Higher primates cannot cope with having no wings, that´s why they always climb on trees or if humanoids launch the Flight Simulator.
I’d really be interested in learning more about your entire setup. Thanks
No problem at all, shoot me a direct message with any questions you have.
Well…after reading this I guess I can say that I had thought of myself as a serious simmer…
Now I demote myself to a real world pilot that can’t fly the real thing as much as I used to…and enjoy flying the closet simmer grade.
I have a private pilot license and an instrument rating… over 900 hours in my log book…most of it pre glass panel… with 200 or so in a 182 G1000. I have been using msfs and other sims to practice IFR for many years…and as as many of you have stated…it’s not the same as real flying. In fact it’s a lot harder to fly the sim! Left downwind and not being able to keep the runway perfectly centered in the strut with your peripheral vision while getting the aircraft ready to land and not pulling the power exactly as you line up with the numbers while putting in 15 degrees of flaps at the correct pattern altitude and speed… that’s hard in the sim… and second nature to someone like me in the real aircraft at an airport you have hundreds of landings at. Let’s get serious…we need multiple monitors in msfs! The VR is still not anywhere near real.
My rig I have built is about as close to real as a closet flyer can get…looks like a modern 182 RG Nav lll with all the goodies (including multi engine)…and I have what I consider the as close to real flying controls you can get…mostly virtual fly.
And serious modifications… my Ruddo pedals have power adjustable pedals…like my F150 has.. and if you ever use a virtual fly V3ERNO plus… you will never be satisfied with any other single engine control…you see…we real pilots twist the prop and mixture…example…pull the mixture until you get a rough engine (peak egt) and turn it 2 full turns in. Then look at the egt and fine tune twist.
Serious enough to make my gear switch out of PETG and light it with a DTA program
Serious enough to run air manager on 2 16" touch screens so I can glass and steam a 6 pack.
But…NOT serious enough to be called a serious simmer.
One of my best friends is a AA pilot and I get to fly the full size sims just south of DFW every now and then (always seems to be 3am)
Does that make me a serious simmer…nope!
I say a Serious simmer is someone who you could take from the desk and put them directly into the real aircraft and…they know more about flying it than you do… and could actually fly the aircraft. I took a guy who had only simmed for many years up with me for a “hundred dollar hamburger” at T67 and he knew the pre fight walk around better than I did…he actually checked the static ports… without the checklist in his hands…
Now…that’s what I call a serious simmer!
The latent (and in some cases, open and obvious) anti Xbox sentiment in many of these posts makes my skin crawl.
The majority of the “game NOT sim” claims are based (at least in part) on this, as the elitists think a “sim” should be inaccessible, or require significant investment, so the title “simmer” is hard earned and a badge of honour. They think that because “some kid on an Xbox” can claim to be a “simmer” it is somehow demeaning to them.
Admittedly, MicroSobo did themselves no favours on the Sim VS Game front with the Reno Races, but I personally don’t see this as detracting from the sim - it just adds nothing of value to my siming experience. However, I certainly don’t look down on someone because they play a “game” on the same platform I use to “sim”.
Obviously, it doesn’t end there, and there are many points of contention and lines in the sand, drawn by the pompous, that segregate those that are “worthy” and those that are not - Xbox is just one of the more obvious. It is basically a low grade form of bigotry, and like real bigots, many will not realise they are doing it, or will lie to themselves about their reasoning.
I used to try and engage with, and even help people on here, but I don’t post very often now, for this very reason. It is just too tiring to deal with people like that.
Edit: For the record, I do not own an Xbox and have spent a lot of money (relatively, for me - though I know some have spent MUCH more) on my PC and extra equipment (VR headset, yoke, throttle, dial boxes, etc) JUST for flight simming. This does not make me any more “serious” than anyone else.
First off all, couple off post here brought tears in my eyes form laughing. Really, some of you should definitely consider making a career in stand up comedy.
Anyway i need to admit there is certainly a level off seriousness in playing this sim.
I have been to flightsim conventions and meetings where this level is clearly visible. Something I always enjoy to watch from a little distance. Kids being introduced to the sim with a joystick while flying a cessna around their hometown, and beside them a fully dressed F16 pilot in a home build full motion cockpit (havent checked if the ejecton seat actually worked) flying a nice display for dozens off spectators standing behind him.
Some off the other “golden oldies” looked like they could not be bothered with “noob” questions because they were fully occupied and focussed by the real live ATC and their single pilot flying (i guess its was the PMDG) 737.
