Bojote, you're a pro and thanks for showing the immersive experience of using head tracking together with a virtual cockpit view.Another thing which might hold back people from flying online comes to my mind. The language one. Some aren't as good as you or even unable to proceed in English. Of course, there are "native" events or the opportunity to go in your language only if flying local routes (at least VFR), but you mainly talk in the aviation language and not everybody is willing or confident enough to go for it.But it's nice to see that you are trying to encourage people to try it. You grow along with your task in the online business. :(

"native" events or the opportunity to go in your language only if flying local routes

That was the main reason why I was so scared at first ;) I'm not a native english speaker! Anyway, the important thing is not to make excuses and try. After all, the reward is always proportional to the challenge we face.Take care!

None of the above...Because I love flying vatsim...You guys who say there's poor coverage... sure if you take into consideration the entire world. But if you use a program like ServInfo or VatSpy to see whos online you cane easily create a flight based on coverage. That's exactly what I do. In fact this way I get to fly to unusual destinations, or places where I normally would not fly. Then I get to learn new procedures and charts! So I urge people to download vatspy and see whos online...Also, fly VFR if you want, and if you have questions just ask!

With free time limited for me, my simming consists of a lot of flights that include pushing the Pause key and coming back later- or even having to save the panel-state and return another day to the flight. I would like to get involved more in flying with VATSIM (I am a memeber and have tried it several time, it's a lot of fun and very interactive- almost as much as my real instrument flying). Good poll, interesting. Bruce.

I'm with Chock - not sure there's enough coverage in the UK to make me want to fly online. I like the fact that my airports are busy (10 - 15% MTX Pro) and that doesn't happen with Vatsim or Ivao for me. Also, scaredy-cat, I admit :) But busy airports would make me overcome that, I am sure.

If you want traffic then I recommend flying during events, traffic are usually pretty heavy during those, but be advised, things are happening much quicker during events and ATC are not able to provide the same service they could during less busy hours (basically, they usually cannot guide a newbie, answer questions etc due to workload), so its recommended to be fairly proficient at the basics before you attempt to fly events.The reduced traffic compared to AI traffic offline is an issue, but its a very small consideration for me when I look at the upsides of having a real human controlling the airspace. You'll no longer get cut off by a 747 coming in from the left while youre on the localizer, traffic actually listens to and follows ATC instructions, unlike what the AI does. Its normal to be a bit scared at the start and you are not expected to know everything, its a learning environment and as long as you put NEWBIE in your flightplan remarks the ATC will give you extra attention. The fact that its a bit scary at first will almost certainly make you come back and fly more, I had this amazing adrenaline rush after finishing my first online flight, and I really wanted to start a new flight again right after I finished :D

With free time limited for me, my simming consists of a lot of flights that include pushing the Pause key and coming back later- or even having to save the panel-state and return another day to the flight. I would like to get involved more in flying with VATSIM (I am a memeber and have tried it several time, it's a lot of fun and very interactive- almost as much as my real instrument flying). Good poll, interesting. Bruce.

You could always keep your flights short - could do pattern work, or just a quick IFR flight and shoot a few approaches. That's what I do - 99% of the time I'm flying some sort of GA plane, less than 100 miles if prop, less than 200 mi if jet/turboprop.

You could always keep your flights short - could do pattern work, or just a quick IFR flight and shoot a few approaches. That's what I do - 99% of the time I'm flying some sort of GA plane, less than 100 miles if prop, less than 200 mi if jet/turboprop.

Thanks- you are correct, I can do short flights. Actually, you may have incentivized me to try that on VATSIM. I'll have to get back into the tutorials and re-acquaint myself first!Regarding VATSIM- what's a good link to a refresher? I fly with real ATC a lot more than virtual, and one doesn't necessarily help the other :)Thanks- Bruce.

With free time limited for me, my simming consists of a lot of flights that include pushing the Pause key and coming back later- or even having to save the panel-state and return another day to the flight. I would like to get involved more in flying with VATSIM (I am a memeber and have tried it several time, it's a lot of fun and very interactive- almost as much as my real instrument flying). Good poll, interesting. Bruce.

