With a lot of the videos I see on YT, it appears there is a big appeal in putting yourself in the pilot seat of an airliner because of the thrill of flying passengers around. On a lot of these videos, the pilot goes through the checklist as closely as they could if they were actually on the plane, the flight attendants can be heard talking to the passengers, and passengers can even be seen boarding. I’m guessing that there’s something about the responsibility of getting passengers from A to B safely and comfortably that makes it appealing.
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Good point - raising the virtual stakes is a big part of it. The GA part doesn’t ever have the same stakes in terms of the life of so many other humans. I still think there are ways to raise the stakes and pressure for the latter, but again, you have to kinda know what’s involved and take it pretty seriously.
This is an important point; it’s easy to be a terrain tourist. It took me forever to break out of that habit.
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Interesting question. Perhaps because they have great jobs flying great planes? Not to mention they are the great at aviating, navigating and communicating? In all honesty, I’m not sure why you appear to have an issue with these airline pilots who are popular?
I didn’t read into it that there was an issue. It seemed an honest question into the psychology of what we enjoy and get from simming and why most people seem to choose airliners in that regard.
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Lorry and train simulators are popular too, go figure.
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I believe what @CharlieFox00 is saying, is that when we fly like real pilots in the sim, the experience becomes much more rewarding. I completely agree. I’ve flown full milsim missions online that I will never forget. Completing an airliner flight with all the correct procedures must bring the same great feeling. But, I can’t resist an aircraft that gets me there with just a few clicks.
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That’s exactly it. Most people aren’t exposed to the in’s and out’s of GA versus airliners. I’ll fly airliners, too, but I’m kind of an GA evangelist and have found it extremely rewarding in real life and the sim. I’ve found using real-world experience to simulate real-world practices is by far the best way to achieve that enjoyment.
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I may be WAY off base here, but I think the general population (i.e. non-pilots looking to play a simgame) consider airline pilots ‘professionals’ while the guy flying a Cessna 172 at a local airport is “just some guy who can fly a plane in good weather.”
I think some egos are rewarded more when people can see themselves at the controls (even if just an Xbox controller and a mouse/keyboard) of a $100 million airliner, the fate of hundreds of passengers in their hands. They feel more like a ‘real pilot.’
Nothing wrong with that, just as there’s nothing wrong with being a virtual tourist guy with a fairly extensive and expensive C172 mockup cockpit.
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I get that. I recreated the flight from the movie The High and the Mighty using the pmdg dc-6. I think the movie plane was a dc-4 but close enough. I watched the movie and took notes of the details so I could recreate it as close as possible even down to the amount of fuel they started with. Simulating engine failures, and so forth. I could only use the navigation technics they had in the 50’s. They landed on fumes and I barely made it also.
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excellent idea!
The overwhelming majority of aircraft on the VATSIM network are airliners and controllers love it when the meta is shaken. I fly under VFR quite often and I’ve personally had controllers tell me it’s nice to see someone ask for flight following. Additionally when I fly under IFR they enjoy clearing me for an approach to an airport not used all too much on the network. For controllers it’s typically the same thing again and again. Some well used airport, some SID / STAR used often, some approach used over and over. I personally find very little interest in flying airliners as they’re just boring to me. In MSFS and XP I have many top-shelf GA aircraft and I have a blast.
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Back in the FS9 days, tubes were more fun, but less challenging. Set up a flight plan, jump into a 747, hit Ctrl+E to start the plane (no APU), push back, go fly. Set the autopilot and then go eat supper and watch the game. Just keep an ear out for the radio calls or you’ll get dropped from ATC service. Or better yet, don’t bother with ATC until you’re almost to your destination. For me, the most fun part was landing the big beast. You had to think ahead because it was slower to respond to control inputs.
