Jump to content
Sign in to follow this  
Gregg_Seipp

So...I quit simming

Recommended Posts

 

 


Good, reflective post, Gregg. I too shut off the sim mid-December, and to my surprise, it hasn't been turned on yet. I think I was ready for a break but perhaps was fighting it. You know those nights where you load up a flight, get bored very quickly, come out, load up a different type of flight all together - but still find yourself a little bored with it. That's how I'd been up to the point when I decided to take a break.

Absense truly does make the heart grow fonder though - I know when I get the urge again, it'll be fantastic all over again and every flight will be a joy. Just not there yet.

Hopefully the same will apply to you Gregg.

 

Well said.  I can't count the number of times I've thought this...why am I flying this time?  If it was the Mustang it was enough just to love to feel the plane.  Fast enough to make a long journey shorter, slow enough and with a wing view to see the sites down low, simple enough to be single-pilot.  Other airplanes...I always felt like I wanted something more.  Sometimes I was flying to see the sights which was pretty decent in Orbx regions sometimes...I always longed for photoreal and Orbx keeps growing that and making it worth a trip.  The crashes as of late were sucking a lot of wind out of my sails and, as I said, the time spent away from family with all this patching, installing, adjusting was taking a toll.  I started thinking about other things I could be doing. 

 

So, I hope it gets simpler and easier to maintain...and, maybe, we get some of those things on that list up there.  I do have a bit of 'homesickness' but not enough to go through it all right now and, especially now, with where things stand with P3D 3.1.

 

Gregg


Gregg Seipp

"A good landing is when you can walk away from the airplane.  A great landing is when you can reuse it."
i7-8700 32GB Ram, GTX-1070 8 Gig RAM

Share this post


Link to post

I too was very close to throwing in the towel recently, until I found the twitch channel, theskylounge.tv This is a community of like minded people that really enjoy all different types of flights. For me it adds the sense of community I found in other, non-sim games, also somewhere to meet and talk when not simming via Discord. All of the flying is done via FS Cloud, and there is almost always someone willing to fire up a fly together. I recommend checking them out to anyone who may be feeling a little burnt out on the usual empty skies feeling that easily goes along with flight simulation. It's not for everyone, but I actually look forward to my days off and being able to fly!


Matt Bernard
20+ Years Commercial/GA A&P/PLST

Share this post


Link to post

 

 


If it was the Mustang it was enough just to love to feel the plane. Fast enough to make a long journey shorter, slow enough and with a wing view to see the sites down low, simple enough to be single-pilot.

 

Hi, Gregg,

 

I sure hate to hear this. You have had some great things to say. It's been a pleasure to read about some of the things you come up with.

 

There have been so many times when the feeling was mutual about quitting with this stuff. It doesn't take anything to wind up spending way too much time with this. But, if I wasn't simming, I'd be working! Hummmmm...gotta throw a quarter up into the air and see what it lands on. Thank goodness it's a two headed quarter, since I always call "heads".

 

It's hard to believe that after the time spent in real world flying that simming would be a great way to spend off time. But, there is something about the program. The creativity, the antagonism, the beauty of what others have produced, the forgetting to turn on the GPU fan and have the computer shut down right after takeoff, etc.

 

For a long time, quite a few of the pilots where I work would get together and we would fly multi-player....a lot. Their wives weaned them from the sim and have them doing domestic stuff! What a waste of good simming time!

 

While the aircraft in my hangar are fun to take around the patch, like you, my favorite is the A2A P-51. This airplane gets more attention then any other. So, when I pick another to go bore holes in the sky, I have to hear them complain about "Fancy Pants, the P-51"! Makes me want to quit just because of the complaints. But, some how, I just look over it all..... for now.

 

Hope to hear that you are back in it soon, Gregg. As was said above:  "Absense truly does make the heart grow fonder though......." Ditto to that!

 

Take care, Sir!

 

Jim

Share this post


Link to post

Guys,

 

those of you that feel bored flying those tubeliners, for hours, and specially those of you looking forward to experience what a tremendous flight dynamics for prop aircraft or rotary wing can be, or even modern fighters ( not my cup of tea... ) should really try IL-2 Battle of Stalingrad and / or DCS World   and / or Rise of Flight...!

