What is flight simming to you?

[47driver 0]

I am getting the impression that many on here load up gobs of scenery and complex jumbo jets that they don't even know how to fly other than p

throttling up & pulling back, then take off, while fixating on their frame rate monitor in an attempt to see if their newest mod fixed previous stutters or other graphic inconsistencies. Not saying that's what really happens, but the holy grail seems to be some smooth system that will run all orbx scenery with perfect clouds and plowing tractors in fields with busy freeways outside of a big city with plenty of AI traffic nearby VFR in a complex airliner that was designed to fly IFR in class A airspace.

 

I fly purely for training and the experience it gives me. This simulator is years from simulating a very realistic VFR experience, and despite current technology, it is visually well above some of the best commercial and military simulators I have been in. I am not quite sure what people expect, or how many of them are actual pilots. If anything needs to be improved that reasonably can, its the availability of controllers on vatsim, or the automation of the air traffic control. Flying is not a glamorous hobby where you spend the entire flight looking at scenery; at least not near busy airports where you are trying to navigate while being handed off to several different controllers at once and get your call in amongst other aircraft while worrying if your fuel burn rate met your calculations based on your weight & balance because you're too busy to do a fuel check, and if the next approach will get you low enough to break out and if not, trying to remember your current category limitations and do you have enough fuel to get to the alternate.

 

I use my sim to simulate the nastiest weather conditions known to man while flying IFR through busy airspace to airports where ground scenery isn't even visible. As a real pilot, I find this simulator very useful for putting myself in weather conditions and situations that I would not normally find myself in real life, as well as training in situations that I may encounter in real life, in local areas with the same GPS points, approaches, terrain and obstacles that I can expect in real life. Simulating an actual check ride, I'm way too busy to have time to sit and look out the window. For flying IFR, I can attest that I do not get stutters.

 

This IS a flight simulator, not an eye candy machine. For those of you who are obsessed with frame rates, I encourage you to decrease ground scenery to a minimum, learn the aircraft you are flying, fly some IFR, navigate by your instruments, and do some instrument approaches in poor weather. You will see the true beauty of what this software is: a FLIGHT simulator; simulating flying a real aircraft. Not a computer scenery program.

 

Most of these complex aircraft models and systems take days to learn and years to perfect IRL.

 

I just get confused when so many people are primarily concerned about frame rates, stutters while flying a commercial jet VFR near big cities, and smooth running systems and I ask myself if these people are truly trying to simulate flight, or computer nerds; just attempting to do the graphically impossible. I've run FSX perfectly fine for the last 6 years as a simulator, doing many approaches, familiarizing myself with IFR & VFR corridors, waypoints, NAVAIDS, SIDS, STARS, approaches, and had very little issues with my 6 year old rig "running FSX"

 

Just a rant; nothing personal to anyone.

[spirit_66 2]

One man’s meat is another man’s poison :unsure:

Spirit

[rene_1st 7]

well said and I agree...most posts that one comes across has to do with FPS and eye candy. Although I too like the eye candy

[pilottj 198]

There are no 'rules' in FSX/P3D.  Flight simulation is whatever you want it to be.  It is a game, it is a simulator, it is entertainment, it is educational.  In the end, all that matters is if you are enjoying yourself.  If it isn't enjoyable, there is no reason to do it.

 

Why care how others choose to spend their time in FS?  Whether a simmer is into uber realism or not is their business.  I do both, sometimes I am super 'realistic', other times I am breaking every FAR that I can think of....and I won't get fined or loose my license. B)

 

Cheers

TJ

[jcomm 5,961]

Mostly for the pleasure of doing in the sim what I am unable to do IRL, although with age I have changed my wants substantially...

 

The constant term has always been, for me, the accuracy of the flight dynamics modeling - let's cal it plausibility - and also the weather modeling.

 

I am satisfied with  a circuit around an airfield, on an area where the scenery looks good, even if default or freeware like we can get in, say, in X-Plane 10, or in FSX with some payware stuff. Then I like to set adverse weather conditions because simply looking outside the windshield while flying the aircraft as close to real as I should IRL doesn't bring me any special pleasure...

 

Operating the aircraft as close as possible to it's RW procedures is another area where I like to invest, thus having to spend some time reading about that particular aircraft model, but with the years, and having completely lost the hope of one day becoming an airline pilot ( eheheh... I am now 50, and the closest I could get to it is the glider pilot license I still own and use as much as life allows... ) my interest in complex aircraft has decreased substantially. A good GA aircraft can certainly do a much better job, specially if I find it's flight, engine/ systems/  instruments modeling plausible / good.

 

Unfortunately the type of aircraft I fly IRL were never acceptably ( at least for me ) modeled in any of the mainstream sims I used - MSFS and X-Plane - and even some newcomers like AeroflyFS leave a lot to be desired when it comes to modeling a "simple" glider :-(  I still use Condorsoaring and sometimes Silentwings for that...

 

I noticed, long ago, that MS FLIGHT had quite an impact in my simmer life, and it is still by far my preferred civil flight simulator ever! I believe one of the things that kept me fan of it was the special feel about the 4 "detailed" aircraft that I was able to use with it, the certainly upgraded FDM ( compared to FSX ), and the scenery details I kept finding my missions / tasks, which I really became a fan of.

 

Unfortunately, we all know what was the fate of MS FLIGHT, and now we also know it could change ( ? ), but the return to FSX, and then the investment in P3D and X-Plane proved to insufficient to keep me interested on those sims, by various reasons including ( but not only ) the limited FDM and their failure to impress one of my main claims - that a flight simulator has to model at least the most basic aspects of flight acceptably!

