My parents do not play any computer games at all, actually they're usually quite happy when they can use some "more sophisticated" functions contents of MS Office than Word is (i.e. Excel) :rolleyes: . My sister isn't very much a gamer either, and if she plays something, it's one of those crazy unrealistic highway pursuit games like Need for Speed.

Still they seem not to bother too much about my flights simming at all, sometimes they even seem to be interested in what you can learn when you're into it.

I have 3 kids, 2 of whom are obsessed with FS and 1 is also pretty into it, where did I go wrong... :mellow:

 

The wife isn't fond of it in the slightest though at this stage... :blush:

 

Regards,

Ró.

 

LOL I somehow suspect that won't change when they all start wanting to build their own cockpits and FS PCs =P.

I have 5 kids, 3 girls, 2 boys. My oldest boy (10) is right into the flight sims... and the younger boy (5) is just starting to show an interest. The girls are all too interested in Dora the Explorer and Barbie dolls :rolleyes:

 

It can be a family thing for sure, but the problem can be that to have all of us flying with each other in a networked environment, we all (3 of us) need super computers each to run everything... and at the moment, we only have one semi-super PC to run FS on... so its a matter of take a number and stand in line!

 

An interesting subject nonetheless, and good to see how others have responded too with their experiences...

When I was 14 and using my Amiga and C-64, I Iived with my step brother and it was a hobby for us, more so for me since I had started taking flying lessons. We were both into aviation although for me at that time I was planning on it as a career path and my step just liked it since he thought it was cool. I had whatever were the good sims for that day, Chuck Yeager, FS1?, GunShip, some F-18 sim for Amiga, and Falcon. We both used the sims for fun a lot of days after school and even built an enclosed sim and put the monitor on the ouside flush with the wood and mounted the joystick on the inside. My dad had an old Airforce parachute that we put in the seat and would use it to "strap in", lol. The sim or "hot box" as my dad called it, was housed in the garage and was truely a "hot box" in the summer months in the high desert of California. Of course after sim sessions were usually followed by a viewing of Top Gun, Iron Eagle, or The Right Stuff to make the experience complete, lol.

 

These days, I have no kids and have been with the same girl for about 6 years or so. She isn't into flying (except to go on trips), but she does like to go the the annual airshow at Alliance airport near DFW, and on occasion if we are near DFW she will let me stop at Founders Plaza to so some spotting for a bit. When we're on vacation in Ft. Lauderdale she will let me stop at the viewing area at KFLL for a bit after the beach, but get tired of watching and listening to the tower after about 30 minutes.

 

I've tried a few times to get her to at least try flying the default 172 in FSX but she has no interest at all. I've even shown her what it looks like to fly over our place using MegaScenery Dallas and the most I get is "that's nice". The one time I did get a little rise out of her was when we had just gotten back from Ft. Lauderdale and had fired up the airport in the sim parked at the gate we had just departed the day earlier. I told her to come here and take a look. When she came over i said does that look familiar? She stared at the screen an actually had a look of surprise on her face when she saw how similar FSDT's KFLL looked in the sim compared to what she saw the day before in real life. I panned around a little and she saw the smoke stacks that sit just north east of the airport and she was really amazed. I then tried to coax her into trying a little bit of flying and that was when the amazement left her face and she said she had some errands to run.

 

Although its only a hobby for me, she doesn't mind it at all or the money/time I spend on it, so I can be grateful for that at least. It would be cool if I could get her to at least sit and watch a short flight or an approach in the NGX, but she has absolutely no interest at all. I suppose in a way its good otherwise she might like it so much that she would be hogging the sim computer all the time and I would have to build another one just for me.

I think the main thing that stops FS from being considered a 'family' hobby is the difficulty of playing it together. To play together in a meaningful way, you're really going to have to do something like shared cockpit (very little support for that) or group flights. I'm sure you could have a blast doing group flights in say the default Cessna or messing around doing silly things (flying under bridges, inverted flying, etc.) but many people around here seem to be mainly into procedure heavy tubeliner flying. To understand (let alone enjoy) that requires a level of understanding and maturity that few people will reach before their late teens. I've been playing FS since I was 7 or so, but until 2 years ago I'd never completed a flight longer than 2 hours (and those were few and far between) and didn't understand how someone could enjoy spending 15-30 minutes just switching on the plane. Now I always start from cold and dark and regularly fly 2-3 hour flights.

Yesterday I did a flight from Oslo to Paris CDG and back. Doing a realtime schedule, I could watch "my plane" SAS839/SAS836 on flightradar24. I was enjoying it, but I have to admit that it isn't for everyone :lol:

 

I consider myself a normal person, but you REALLY have to be into aviation in order to spend 5 hours of your day that way. Lol.

I got my wife to have a go flying the default Cessna. Took off, did a circuit and crashed on landing, by which time "OMG" had been shouted on more than one occasion.

 

I said, " So, you think I'm enjoying myself when I'm flying!"