have a lot of time spare to fly.
When I do get 4 or 5 hours together I enjoy flying airliners (well OK just the A320, because xbox) on longer flights. I chose routes that have interesting scenery from the air, then once cruising I switch to external view and watch the scenery go by. I jump back inside if I need to tweak anything.
If I have time I’ll fly these in real time, if I don’t I sometimes up the sim rate. I don’t use jump to descent.
Sometimes I’ll go cook dinner or do some other task while cruising. Or catch up on the forum, watch videos, or study arrival charts.
How to know when sim rate is set back to 1? I just look at the clock in the cockpit and count along. Pretty obvious if it’s ticking too fast or slow.
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Genuine question. Seeing as quite a few of the people here who do long flights go off and do other things like cleaning the house what would the difference be if you just speed up the sim rate between take off and landing?
I’m failing to see the fun/excitement/reason to do long flights if you aren’t actually there. Maybe I’m just missing something but it seems rather a waste if you are somewhere else?
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Can’t speak for others, but my favored career addon does not allow for time compression.
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That makes sense. Cheers.
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Depends where I’m flying, example, playing It’s a Pilot’s Life - Chapter 2 - you often fly the same route multiple times, it gets a bit same old, so I just leave it in the CRZ and do other things. I’m getting my XP up so I can apply to join a different airline.
I know it sounds weird, but this is why I like flight sims, you can do other stuff, but the fun part of take off / landing etc is still there.
I pop back every now and again and look at the scenery / check everything is ok.
What you say makes sense, but I like to fly real time. I don’t always walk off elsewhere, sometimes I sit there and enjoy the views.
I suppose when you look at it and read it back, its a bit lol, but hey thats flight sims.
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Can’t step away for too long, since it’s always on VATSIM. So… in VR… on a long flight, chat people watching the stream. Have a few… uh… adult beverages (yes I’m way over 21)… Admire the scenery… repeat…
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I spend my MSFS flights at low altitude so I really do have to spend it looking at the scenery!
I can see why you do what you do. I used to spend lots of time in Elite Dangerous. Just trading but would take my time working out the most profitable routes (on excel of course), then taking off, flying a route maybe down to a planet and a tight landing approach. Rinse and repeat. All hand flown.
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Me too (ED)! I remember playing ED in VR for the first time, but thats another story.
In MSFS, I don’t always do the same thing, at the moment I am going through my airliner phase but before that I spent hours and hours in GAs, then the Airbus H145.
If you always fly at high altitude you are really missing out on the beauty of this sim, so its good to mix it up.
Some of the best fun I had with this sim was flying exclusively Greenland / Alaska in GAs, landing on tundra and the weather.
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I smoke meat on my electric smoker occasionally
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