This pausing isn't a problem at all when going online. One shouldn't do this at the approach or in dense areas of course but you won't get anyone in trouble if you go London - New York and pause/save midflight together with disconnecting and continuing on the next day or after doing all family business. We are flying a simulator and everybody's aware of this. So the stewardess isn't virtual, but she might be your wife and usually outplays the ATC instructions. So do your passengers, your kids, your cat on the keyboard and your dog barking. :smile:This pause thing usually is covered in some FAQs around the forums of the big networks and, together with using the time acceleration feature, shouldn't be show stopper if done correctly. There are some things to consider when doing this, but it's far away from being complicated.You would be surprised how many disconnects (intentionally and unintentionally) happen to your fellow pilots and ATC people. That's the simulator circumstance in this little world.

Concerning the lack of coverage on the networks, I'd like to add some viewpoints.ryanbatcund gave some tips towards programs to use. Ones which show the current coverage and therefor allow you to see where to fly if you wish to get ATC guidance. That's a good tip of course. VATSpy, your Flight Sim Commander or ServInfo help here.The "no coverage" factor comes into play if you want to go to remote locations or not only the big airports on this planet.You won't have any trouble getting to a ATC covered New York area or Sydney, Frankfurt, bigger west coast US cities and so on. So the first circumstance where you won't get any ATC coverage at all might be the one when you chose to abandon those major areas.Sometimes you are lucky and they set up smaller fields at events or after a nice addon was released. Orbx PNW might have triggered some stuff around Seattle for example.But there's another much more common situation.As we are simulator pilots, we are usually flying after work is done, family is happy and after the other hobbies are covered too. So everybody connects in the after work hours to fly around or to control his Tower, Center or whatever.While pilots go all over the planet, ATC controllers often stay local. This is due to some rules or just for the love towards their own country. No matter which reason is active, the current situation shows e. g. Russia being online at their after work hours, later Europe comes up, the British guys join in and so on. Times overlap of course if those areas are close to each other.So if you are a European pilot, you connect at e. g. 7 pm and see your area coming online while the other ones (except for e. g. New York and areas like it) are asleep. This situation only changes at the weekend, where either you or they can connect at different times or at special events like Frankfurt Overload, where 24 hour coverage was made available (thanks for that by the way).So the ATC coverage area usually follows the current timezone, meaning "after work hours" all over the planet. For example, it will be hard for Europeans to catch some Australian coverage because the European 7 pm gives you a current 2 to 5 am in Australia and there won't be that many people available to control your favorite facility.Sydney is very active at VATSIM at most times, but you won't see the rest of Australia online (for obvious reasons) in this time segmentSo the coverage is very time dependent and if one wants to fly to anywhere else than his own area, he will see that the offline solution might be the denser one.But I can encourage everyone to do maybe "crazy" things to catch some ATC coverage at the weekends and fly in a completely different time zone. If you make yourself clear that you are flying and talking together with guys from thousands of miles away from your location, with a totally different environment, language (which sometimes affects the "English" aviation language greatly), political system and stability, viewpoints, and so on, you will surely be amazed how much fun this one community can be.I never had a bad experience on those "foreign" flights but many good ones. If you bring in an exotic plane or a not so exotic but a common one for this special area together with a fitting call sign, they feel very pleased (hopefully) and welcome every fellow pilot from very far away.You guys share the same hobby then, despite all those different circumstances mentioned before. A great experience to do this and to maybe return after some time.So it might be worth to catch that coverage just somewhere on the planet.

Maybe he he had some sort of techincal issue. I have never seen a controller leave without letting people know beforehand.

I've been flying on VATSIM for almost ten years and for the last two years mainly in the US, and my experience is quite the contrary. I find it quite annoying that US controllers constantly log off without giving any kind of warning or message. When I plan my flight, I usually look up on Servinfo which airport has the best coverage but often find myself chasing airports, ie I choose an airport, go there, start preparing my flight and when I am finished most ATC has left, so I go to the next airport with coverage. Many controllers only stay online for a short time, say half an hour, and from MY perspective it would be better if they didn't log on at all! :DIn Europe for some reason, ATC usually stay online much longer (and some VACC's also has webpages where atc states during which hours they will be online) and most report before logging off.Of course there are exceptions and many US controllers do state that they are leaving and DO stay online for hours and hours, although there is not a single AC in sight.So what do I do? Well, over time I have learned which areas and airport have the best coverage with the longest "endurance", so I usually plan my flight accordingly. The negative aspect of course being that I often find myself flying between the same airports... Also, in the splendid program Vroute there is a feature that shows which ATC is currently online along your route AND based on statistics, how probable it is that a sector along the route will be online. Or I just pick an interesting airport that happens to be online and hurry up with all the preparations (having all charts readily available on the iPad is a HUGE plus) and then simply acccept that I will fly most of the route without ATC and realize that other people actually have lives! :DAnyway, nine out of ten flights i do are flown on VATSIM. But every now and then I have to load up eg KORD with 100+ AI-planes on the tarmac and often end up just watching the activity!