Offcourse the “noobs” like me that time, were completely blown away by the professional looking outfit, cockpit, fluent ATC talk, maps, checklists, manuals and procedures. Flabbergasted and drooling, we gave this pilot a big and warm applause after the succesfull landing of his 737. The smile on his face and his proud level were maxed out during his moment of fame with his 15 real life passengers (young and old). Later he admitted, he wasnt a real life pilot (because off medical issues) but has been simming for over 20 years. Trust me, If this guy would stand up during a mid flight “is there a pilot among the passengers” situation, I wouldnt be worried if he took over the controls (autoland only 
).
So much knowledge and professionalism was there. This guy deserved the stamp hardcore simmer from me. Some might think he was obsessed or just a plain clown dressed up like a real pilot in his 1:1 full scale cockpit. My opinion is that this was a guy with passion and not afraid to show it to the outside world and enjoys to teach others to make them as enthusiast like himself.
When we saw the kid mentioned above landing his cessna way of the runway but still intact, he got the same level off applause from his 15 real life passengers in the backseat of his cessna. The smile on this kids face after this “succesfull” landing: priceless
The guy that was instructing this kid was a real life flight instructor and wasnt “dressed for the occasion” and just playing the sim from a single screen PC with a joystick.
Was this real life flight instructor more/less or equally serious as the 737 simmer next to him?
Well I can’t tell you the answer to this question. One thing I can tell for sure and that is, that all off the above people (including the audience) had a great time.
And for me, the guy that flew in real life, on Vatsim, intercepted cessna’s with a 747 from Lukla, taught newbies how to get started and enjoys currently just flying around a bit without ATC but with as much live players around me as possible no matter what the do, and by the way doesn’t consider himself as a serious simmer; having a great time is the most important thing!
There is a joke among racing sim enthusiasts. You are a serious simmer once you have spent as much on your home sim rig as you would spend on a trackable Miata. So, once you have spent enough to do it IRL, you can consider yourself a serious simmer.
By that definition a serious flight simmer would spend more money on thier rig, mods, and Addons, than it would cost for a real world PPL…. Don’t tell my wife, I might be a serious simmer under that definition…. 
You are exactly right and I agree. MSFS, is meant to be enjoyed as a MS Flight Simulator Game product and is now being played by millions. What other game can you go out and see the entire planet at your leisure.
This right here! As much as we like to take a kick at photogrammetry, it really has pushed this game forward in what it offers. Flying around the globe is an enjoyable pastime now.
DISCLAIMER: I’m posting this solely as my own personal opinion as someone who enjoys flight sims. None of the following should be treated as an official statement from Microsoft or Asobo.
“Have you ever noticed that anybody driving slower than you is an idiot, and anyone going faster than you is a maniac?”
-George Carlin
People are going to have wildly different definitions on what constitutes a “serious simmer”. If someone takes it less seriously than you, then they’re a casual gamer who just likes screenshots and pretty scenery. If someone takes it more seriously than you, then they’re a rivet counter who is unable to have fun because they’re too obsessed over the smallest minutia being accurate.
The prevailing opinion I see posted most frequently here is that “serious simmers” are only the people who fly tubeliners or other complex aircraft on IFR flight plans, usually on a virtual ATC network like VATSIM, IVAO, or PilotEdge, all the while trying to follow real-world procedures and air regulations as closely as possible.
To me, that’s a very, very narrow definition of flight simming. I don’t do any of that. I fly (almost) exclusively GA planes in VFR. I deliberately ignore airspace restrictions and most other air regulations. I almost never start cold and dark and bother going through the full startup checklist. I get a kick out of doing ridiculous things like burning down the Champs-Élysées at full throttle in a Pitts Special, threading the needle through the Arc de Triomphe, rolling inverted and flying underneath the Eiffel Tower, then pulling up into a victory roll. I like zooming through canyons and valleys like I’m Luke Skywalker flying his T-16 Skyhopper. I enjoy competing in the Reno Air Race mode. And perhaps most of all, I really like exploring the world while flying chill, relaxing flights over interesting terrain while marveling at the beautiful scenery in MSFS. In short, I’m quite clearly not a Real Serious Simmer™ but am instead one of those filthy casuals I keep reading about, right?
Well, not so fast. I earned a Glider Pilot License at age 16 and Private Pilot License at age 17. I reckon I probably have more real world flying hours than over 99% of the people reading this post. When I was younger, I formerly worked at a flying school teaching ground school lessons to real student pilots. I’ve been into flight simulators for over 25 years (since the early-mid 90s). I’ve played every version of MSFS released since 1993 (MSFS 5.0 for DOS was my first entry to the series). I’ve also played pretty much every other popular flight sim that has been released over the past three decades, from civilian sims like Flight Unlimited, Sierra Pro Pilot, Fly!, and X-Plane to military sims like the classic Dynamix games (Red Baron, Aces of the Pacific, Aces Over Europe), Microsoft Combat Flight Simulator 1-3, Chuck Yeager’s Air Combat, Jane’s WWII Fighters, European Air War, Falcon 4.0, most entries from the IL-2 Sturmovik series, and many more that I’m forgetting to mention.