 

I have completely turned into combat flight simulators, which are now my main occupation as a simmer, and I can't regret having done so because I discovered a WORLD of good examples of what I always wanted to find, and wasn't able to, in any of the civil flight simulators I used ( MS FLIGHT being probably the only exception! ). Although il2 sturmovik BoS has made me "enter combat" and now happily participating on some great furbals online,I use my combat flight simulators most of the time for simple circuits or flights between aerodromes, profiting from their unique, and certainly superior to any if their civil counterparts flight dynamics, overall physics modeling, systems modeling, damage models, and even quality of the graphics and smoothness in my rig where I fought to get sometimes acceptable frames to take my sophisticated airliner to a good stop after a landing at some european airport...  Even weather modeling offers, specially on the visuals side, a much better experience in any of those sims!

 

So, while flight simming for me is still what it always has been - a way of finding myself closer to what I would like to do IRL as a job - I have changed completely the type of platforms I use for that, because of the main aspects I focus my attention on when chosing a flight simulator - flight dynamics and overall World physics modelling, including weather, and also engines and systems modeling. Also, the possibility of flying with some dynamic objective and being able to interact with other pilots / aircraft being it true humans behind those models or AI - yes I know I can have all of it in MSFS and somehow XP10 too, but certainly not at the level and immersion I get with combat flight simulators :-)

[Adam Reed 29]

Although I agree that the most important thing is to actually enjoy flying and learning new techniques e.g instrument approaches etc, the visuals are of high importance for me. 

 

I simply can't enjoy an approach with low visibility or a strong crosswind approach if the simulator is stuttering so much, It then becomes un-enjoyable. One day, the simulator will be stutter free, and the visuals will be amazing with no impact on FPS or smoothness.

 

I must say though over the past year or so, I have not really been looking at FPS in the simulator, I have been more fixated on the smoothness overall, which I think is a better way to go. As currently I have good FPS but a s tt u ttter y  simulator. 

 

Thanks for your point of view, it made for an interesting read.

 

Adam

[denali 74]

I don't know how to respond to this.  I've flown real aircraft sans CFI.  I'm simming because it does help, IFR and VFR skills.  I'm not so macho that i have to tell everyone that my flight experience is all about the nasty weather and interacting with Gods for check rides and clearance into special airspace.  

 

I enjoy flying.  I enjoy looking out the window.  Send me on a trip and I'll demand a window seat.  Put me behind the yoke IRL and I'll stay low and look at the tractors in the field, and the farmhouses, and the suburban sprawl.  Turns around a point around anything that's interesting.  For me it's about what's over the horizon, seeing what God and man have done and enjoying the view of it all.  Not trying to look down on everyone else.  I get enough demands of perfection from the Gods of my work too; the compiler is unforgiving.  I just wanna see something different when I look through windows (The way P3D2 does "full screen" I can do my work on top while the sim is like my windows background.)

 

I get the sense you only know how to use your simulator flying and otherwise one way.  Relax, take a look around, and get down and smell the hay fields.

[Mickel 42]

For the last three weeks in the sim I've been flying a Cub, rarely above 2,000' AGL navigating using a chart, compass, half an eye on a clock and what I can see. Grass strips and small towns. Forgive me if I want a nice view out the window...

[rene_1st 7]

well said and I agree...most posts that one comes across has to do with FPS and eye candy. Although I too like the eye candy

[denali 74]

By the strictest sense, since you're being so strict with us, what's the point of ever upgrading, since instruments are all one cares about you shouldn't be asking us, you should be in the FS95 forum.  In fact, I had all you'd ever want with Flight Assignment ATP.

[LHookins 3,104]

I fly a Piper Cub.  Why in the nine names of hell would I want to have anything to do with IFR?  Or controlled airspace for that matter... no transponder.  The closest I come to IFR conditions is when I'm in a sailplane (using CumulusX) and stay a bit too long in a thermal and end up in a cloud.  At that point it's "needle ball and airspeed" until I'm in the clear.  Sure, I can fly IFR, but why would I want to?

 

Here's how Richard Bach puts it:

 

http://richardbach.com/change-of-an-era/

 

Hook

[zmak 331]

Its interesting to note the pilot of the doomed Malaysia flight used his SIM for adventure to places he wouldn't normally go (he may have actually done it for real). He also said real flying was boring because it was so routine

So there you have it there are also pilots out there who actually enjoy the sim more.

 

For me I can no longer fly due to health and the Sim has been a life saver for me and to be honest its just as challenging as the real thing , But kicker and Force feed back go a long way in creating the missing link

[dkgrechus 0]

I sim because it brings back that feeling of when I was a child and I would always watch the birds and EVERY aircraft, big or small, fly overhead and wonder what it looked like and felt like. I believe aviation is in the blood and even as an, (now old), adult I still ponder and wonder. So when I use MSFS I have to load up some eye candy because for myself,,,,,, It as much about the candy as it is the wrapper.   :rolleyes:  

 

 

 

DLGrechus

[polk2 15]

Flight simming is my first, my last ,my everything....unless football is on the telly.

 

I was guilty of getting sucked into tweaking and little else.

 

I am making the declaration now that its  FSX dx10 fixer with Word Not Allowed tweaks only, and to hell with P3DV2.2 and stutters and  its bright and shiny graphics that just dosen't seem right to me.

 

Back to online simming with Vatsim and IVAO and no more tweaking.

[Richard Avenido 5]

flightsimming for me is a hobby.