I had the exact same question when I bought MSFS in Decemeber when they released the VR compatible update. I was thinking the airports would be the least important part of the flight, and I wondered why they didn’t spend time doing scenery and city packs instead, like the sites you spend time flying to rather than the places you take off and land.
6 months on though and I can certainly see why airports are so popular.
Firstly, the more you get into simming, the more time you spend in them. If you play realistically, and go through all the pre flight checks, startup checks, ATC requests etc the first 10 - 15 minutes are going to be spent at the airport so you’ll be seeing it up real close. If it’s a local airport, and a popular starting base, you’ll be there a lot. If you’re also doing full landings, taxiing back to parking and shutting down the plane you’ll spend a few minutes at the other end as well. So a fair chunk of the flying experience takes place at airports, and being all at ground level you really notice the extra details of custom built airports.
Secondly, if like me you start to get into the hobby, you’ll probably find yourself looking at Youtube to see the airports in real life, and it’s just so much more satisfying to see your MSFS version accurately represent the real thing, even down to local cafes, peculiar buildings and monuments etc. I imagine for real pilots who sim, an airport they visit in real life that didn’t correspend to reality in the sim would be utterly immersion breaking.
I have found that now only fly to and from hand made airports from now on. They are just so much more satisfying. You don’t have to buy them. I’ve only purchased one airport mod so far, and downloaded the rest from Flightsim.to for free.
In my local county of Devon, and its neigbouring Cornwall, a community modder called Superspud has expertly recreated Exeter, Newquay, Salcombe, Lands End (Althought Asobso have done a great one here to) and the Scilly Isles and they are all so well done that it’s just a pleasure to fly to them all.
I’ve found Youtube channels from hobbyists who sly from these airfields. For example there is a Youtube Channel called Gull Perch Flyer where a guy from Salcombe airfield records flights and little historical flying visits and I love watching them and seeing just how closely Superspud’s mod matches the real thing. It’s like I’ve been there, even though I haven’t.
The one airfield I have bought so far is Perranporth from the Just Flight wesbite. It’s a lovely former RAF World War 2 airfield on the cliffs on Cornwal that makes for a great place to start and end flights. It has a war memorial there, a rather quirky terminal building and a bunch of extra details, like a caravan park, tyres to mark the runway barriers, and static people populating the place.
For less than £10 it’s been great value as I’ve flown to and from there over a dozen times now. I’ll likely only pay for airports that are fairly local to me, or areas that I intend to use a bases for many flights. For places I might see only a couple times I’d grab a free one from flightsim.to, as they are all done to a high standard.
In summary though, I have to say airport mods are really important to me now for improving the overall flight experience, especially if you start from cold and dark and then taxi to shutdown at the end. At Salcombe I literally drive my plane into the hanger to shut down, and start from there again when I take-off!