Since the August 2020 release of MSFS, I’ve spent over $2,000 just on flight sim peripherals (stick, throttle quadrant, rudder, TrackIR, and more) plus the cost of an ultra high-end gaming PC specifically so I can enjoy the new sim at the highest possible graphical settings. I attended Flight Sim Expo in San Diego last September, not on a work trip as a representative of the MSFS team but on a personal vacation as a fan and flight sim enthusiast. In addition to this product being my day job, I also consider Microsoft Flight Simulator to be my primary hobby.
So does that make me a “serious simmer” now? Who even knows. More importantly, who even cares? Enjoy Microsoft Flight Simulator however YOU want to enjoy it. I personally think flying IFR at FL380 in an A320 from EGLL to LIRF with the computer doing 98% of the flying and you spending almost the entire flight monitoring practically unmoving instruments and displays to be super boring, but I know many of you really, really enjoy stuff like that. I absolutely don’t judge you negatively just because you and I have different tastes in how we like to play flight simulators. As our Standard Operating Procedures say:
- The Skies are Open for All - Everyone is welcome to Microsoft Flight Simulator regardless of age, gender, race, sexuality, or creed.
- One World, One Community - No matter how you play – regardless of console, experience level, or reason – we are one community of aviation lovers.
I just have this to say for this topic: a serious simmer is a person who manages to get 617 KB of conventional memory free to use for Falcon 3.0 (617 KB were required by the Fighting Tigers expansion) - including the bloody Soundblaster emulation software for the (otherwise excellent) Gravis Ultrasound which alone required 30 KB, and a mousedriver. Yes, folks, we‘re talking kilobytes here, not megabytes, and for sure not gigabytes - and if you don‘t know about convenional memory, himem, autoexec.bat or emm386.exe then you cannot possibly be a „serious simmer“!
I’ll disagree a bit here, with the caveat that it depends what you’re doing on Vatsim. If you’re just getting VFR flight following in a no-traffic-density area, then yes, Vatsim is just more of a social activity (which can be fun.)
But if you’re attempting to simulate realistic IFR flying in complex, crowded airspace, then Vatsim (or any human ATC) is an integral part of the entire experience. If you take the same exact flight but perform it offline, and then again on a busy night on Vatsim, I guarantee that if you look at your tracks afterwards, you won’t have done the same thing, probably not even close. On Vatsim, you will need to be flexible and able to adjust your plan to match the controller’s. If you aren’t able to maintain SA and anticipate well, his plan will come as a surprise to you and then you’ll instantly be behind the plane as you’re trying to adjust. The controller can also be a valuable resource for you if/when things start going wrong. All these things are the way it works in reality.
If you like IFR simming and aren’t taking advantage of human controllers, you’re missing a good bit more than the “cherry on top”, you’re missing an integral part of the experience.
I say this not to be seen as a “serious simmer” (my phone doesn’t have a dramatic enough eye-rolling emoji for that term), but just as a plug for Vatsim. I totally understand it’s not the aspect of flying that interests some people, others aren’t comfortable with it etc, and obviously that’s all fine, we should all be having fun the way we want to. But if you’ve ever flown real-world IFR, or you want to see what that’s like, you owe it to yourself to try Vatsim at a busy airport sometime. It will completely change the experience for you.
It comes down to time spent and your attitude. I try to fly once each day and twice or three times on a weekend day. I use maps (topo and political), and I read about the cities and towns I fly over. I research the geological formations that are suddenly so accessible from the air, and I try to be the safest and considerate pilot I’m capable of being. I study pilot texts and read up about physics of flight. There are even 28 balsa airplanes hanging from the ceiling of my man-cave. I’m grateful for the chance this gives me to meet flight on my own terms. I get a lot from this experience and I feel like I am a serious simmer.
LOL, now this brings back memories! Prior to being hired on to the Microsoft Flight Simulator team, I spent the first 20 years of my professional career working in enterprise IT. I got my start in that field and learned more than I ever did in college about how computers work just by spending so many hours trying to make a boot disk with custom autoexec.bat and config.sys files that loaded my sound card and joystick drivers into high memory just so I could play Aces of the Pacific on the family 486. Of course, in those days the internet wasn’t what it is today, and there were no online guides or YouTube tutorials to teach you all that stuff. Looking back, I’m not even sure how I learned how to do that. Maybe by borrowing computer books from the library?
There were plenty of BBS’s to navigate back then on your 1200 Baud Modem…
Actually, if you’re talking 486, it was probably 2400 Baud…
Look at you bragging about your 1200 baud modem. Well la-dee-da Mr. Fancypants! I only had a 300 baud modem.