what should i do for long flights because i hate to use the map in FSX to move me closer to the destination!!!!!!!

you could increase the rate of time. "r" then "=" to increase and "-" to decrease. if you only do 2x or 4x you still have weather and traffic and all without the sim having to redraw anything.

Get some good scenery, put on autopilot. Brew some coffee and have a smoke and maybe put on some music and enjoy the view and watch traffic while you fly realtime B)

My preffered method as to climb to around 40K, then gradually rate it to 16x, this is for long haul 6000nm or more.

 

In bad weather running at 16x could cause crash very quickly, so dpending on weather set sim acceleration, say x2 or 4 in bad weather.

 

The higher the sim acceleration, the more work and hotter you cpu will get, so if your OC not stable to handle 16x, youll find out.

 

I used to use x4 for long flights, but that was still too slow for me, prefer to speed up the cruise, and its fun

I usually browse the net, watch TV or play a video game during my longer hauls. I use 1x speeds

I only fly in real time. If I only have an hour then I fly a shorter flight.

I almost always use real time speed. I try to plan my long hauls either over night ex: 12am-8am or 6pm-2am depending on the day and all. Obviously almost always a weekend thing. For the 12am-8am or even longer flights I will takeoff do all the climb things and then just let the autopilot do its job while I sleep. Wake up about 1 hour before landing and take care of it. I am not a great sleeper so when I do wake up in the night depending how tired I am I might go ahead and maket he step climb. But usually if I know its going to be a sleep through flight I go to the highest allowed Flight Level.

 

For something like 6pm-2am or even 10am-10pm flight I just go and do the stuff I would do during the day. Go out to lunch, watch tv, surf the net, do work etc.. w/e is needed.

 

I remember years ago I did MIA-NRT tookoff at 6am and went to school and everything. Came back and still had hours to go.

 

When I don't have time to fly long hauls I just stick with short hauls which are the majority of my flights anyway.

I usually watch the net. Find some MayDay or ACI full length episodes on YouTube and watch them.

 

Most of the time though I am also in my TS channel talking and messing about with my mates from our Flying Club.

 

 

I usually start my really long haul (+9 hours) flights at night and then when I wake up there are usually some hundreds of nautical miles left to destination.

 

During shorter flights I usually surf around the internet and do other stuff while cruising.

I fly for only in realtime. Right now I am actually doing a flight from Phoenix to Honolulu, and I have about 4 hours of flight left.

 

If you fly for a VA then you have to sit through all your flights in order to build up hours. And its policy to FLY your FLIGHTS.

In the old days before all the add-ons and much older versions of FS I used to slew the action but these days with all the quality programs it's so much like the real thing I do my flights in real time and schedule flights with the time I have available.

You have 4 methods to deal with long flights:

-Sit them out in real time while doing something else on the side.

-Use the autopilot for an unattended cruise.

-Use timecompression.

-Skip the cruisephase by changing the aircraft's position and fuelstate.

Switch with your relief crew and go to sleep. Pause at TOD.

There is a program in the library called Xpause.

Do a file search for XPause 1.0

One thing though it doesn't run to great with the Level-D for some reason.

I was hoping it would eventually get incorporated into FSUIPC.

Edited September 30, 201213 yr by Daveo

+1. I save the paused flights at TOD, and use them later with different weather and/or a different landing runway assignment. I could never find the time to sit at a computer for hours, especially since I spend 10 hours + at one for work. Not when it competes with hiking in the Rockies

 

What I would love also is an addon that would pause t the start of a dawn or dusk transition,which is a great time to pick up a flight!

 

Thanks, Bruce.

As something of a reformed "1x purist" myself, I gotta ask what is the point in it if your are not actively monitoring your flight (because you are watching TV, read a book, sleep, eat, shower, work etc.)?

 

If something occurred that required your input (which is unlikely if you are not simulating failures) you wouldn't be there to deal with it anyway. You'd be much better of to run the sim as fast as your AC can manage and monitor progress, plan your approach and so on.

 

However, this is not the main reason why I think 1x is silly when you are away from your PC. My main beef with that approach is that it is an utter waste of electricity. Any modern FSX PC will suckle hundreds of watts of power to feed that beefy video card of yours, spin the disks or query your SSD as FSX is constantly loading a plethora of files (needed or not), run all your peripherals and of course drive the CPU. If the latter is overclocked as is the case for many simmers power efficiency is particularly poor.

 

Most FSX aircraft that I fly (PMDG, LevelD...) can deal with up to 16x as long as you keep and eye on it and 8x otherwise. That way you can complete an extreme long haul flight such as SYD-DFW or SIN-EWR in under 3 hours. Just enable time acceleration while in cruise and when you reach TOD you can go back to 1x.

 

All told I reckon the advantages of time compression are:

• You are actually able to monitor your flight, fuel, weather, and are able to respond to any issues. Much more realistic then just walking away from your sim for hours on end.
  
• You use less power -> spend less money -> pollute less.
  
• Your system is likely to last longer (MTTF).
  
• FSX is likely to be more stable as it drops AI past 4x and loads a lot less bgl's and texture files reducing the possibility of loading/generating a corrupted file. That last point is my observation at least.