My 12yo son convinced me to sign up for the xbox game pass for pc and showed me this new flight sim game. Little did I know that I would become totally obsessed… I’m currently stuck at home with 3 kids as our region is locked down with Covid restrictions. Can’t go to work, kids are home schooling, pretty depressing really. MSFS has been my saviour ! I have really loved the intellectual challenge of mastering smooth flight, taking off, landings, navigation, cold start ups taxiing, working the radio. I’m even considering incorporating live ATC with Vatsim. All good clean nerdy fun. I’m almost up to 50 hours ! I spend most nights watching YouTube videos of pilots talking about the perplexing joy of various navigation techniques. There is so much more to learn and I am looking forward to immersing myself in the process.
I’m keen to hear from other newbies who have discovered the joy of flight swimming. Also any oldies who remember back to when they started !
Glad to hear you are having so much fun. Its good to see happy posts like this.
Another nice way to fly is to play LiveATC in the background, you can hear how the real pros do it. Nice when you’re tooling about in a C172 or similar. Click on the map to choose a location or type in the airport ID: https://www.liveatc.net
I hear you on the lockdown. I have been alone in this small shoebox studio flat of mine for 2.2 years and without PC gaming I would have been very depressed. Its a nice escape from the harsh reality of the real world.
Same here! Did some flight simming until 20 years ago, and started last year again and quite addicted now. The combination of navigation, aircraft systems, visual experience, building your home cockpit, programming etc is just awesome. And it has really helped me through a dark Covid winter period this year.
Started simming in the late 90’s. Then I became a pilot IRL and have been flying the last 20 years, mostly on the Boeing 737 series. (300,800,MAX). I have also built a full size B737-MAX-8 Cockpit at my home which are running msfs2020. Just Love it
I have been obsessed with it since the release of MSFS (I was obsessed with FS2004 a while back too, but I stopped simming after FSX), to the point I tried flying a piper arrow for the first time with a friend and I will start doing my PPL on June.
I have to say I was impressed by how similar it was flying the plane in real life than MSFS, most of the help I needed was with some procedures (checklists and coms).
Even though my first Microsoft flight sim was 5.0 and I “played” some sims here and there every once in a while, it was only until MSFS and explicitly SU5 (might be coincidence, but with the increased framerate I did feel a lot more in control of the plane) when I suddenly started to become really addicted to this sim and flying in general.
Up until that point I never really looked too much into all the complexity behind flying. Full throttle and off I went, buzzed around for 10mins in some random city and was done for a couple of weeks.
Since then I’ve stocked up on a yoke, throttle quadrant, rudder pedals, navigraph subscription. Flying circuits in the C152 and TBM almost daily. I’m reading SIDs and STARs, doing trips in the A32NX all over the world. I’m currently halfway through reading the PHAK and already have the Pilot Flying Handbook and Instrument Flying Handbook on my shelf to delve into once I’m done with that.
Not sure why it finally clicked after all these decades, but maybe for me the visuals finally reached a point where I could now really pretend to be in an actual plane and not some pixelated/vectorized estimation of the world.
Been a fan of flight (and space) simulation since the 80’s/90’s so, obsessed? Maybe. Recently? Maybe not
I do think we are seeing a bit of a golden age for flight and space simulation though. There are now plenty of good titles which are proving to have staying power and what is happening with the peripherals has never been better. The smaller companies like VKB, Virpil and Honeycomb are shaking things up with what had become a stagnant 2 brand marketplace and 3d printing has really made self build projects a lot easier.
All this AND being locked in a room with my Gaming kit for over a year!!!
I am on Xbox have over 100 hours and might actually go for a real flight soon in small ga plane.Not trying to get a pilot license but have a chance for free and bucket list thing
If 1998 is recently, then yes I’ve become obsessed. Well, everyone needs a hobby. My brother builds train sets and plays with trains. I think my hobby is more mature.
I would mess around with sims since the 80’s. But they were so bad looking it was hard for me to get immersed I guess. I wanted to like them, but would get bored or lacked imagination. BUT… That was me ~5 years ago with FSX, went all in controllers, pay ware, etc… Fun times! Still always learning. Geez, where are you to be so locked down!? Sounds terrible.
For me I enjoyed MSFS from the start. Took a Dahar TBM and flew all around the globe. My interest really took off when VR landed, it’s just so immersive in my HP Reverb G2 and since SU5 VR is just looking absolutely incredible with the gains in performance. VR and MSFS with the world data streamed in is a unique and amazing experience.
I was obsessed with Flight Sim waaaay back in the late 90’s and early naughties, but fell away for a while, then got back into around 2017 with FSX:Steam Edition… Then MSFS dropped… Then VR… OMG I cannot get enough… 2-3 hours a night after work…
Good for you man! Seriously! This is kind of the same thing I did. Around the time Covid started I was really sick with Valley Fever infection. I couldn’t do anything so I started simming. (started on xplane). It’s been exactly as you say, learning cold start ups, traffic pattern, radio coms, navigation, IFR flights, ILS approaches. I love it. The intellectual challenge of being adept at all the ins and outs of aviation has been so satisfying. So welcome aboard to you and happy landings.
