My flights usually don't last longer than a couple of hours, but when I'm bored I usually read aircraft manuals or other books.

I bought a rowing machine, I hook it up to my laptop and you can row races and stuff online, plus I've lost about 15 lbs in the last couple months. Exercise while enjoying your favorite hobby, nothing beats it.

Surf the web, chat with friends, watch videos etc. Stuff like that. I rarely sit and watch the clouds pass by in the VC

I tend to open up my laptop and chat with friends, and otherwise I'll watch a movie, TV series or read a good 'ol book.

If its a short flight, IE 3-4 hours then I will play on the laptop.If I do a long flight IE around 15 hours, then I will set it up late at night, a couple of hours before I sleep, and hope in the morning the plane has not crashed, or more importing, the computer!

Ok, here's a true one. Thinking about that standard scenery I'm watching to get replaced by that nice payware offer from this or that dev. Or trying to find out if that area I'm looking at is already available as addon.Or fighting some non flight sim fans around which don't get tired of stating that I'm enjoying the most boring hobby on the planet.Where's the first guy to truly state that he's monitoring the aircraft systems throughout the whole flight then? Talking about 3+ flights, so no cheating here. :(

What does everyone do while cruising? Had a particularly long flight yesterday but was bored out of my mind so I went 8x simulation speed until I was 80 miles out. How do you kill time?

I haven't sped up the sim in a very long time. The longest flight I've made is 4 hrs, so I watch a movie or something on tv.

Enabling the random failures on some of the complex birds and watching the printer spitting put that QRH. :(

Ok, here's a true one. Thinking about that standard scenery I'm watching to get replaced by that nice payware offer from this or that dev. Or trying to find out if that area I'm looking at is already available as addon.Or fighting some non flight sim fans around which don't get tired of stating that I'm enjoying the most boring hobby on the planet.Where's the first guy to truly state that he's monitoring the aircraft systems throughout the whole flight then? Talking about 3+ flights, so no cheating here. :(

I do actually regularly monitor the aircraft systems, usually every 15 - 30 minutes or so. Just flip through all the pages available through the EICAS or whatnot. 747 has quite some, with the 767 you're done in a sec. I do this for every flight I do, whether it's long or short, so if I'm flying, I'm always at the computer, just not alwyas looking at the screen (nose burried in a book for example).

If the flight is so long that I am not going to stay in front of the computer and stare at the screen or for that matter, want to stare at the screen, then I use 4x to 8x time compression. Frankly, I dont see the point in starting a flight then going and doing something like going to bed or going and watching t.v. If your going to step away from the computer and participate in other activities why not use time compression? I used to do these 8 to 12 hour flights where I would fly to altitude, put it on autopilot, then go watch tv, go to bed or do something else, then come back to start the descent and fly the arrival etc. After doing this a few times, I finally realized that I was wasn't getting anymore out of the experience by doing it all in realtime when I wasn't even in front of the computer. Since then I started using time compression for the cruise and get the same enjoyment as well as being able to do a lot more flights in the same amount of time.

First, I try to set up flights that are the correct length depending on how much time I have. I find 3-5 hours is a good amount of time.After I level off, I go about my business - make dinner, watch hockey, watch TV with the wife... She usually goes to be much earlier than me so I land after she goes to bed.I also have my laptop right next to my FS rig so I may surf the net.

I rarely fly flights over 1 hr. So if it's longer I'm browsing the net. I never use time comp though - 90% of my long flights are on vatsim.

Monitor fuel and chart my progress on a plotter. I too have a second computer here in the office that I use for surfing on. I also watch DVD's and or read. I do not use time compression and my longest flight is just over eight hours.Some longer legs from my blog....http://altstiffsim.blogspot.com/2011/02/amsterdam.htmlhttp://altstiffsim.blogspot.com/2010/06/kpdx-and-cascade-mountains.htmlhttp://altstiffsim.blogspot.com/2010/02/lets-go-to-hawaii.html

I used to do crazy long flights like from Chicago to Shanghai. At the time I used simfly so I could take off before going to work, then monitor the flight at work, then come home and land. The only downside was a few times I was at work I'd see my 747 flying crazy, losing altitude, then crashing and all I could do was watch and feel bad for my virtual passengers. Now I don't normally do a flight over 3 hours and use time compression if its longer. I'll still leave the computer to watch tv, eat dinner and such though, but at least I can take over if the plane starts acting up.

I look for targets of opportunity.Al