Edit: ^ ^Suppose to be 'your' not 'you', grrrr.

 

I'm finding it shocking how much time this game consumes.

 

Last night I tried to do a simple 72nm flight with all the procedures involved(cold/dark, startup, warmup, loading passengers, atc, taxi, wait for traffic, etc)(which I'm sure I'm still probably not totally following properly), it took almost an hour and half.

 

Do you guys just save usually and resume later? I'm using Ideal Flight and seems if I save, when I reload the game doesn't remember the nice kneeboard info that RF injected.

 

Where do you find the time to fly? Especially you airliner guys, must take several hours to do a flight unless you do 16x game speed or something.

Oh I know. If I do a full flight it's usually no more than 2-3 hours and I only have time once a week. I do occasionally get in a do some pattern work which is fun, and can't forget about the times when I just takeoff and quit after the aircraft is cleaned up. Cold and dark to takeoff can take a while if you're not used to the flows. I will save a flight if it's longer in duration, but I haven't figured out how to save real-time weather from active sky yet.

 

This hobby is amazing but you've got to get outside every now and then. I can't sit at my computer and do a trans-atlantic all night. Not sure what I'm going to do when the 777 is out.

That's exactly what I was wondering. I usualy do 1 hour flights from LTAC (the flights I do in real life as a passanger) but for long hauls I don't know how it is possible.

1 to 3 hrs. No interest in 74 or 777's.

I only fly the B744 and go through the complete sequence of events from 'cold and dark'. My shortest flight is about 1.5 hrs, and the longest about 2.5 hrs. I always use the Sim Rate, though rather carefully whilst in climb or descent (depending on my ROC or ROD). Once cruising, I'm at 16X, since I can't sit at the computer all afternoon, evening and night!

 

To make it a little more interesting, I plan one long flight, but do a stopover midway to take on pax and fuel. It gives the sense of continuity. I always save the game at various intervals (esp. after taxiing to the runway, mid-flight several times, TOD, etc,, since I never know when a CTD, or freeze may suddenly take place. I never come back to a flight later in the day or week - the flight has to start and complete in the one session. I generally aim to cruise at FL400, or as my pen name indicates: Angels40, which is the old term for Flight Level Four Zero Zero.

The only time I get to fly is on Saturday and Sunday afternoons (usually), as other chores and commitments are important (!) too. But that work gets done rather expeditiously and with zest, as I'd rather be flying. Only after a good flight, do I really feel that I've had a profitable and memorable weekend.

 

Chris

I like to use time compression to speed up the flights. That way I can do a 500 nm flight in the Duke Turbo, for example, from "cold and dark" to shut down in a couple of hours. I'll use FltPlan.com for my planning, load that into PlanG v3 and save to FSX. Then I use AS2012 to load the weather and RCV4 for ATC. I always fly by the numbers, fly procedures and prefer flying the RNAV approaches using the RXP GNS530WAAS. By using FSX Sim Rate of x4 or x8 while in cruise over the "fly over" country, it keeps the longer flights to a manageable time. I don't fly on line or for a VA that requires automatic flight logging.

I've been doing more tweaking than flying lately, it's a bad habit to get into (am I alone in this assumption?) but you have to get everything right after all!

 

I generally fly tube liners for a VA to do a 1hr flight can take me at least 2 1/2 hrs from turning on the pc, and not allowed to increase the sim rate so it's all done in real time. I'm seriously considering making a check list for my preflight set ups as I invariably forget to do something in the right order arghh...

 

When it all goes smoothly I can rest easy. It's such a time consuming activity. So only get chance to complete one or two flights per month. The rest of the time I just go sight seeing and also while away quite a few hours in Flight as I find it so much fun to just chill, as I don't have to worry about the stuff you have to consider in FSX

 

I do lots of long flights. But I cheat.

 

When I do a long flight -- something like Atlanta to Johannesburg, Newark to New Delhi, Houston to Amsterdam (the first of the United 787 flightrs), I set up the flight before I go to bed. After reaching my cruise altitude, I make sure the auto-pilot is working and usually put the ATC in a position where it won't bother me. Then I go to bed. After all, I figure that these flights are not one man deals. My imaginary co-pilot can watch things and deal with air traffic control while I go to bed.

 

All of the big modern airliners pretty much fly themselves. I have come to the conclusion that a pilot's job is pretty boring, especially on the long haul flights. In fact, it seems that most of the interesting work (i.e. short hops) is done by junior pilots flying regional jets. Their reward for being promoted to a senior pilot is getting to watch a big jet fly itself for hours on end. Of course, they do tend to get the big bucks for doing this, and there are more lives at stake.

