I’m located in the Greater Vancouver Area and of course, have a spent a decent amount of time exploring the surrounding regions, that I’ve travelled to by car/plane in real life.
New Zealand is probably the area I’ve enjoyed the most, they did a really great job with the World Update and it was the first time I purchased a 3rd party airport outside of my local area (NZA’s Mount Cook).
I’d consider purchasing a handful of 3rd party airports if I was keen to re-visit an area/region more regularly, but there’s just so many places to go, that I haven’t really spent more time in any particular area than the others yet.
Share where you live, how much of your local area, country and/or continent you’ve explored, and what your favorite or top 3 are that you enjoy most, that aren’t close to home.
Perhaps your answers will depend on what type of planes you’re using as well? I just like to rotate between my favourites to keep it interesting, and alternate between my Stick and my Yoke.
Airbus A320, Vision Jet, Kodiak 100 are my top 3 right now. Just dusted off the Bonanza G36 and TBM 930 as well.
I’m on The Island, just up the coast from The Village. I spent most of my time flying around the area between Seattle and the lower mainland. It’s a very satisfying place to fly with excellent scenery and a wide variety of airfields. I have my own mach loop around Lebanon which I fly now and then. Everyone should make their own loop; it’s a great way to compare planes and how they perform.
I try to avoid areas that have that fake quilted ground texture. After exploring the world for awhile you realize there is a LOT of it in the digital twin. I also find myself avoiding flat earth with farmland as far as the eye can see. I’ve heard a lot of good comments on New Zealand. I did just one circuit there on a test flight, but I am going to explore it some more.
Very cool, when you say The Village, whereabouts are you exactly? I used to live in Nanaimo and Parksville 20 years ago, Langley now.
Which airports have you purchased locally? Waiting for the Tofino one to go on sale but still waiting on XBOX Marketplace. I purchased Vancouver and Kelowna so far.
I thought the V would give it away. I did some time in Langley
I have a couple for Vancouver, Seattle Landmarks, and Portland where I never go anymore. How’s Kelowna? I flew around Kamloops yesterday. Nice area.
I found a new place that looks interesting today. KSFF Felts Field in Spokane. Lots of interesting terrain around there to explore. Some good canyons for booming around.
I’ve flown my local area around KJQF quite a bit early on, also around KAVL which is a nearby area I like. Over time I adopted other areas. Definitely love the pacific west coast, Seattle, Vancouver, Alaska, and BC. I also like to fly around Tampa FL quite a bit, the whole area has pretty good photogrammetry. I also fly around NYC and Los Angeles on a regular basis.
I think I have visited all the photogrammetry cities except the new ones in TX which I’ll get to soon.
I’ve been fairly methodical visiting different countries. I have about 1050 hours in the sim so far. I use Little Nav Map to log my flights and it captures the log into a sqlite database. I found a free database of airports and a country list that goes with it and now I’m able to write queries showing me which countries and airports I have never flown yet. Out of 247 countries, I’m down to 28 more countries that I have not flown in yet (based on departure airport country), all the others I have at least one flight so far, and of course some of the major countries I’ve flown lots of hours in. It is a big world with lots to see and I’m having a blast seeing it little by little in this sim. Hoping it all looks even better in 2024.
For that kind of low city level sight seeing, nothing really beats a helicopter for me. But I fly in VR and actually don’t think I could fly from inside the cockpit of a helicopter in 2d screen mode, I could do it from the outside, but only the 3d VR experience gives me the situational awareness to fly one from inside, they are tricky and take practice.
With a helicopter you can maneuver and hover around buildings, and I don’t find myself toggling out to external view like I do in fixed wing because the visibility is so good even from inside. I have most of the available helicopters, love the h145, got firends mini, and the new alouette is my new favorite helicopter.
But I also love fixed wing GA and STOL type aircraft, the beaver is what I love to fly around AK and pacific NW, love the fast fighter jets for big scale sight seeing like the alps or the grand canyon.
I have some of the airliners but haven’t really got into them yet, not much to see way up where they fly.
Have made my own Bush Trips using LNM & BTI and including a whole series across Canada, the first being Vancouver to Calgary via Kamloops, Jasper and Banff. There are 13 in the Canada series, 12 of them being LNM Projects, I just need to finish the waypoint detail.
Having been to Vancouver and journeyed on the Rockie Mountaineer its good to fly the route.
My UK Bush Trips are finished and in my MSFS Community folder ready to be flown. Favourite is our Lake District with the A 5 and many of the Lakes have been set up as Waterdrome’s to end/start various legs.
The Hawaiian Isles is a great place to fly. Specifically Kawaii, fly up to the summit of the Canyon then drop down into it and fly all the way down to the coast, flying just above the trees but as low as you can go.
Funny, I grew up in Langley and now live on the island…. Also I have lived on VI for over 25 years, and have no idea where this Village is either???
Oh and to where I fly??? Mostly up and down the (b)west coast between San Diego and Prince Rupert. When flying fighter jets and warbirds, it’s a tossup between Nellis, Hawaii, Duxford, and Auckland…. Airliners over mostly a North America, some European hops too.
Yeah, agree. Some of my first add-on airports were NZA and Flightbeam stuff. Superb place to fly the ATR-72, and surprisingly well covered in MSFS (as is eastern Australia — another favourite place of mine).
The UK (my home), Spain and Greece are also firm favourites; and again, pretty well covered by the third-party devs.
Small world! We’ve got an airport here but I don’t use it much.
Yeah the scenery along the west coast and inland with the mountain ranges is next-level, flying from BC south to California over the huge mountain peaks is something special! Feels like there’s 4 or 5 Mt. Everests in a row every 5-15 minutes.
The Kelowna International is good, but as you say, there’s just so much to do, I haven’t gone there in a while lol.
Yeah the northeast quadrant of Washington State is very good isn’t it, I was airport hopping around there a few weeks ago. Make your way through Idaho and down to Utah as well if you haven’t already!
I will open up the filters on the World Map and hide the POI’s sometimes, makes it easier to locate the starred airports, to check them all out. Another game changer is the starred airport map that a very cool guy made on Google Maps:
You can hide/show the POI’s and/or Airports to plan your route accordingly. Really impressive how he even color coded and labeled them based on which World Update they were released with. The original Airports and POI’s before World Update 1 are in their own group too.
Is The Village a nickname that Victoria locals came up with and I’ve never heard it before?
When I lived in Nanaimo 20 years ago, someone said it’s nickname was “Surrey by the Sea” lol. Surrey has a reputation in the Lower Mainland which I’m sure you’ve heard of, but boy has it grown/changed as of late.
I haven’t spent much time on the east coast, which areas did you enjoy most?
Alaska is very very good, especially for bush planes and stuff like that. There’s that one insane landing strip on the water, it was in the landing challenges. With live weather wind speeds it’s diabolical on a good day!
That’s pretty cool, those are some huge lakes aren’t they. I imagine float planes are common/popular around there? Is it usually pretty windy around there? I’ve read about those crazy “lake effect” conditions that dumped 3 feet of snow on Buffalo, NY last winter in 15 minutes lol.
Lovely area too, reminds me of one of the best TV series ever, Bloodline, filmed in Key West.
Was curious what the IFR High route would look like for an airliner, looks like a big detour to stay on the waypoints!
Not surprising but interesting how the populated areas (in yellow) are exclusively around the shore line (aside from Orlando I guess), too many alligators inland?