 

I am sure "tedium" is a word that will never come back to your minds in as far as simming goes, and even less headache due to having to spend countless hours tweaking to get good performance!

 

After more than 25 yrs of mostly civil aviation simulation, and while I admit I didn't like Air War at all, I became a real fan of these two sims.

 

Yes, i still use Condorsoaring (by far the best soaring simulator ever made available, with Silent Wings 2nd best...), and Rise of Flight is ready for re-install, by I never really played it that much ( not that it isn't good ), but the overall environment, the graphics, even weather modeling in Rise of Flight and Battle of Stalingrad ( visuals but also wind variation and turbulence like I could never find in either MSFS or X-Plane ) attracted me, and then the true to real flight dynamics, that can make even your best add-on for MSFS or X-Plane ( easier with this one ) blush, were the main reason I can never getr back to either MSFS or X-plane - maybe something coming in in the future... Visuals in DCS World are also SUPERB, specially now with DX11, and it runs super smooth ( 64 bit ), but weather modeling when it comes to wind and turbulence are faint, although being addressed in the development of version 2.0 that is ongoing... 

 

Il-2 Battle of Stalingrad, and now Battle of Moscow is an expensive tittle, some may claim, but heck, we get a bunch of great aircraft, and some get released as the beta progresses. And if being in beta in these sims is what it is already, when the modules get to their final versions the attention to detail and the quality excel.

 

In DCS, the base version is free-2-play, and you get a free Su25 and a fully 6dof, clickable, professional flight model and advanced systems model TF51d to play over Caucasus free Map, that will soon be upgraded, for free, to DCS 2.0 standards! Each module ( I only keep the ww2 fighters ) is simply AMAZING and an experience you can't really get out of ANY similar add-on for your civil sims, not because of the shooting, but because of the unique flight dynamics.

 

Try it if you can - I am sure you wont regret! Beware, it'll be difficult to find any joy in getting back to your MSFS or XP stuff... they will look soooo tame...

 

Where in MSFS / P3D / XPX can we get this, plus the actual effects on the aircraft... ?

 

 

or this sort of immersion:

 

 

Similar footage can be found for Rise of Flight and DCS World - How can anyone get bored playing these ? ...


Main Simulation Rig:

Ryzen 5600x, 32GB RAM, Nvidia RTX 3060 Ti, 1 TB & 500 GB M.2 nvme drives, Win11.

Glider pilot since October 1980...

Avid simmer since 1992...

Share this post


Link to post

 

 


theskylounge.tv

 

That looks interesting.


Gregg Seipp

"A good landing is when you can walk away from the airplane.  A great landing is when you can reuse it."
i7-8700 32GB Ram, GTX-1070 8 Gig RAM

Share this post


Link to post

I hear you with respect to the Cessna Citation Mustang, Gregg. I can't understand why Flight1 have not announced a P3D version yet. I reckon it would sell by the bucketload. It is the aircraft that I have flown more than any other, in any flight simulator that I have ever owned. I would love to be able to fly it in P3D, as (like you have indicated) it has great visibility, decent performance, and it can land at very small strips (and therefore opens up so many more destination opportunities compared to other jets).


Christopher Low

UK2000 Beta Tester

FSBetaTesters3.png

Share this post


Link to post

I hear you with respect to the Cessna Citation Mustang, Gregg. I can't understand why Flight1 have not announced a P3D version yet. I reckon it would sell by the bucketload. It is the aircraft that I have flown more than any other, in any flight simulator that I have ever owned. I would love to be able to fly it in P3D, as (like you have indicated) it has great visibility, decent performance, and it can land at very small strips (and therefore opens up so many more destination opportunities compared to other jets).

 

No doubt.  It was, probably, Flight1's flagship products.  As I mentioned to someone else, I put more time into modding that airplane...tweaking and tuning...than any other airplane I own to make it just right...as much as possible within my limited abilities.  When no other airplane inspired me, that one did.  When I wanted to take a long flight to some cool airport over, sometimes, bland terrain it would get me through it.