 

I have found there are easy ways to cheat the ATC. When given a handoff, one can respond, but then not tune in the new frequency. When one comes back to flight simulator, the correct frequency will appear in your ATC window, and you can proceed just as if you had been responding to the handoffs all night. The funny thing about this is that for about a minute or so after you reconnect with the ATC, it will direct you to each waypoint that you missed during the night. Eventually, however, it will get to your current waypoint, usually instructing you to resume your own navigation.

 

If it is a long way to the next handoff, or I have been waiting for it a long time, I will simply go to bed. Of course, the ATC will cancel my IFR flight. But there is an easy fix for this (after saving, of course). Namely access your scenery files from the world menu, and change something. Turn on a scenery item, or turn it off (the originating airport is a good choice to turn off), or move an item (any item) up or down. After you exit the scenery menu, the program will recompile your scenery database and return you to your flight. When you access ATC again, you are presented with the option of asking for IFR clearance. You can do this without reloading your flight plan -- and all of the problems that entails, and be on your merry way, as if you did not sleep through most of the flight/night. (By the way, has anyone noticed that most eastbound flights across the pond tend be be overnight? -- Leave Denver at about 6:00 p.m. and be at London Heathrow at shortly after noon the next day.)

 

Another problem is fuel. I use actual flights. However, it seems that most of my planes run out of gas before I reach my destination. There is an actual United flight between Newark and New Delhi. It is non stop. But in game, I run out of fuel by the time I hit Sweden. So either the information from United is incorrect, or flight simulator is not properly allocating the fuel. Or perhaps I am just not managing the fuel correctly. In any case, until I figure this out, I just give myself unlimited fuel. I feel no guilt about this because the real world flight is able to make it without running dry.

 

This actually gives me the best of both worlds. There is nothing quite like the feel of power when taking off with a 777. (Bwahahaha) But I don't have to watch the computer screen for hours on end as the plane flies itself. When I get up the next morning all refreshed, I can take the plane in for a landing at some exotic destination.

With work, family, hockey, and other obligations, I don't get a lot of time to flight sim. I usually spend anywhere from 1.0 to 1.5 hours flying a couple of times a week. I wish I could do more ...

A typical FSX session takes about 30 to 60 minutes for me. I never do long flights. When I was flying the 737NGX I did short flights that wouldn't take me more then an hour from cold and dark to cold and dark again. Nowadays I fly the RealAir Legacy and usually I plan a flight that's somewhere between 50 and 100 nm. That's more then enough for me. I don't like cruising for too long and I don't iike to use time accel (as soon as I do that the feeling of being there is gone and I usually don't even finish the flight properly). I never save flights so I can finish them later on. Feels odd to me.

 

When I have done one flight I usually quit FSX. Sometimes, when I feel like it, I might start up FSX later on that same day and do another flight. However, if I fly too often I get bored with it all... so I try to limit the amount of flights I do so I keep that feeling of longing for yet another flight. Lately I've been flying the Legacy a lot, too much maybe, because that longing feeling is gone. So I haven't touched FSX for a week or two now and I probably won't touch it again until I really feel like flying. And then I will make sure I will only do ONE flight so I won't get bored too soon again. :wink: Until them I am having a ball with Richard Burns Rally... :wink:

Flying in MP exclusivly, we try to keep flights to around and hour, no more than 1 1/2 hours. Thats plenty of time for the BS to develope and short enough so no one gets bored

Flying airliners I do go trough all procedures, once reaching cruise alt I set the sim to x4 but a long haul can take up to 4 or 5 hrs or so. With flightplanning included add another 30 to 45 mins

 

Harro

I start to get restless after about two hours at the controls, but I'm flying the Aerosoft Katana or A2A Cub by hand and "IFR" (I follow roads) with the Seattle or Klamath Falls sectional on my lap. If I'm going to fly an actual IFR flight, I load up the Baytower RV7 and pick something short and sweet till I get the hang of the radios on VATSIM, usually lasting around an hour total.

1-2 hrs....

When I do a long flight -- something like Atlanta to Johannesburg, Newark to New Delhi, Houston to Amsterdam (the first of the United 787 flightrs), I set up the flight before I go to bed. After reaching my cruise altitude, I make sure the auto-pilot is working and usually put the ATC in a position where it won't bother me. Then I go to bed....

 

....When I get up the next morning all refreshed, I can take the plane in for a landing at some exotic destination.

 

 

Here's my card. There's someone I think you should talk to....

 

Nah, love it really. We're all bonkers...

 

My usual flight time till boredom sets in is probably less than an hour.

 

Ian