There's several things that stopped me from flying on VATSIM (I used to fly often):1) I like the flight to be as realistic as possible, which means flying with the correct aircraft. Because I don't wanna sit behind my PC for 10 hours this means I have to do short-haul flights with aircraft like the 737 or a small airbus.However there are no proper 737's and small airbuses for FSX.. (even though they are only the most flown aircraft in the world :( )I have some great VFR aircraft but those airports don't have online ATC. I have some great jets (pmdg 747, md11, leveld 767) but those are for ocean crosses.I usually took the 767 and did shorthaul anyway because it resembles the 737 so much, but it gets boring.PMDG really need to release their NGX. Wilco's 737 don't work for me on win7 64bit.2) VATSIM needs more ATC in my opinion, merging with IVAO would be a start.Only the biggest airports in Europe have proper ATC coverage. But for the most part I have to wait for an event to do a good flight with ATC coverage.Even Amsterdam Schiphol can be dead in the evening.3) There needs to be a new, updated application to join the Vatsim servers.SB and FSinn are dated and bugged and haven't been updated in years.- They both still use overlays causing FSAA not to work when flying online. (ye, nhancer blabla.. I'm on Ati)- I'm unable to use SB4 because I get player.cpp errors every flight with the chance of crashing and ruining my 3h Vatsim flight.- I cannot use FSinn with Wilco's 737 because they're incompatible. (At least fscopilot.dll is....)- They both need new models.- They both could use some new features and better multiplayer sync etc.

I've been flying on VATSIM for almost ten years and for the last two years mainly in the US, and my experience is quite the contrary. I find it quite annoying that US controllers constantly log off without giving any kind of warning or message. When I plan my flight, I usually look up on Servinfo which airport has the best coverage but often find myself chasing airports, ie I choose an airport, go there, start preparing my flight and when I am finished most ATC has left, so I go to the next airport with coverage. Many controllers only stay online for a short time, say half an hour, and from MY perspective it would be better if they didn't log on at all! :DIn Europe for some reason, ATC usually stay online much longer (and some VACC's also has webpages where atc states during which hours they will be online) and most report before logging off.Of course there are exceptions and many US controllers do state that they are leaving and DO stay online for hours and hours, although there is not a single AC in sight.So what do I do? Well, over time I have learned which areas and airport have the best coverage with the longest "endurance", so I usually plan my flight accordingly. The negative aspect of course being that I often find myself flying between the same airports... Also, in the splendid program Vroute there is a feature that shows which ATC is currently online along your route AND based on statistics, how probable it is that a sector along the route will be online. Or I just pick an interesting airport that happens to be online and hurry up with all the preparations (having all charts readily available on the iPad is a HUGE plus) and then simply acccept that I will fly most of the route without ATC and realize that other people actually have lives! :DAnyway, nine out of ten flights i do are flown on VATSIM. But every now and then I have to load up eg KORD with 100+ AI-planes on the tarmac and often end up just watching the activity!

Exactly what my proposed solution above is trying to address.Shez

I have some great jets (pmdg 747, md11, leveld 767) but those are for ocean crosses.

It is totally realistic to fly a 767 on a two hour flight OR cross the pond! That's the beauty of the 767, being so flexible!

I've been flying on VATSIM for almost ten years and for the last two years mainly in the US, and my experience is quite the contrary. I find it quite annoying that US controllers constantly log off without giving any kind of warning or message. When I plan my flight, I usually look up on Servinfo which airport has the best coverage but often find myself chasing airports, ie I choose an airport, go there, start preparing my flight and when I am finished most ATC has left, so I go to the next airport with coverage. Many controllers only stay online for a short time, say half an hour, and from MY perspective it would be better if they didn't log on at all! :D....

I do agree about controllers usually staying on for longer periods of time in Europe compared to the US, but I thought the poster complained about a controller leaving without warning while he had planes on his frequency in his airspace. I have yet to see this in my ~400 hours. This is not something that happens frequently.