These days, even the default planes are much more complex, including the FMS systems that are pretty much required for a realistic flight. I find those to be tedious and boring, so I lose interest real quick. But that doesn’t mean that I don’t appreciate realistic complexity. I just recently picked up the Black Square King Air Steam Overhaul package, and I’m in love! There’s just enough complexity to make it interesting without being tedious. Plus,
As for what’s outside the window, FS9’s default scenery was horrible compared to today. Autogen trees and buildings were sparse at best, and terrain mesh looked more like mashed potatoes than mountains. But… If you had (more than) a few GB if free disk space, you could download plenty of freeware mesh that would make terrain vastly improved. I had full coverage of the US, Alaska, Hawaii, and parts of Europe. I also had more storage space invested in mesh than the entire rest of the sim. But at least that mesh made mountain flying much more enjoyable.
If you want a real challenge in the current sim, try Innsbruck to Lukla. You’ll be treated to some of the best views and one of the craziest landings you’ve ever done - and you won’t do it in a tube!
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- Because airliners are the real deal. Little boys want to become astronauts or crypto-traders or firemen or pro athlete players or youtubers or airliner captains. No one dreams of becoming a Cessna 172 pilot when they grow up.
- Because they make sense in career addons such as OnAir and the like. GA is just too slow and tedious for these addons (I know, I’ve tried this).
- Because they tend to require much more preparation in a flight sim, which usually means more fun for many people.
- Because GA VFR in clear weather and away from clouds can become repetitive after a few flights.
- Because no one in VATSIM cares about you if you’re flying GA VFR and 99% of the rest of the traffic is airliners.
- Because real world GA VFR may be big in the US where every farmer has an aircraft (or they once did) but it’s nearly negligible in much of the rest of the world where owning an aircraft is equal to owning a submarine. The reason why obtaining non-US VFR maps to use in a sim can become quite a challenge for most countries. Either there aren’t many detailed ones with VRPs and everything, or they’re not free (no, Skyvector is a far cry from a detailed VFR map for most non-US countries). Most simmers outside the US and perhaps the UK do not have a “local airport”, it’s an alien notion to them because small rural airports aren’t that abundant and GA is only something they’ve seen on the web.
Sure, GA VFR also requires planning in the real world, but MSFS isn’t real life and nothing can break, no weather can kill you, you can always pop up the VFR map to see where you’re at, there’s no realistic ATC to emulate complex VFR procedures in complex airspace corridors (though SayIntentions.AI are working towards that goal), no one can take your license or report you if you’re flying too low or if you enter IMC conditions when you shouldn’t and so on and so forth.
So VFR can become boring after some time. And I’m saying that after having logged hundreds of hours in WBsim/JPL C152 and 172 and Piper PA28 a few other relatively study level small a/c.
What made me return to GA VFR was SayIntentions, as I now have almost realistic ATC interactions across all airspaces and all towered airports. I expect that with MSFS2024 looking so good (and hopefully more optimized) I’ll be flying VFR even more often. But once you get to the path of CJ4s and CRJs and 737s and 320s, to me there’s no real turning back. GA VFR will always be a hobby and a break from the more “serious” and “pro” airliner flights.
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What about GA IFR? Any number of choices of IFR platforms, let’s use the A2A Comanche as an example. Can fly IFR, it can break, suffer from icing, etc etc. Also, GA remains popular outside the US in Australia, New Zealand, the UK, France, Switzerland, Germany, etc. More restricted of course in Africa and Asia broadly speaking.
You have some valid points, but for others it seems like you’re equating light aircraft use with day, cloud-free environments only.
Token side note for all to specify that GA doesn’t define aircraft type, it defines flight mission. You can have a “GA” 737 or larger.
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Patently false
Ever done an A-Z cross country flightplan from scratch for a Comanche (GPS disabled), including a weather brief, w&b, performance calcs, airport info, and the preflight walkaround? I wouldn’t say an airliner has any less prep unless you’re also doing those aspects yourself, which isn’t very realistic (dispatchers typically do that part).
This applies to all kinds of flying
There aren’t great computer-driven, in-sim options, but there are plenty of external offerings with realistic, human ATC in which many folks can partake.
Granted, it definitely contains the largest share of those kinds of operations, and it does make it tougher to emulate outside of several countries.
I’m not saying one kind of flying is “better” than the other, but those are pretty bold claims that lack perspective. I’m saying GA can be as rewarding as flying airliners given some information and perspective.
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Depends. I’ve never heard of anyone or never read about anyone with such a “dream”. Perhaps in parts of the US and a couple of other countries where GA is super popular?
I would very much find this part fascinating if there were real random failures and if weather could actually have a significant (read: dangerous) effect. But as long as my C152 JPL can fly to the middle of a hurricane and escape unscathed, detailed preparation seems more like a waste of effort to me. I do get the point though. I just wished there were additional sim factors affecting GA compared to what happens now where flights are a careless walk in the park.
Yes but an airliner has bigger margins and more complex systems and procedures to withstand bad weather and low visibility. GA on the other hand is like “lol, even if I can’t see the runway, I can still land almost wherever and most likely make it out alive, I’m not afraid of gusts or windshears or anything else that might rip my wings apart or turn my little aircraft upside down (as opposed to what would happen in real life)”.
One thing I would have appreciated is the ability to have aircraft to aircraft collisions. This way I would care about approaches in small airports with other GA traffic (which is rare in MSFS anyway, unless you start using external addons). Also I would care about TA/RA alerts in airliners. Now even if resolution advisory starts yelling “traffic, descend, descend” why should I do that? There’s no point. Give us aircraft collisions (under specific conditions, so that multiplayer spawns at the same parking spot won’t cause accidents). This would make GA flying the pattern much more realistic.
With VATSIM being 99% unicom-only across most of the planet for most of the day and having very few towered airports (if we leave the centers aside), I’ve given up on that idea after several hundreds of hours flying under human ATC (more than half of them flying GA VFR/IFR aircraft). Ever since I switched to SayIntentions for 90% of my flights, I’ve found I’m enjoying it much more as an overall experience, with full coverage and free of unicom’s.
So yeah I’m not saying that GA sucks and airliners are the only thing on the planet. I’m trying to think why I (and presumably many others) have gradually grown into liking airliners more.
And this is right after I’ve finished my only flight for this week, a 90min relaxing VFR in my C152 JPL over lovely Canadian forests and lakes.
A significant number of MSFS users either fly smaller aircraft exclusively and another cohort will fly GA as part of an “as the mood takes you” sort of strategy, me included.
The apparent popularity of airliners at the moment has probably been bolstered by the arrival of a rather significant example of probably one of, if the, most complex aircraft, at least non-military, of this age.
Give it a few months and balance will be restored again. 
I think that’s fair - and it was included in my original statement. GA not being equally prevalent worldwide is a barrier to entry to that modality. But there’s a rather large segment here. And no, it’s not as popular a dream, but to say “nobody…” (I’d actually say flying fighter jets would be by far #1 on the aviation dream list for most younggins).
I think there are just as many factors as anything else, as the outcome of flying into adverse weather isn’t any greater for one modality over another.
Again, same as last - you can break an airliner in the sim for want of all of the same. And I can get down to 200-1/2 in my GA planes - there are only rare instances when airliners fly in worse conditions, though they most always can. The biggest difference between the types of aircraft is the level of automation and the performance to get me around or above and away from the crud, quickly. I generally choose to fly mostly without automation as a self-challenge and enjoyment intensification (and it’s also realistic to the aircraft I fly IRL).
Either way, we can sim to whatever level of realism we want, airliners or GA. I see plenty of folks pranging 747s off the runway, or getting obvious spatial D when the automation isn’t set up, or doing silly things like flying a A380 into Courchevel (which is totally okay!). The difference to me is the airliners have a much larger meta and support network to do things realistically because of the things I originally pointed out. Simply put: most people don’t know the same side of realism in GA. GA missions also incorporate a much wider range of airport pairings, aircraft, and routings (and adversity), so what is known gets diffuse quickly and has to be applied situationally.
Again, not saying GA is better than airliners, at all. Just offering some perspective and mostly anecdotal observations into the differences and what might play into the psychology of the desires. It would be cool to have some data.
BTW - I generally enjoy living in the in-between world of turboprops or turbocharged aircraft. Fast enough to get to places far away, but slow enough to get into small airports, systems depth to satisfy the button-pusher in me, and can outclimb some, but not all weather, so staying alert and ahead of the aircraft matters.
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This will never grow old.
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