 

 

 

Another hope for the future is at http://nexgenflightsim.com/

 

Yeah, that's what I see in my son's games...beautiful.  He was getting 30ish FPS on an Alienware laptop.  It'll be interesting to see what it looks like when it's more than still shots.

 

EDIT:  Found a video demo on youtube. 


Gregg Seipp

"A good landing is when you can walk away from the airplane.  A great landing is when you can reuse it."
i7-8700 32GB Ram, GTX-1070 8 Gig RAM

Share this post


Link to post
  • Graphics card crashes.  My GTX 970 was crashing unpredictably and after spending a lot of time planning a flight only to have it crash just after takeoff or any time during the flight requiring a restart was just...painful. 

 

Hi Gregg,

were you using any kind of OC? Did you determine the cause of those crashes?

Share this post


Link to post

 

 


Hi Gregg,

were you using any kind of OC? Did you determine the cause of those crashes?

 

I was using a fairly mild overclock on the CPU but none on the graphics card.  Did some Googling and found a bit of information...tried some of it.  I dunno. 


Gregg Seipp

"A good landing is when you can walk away from the airplane.  A great landing is when you can reuse it."
i7-8700 32GB Ram, GTX-1070 8 Gig RAM

Share this post


Link to post

Good thread, Gregg and it really resonates with me because...  True confession time: I've made only 3-4 flights in the last year, and none in the last 9 months.  In other words, I've pretty much quit simming as well.  And the longer I go without flying, the harder it is to pick it back up.  I still follow threads here with interest, post occasionally, and I even picked up a couple (well three) airports in this year's Orbx Christmas sale - in part hoping that'd bump start me to take it up again.

 

Some (but not all) of your reasons apply to me, the biggest being personal priorities.  The one issue I don't share with you, though, is the system stability problems you seem to be having.  My system remained remarkably stable right up to the time I started to taper off on my flights.  Don't know what I've done right over the years, but I just don't suffer from the constant rounds of tweaking, crashing, rebuilding and head-banging that others seem to experience.  About the only issue I'd ever experience would be the occasional OOM when I tried to push limits.  Usually very understandable and easily corrected.

 

Scott

  • Upvote 1

Share this post


Link to post
 

I wouldn't try to dissuade anyone from taking a break from simming. I do so regularly, and in an unplanned way. I never actually say to myself "time for a break", but one day I'll sit at my PC and instead of firing up FSX, I'll refight the Battle of Waterloo, or an infantry skirmish in the Normandy bocage, or follow some quest in the Fallout wasteland, or just play a game of snooker. It's all good fun. At some point I'll realise that two or three months have gone by since I made a flight. Simming can be an intensive and often frustrating experience. It makes sense to want to step away and, let's face it, do something more rewarding and less taxing.

 

If I may, I'd like to offer some observations based on what you've said, mixed with what I've experienced myself. I've just come back from a long period away from FSX, towards the end of which I took a long look at why I was spending so much time away from it. I realised that it had become a chore, and that it wasn't fun any more, and I wondered why. I thought back to when I first discovered FSX, and what changed since then. The answer was that little three-letter word that I've mentioned already, fun, FUN, F-U-N. Take a good look at that word - this is what simming is supposed to be, and if you're not getting that, maybe you need to change your approach to simming.  In my own case, I identified two self-inflicted problems, sim performance (no great surprise there) and my too-rigid approach to what I was flying, and how.

 

Although I have a low-end system (Q6600 2.4Ghz, 4GB, 1GB nVidia), sim performance wasn't an issue at first, because for a while, I was happy enough with the default aircraft and scenery. Then I discovered add-ons, in particular, UTX and Carenado. Again, not too much of an extra stress on the hardware, but then I discovered RealAir and other more advanced add-on creators, and then came...Orbx! And then the tweaking really started. And continued, until like you, I found that I spent more time tweaking than flying. I think every simmer might benefit from a red light and klaxon above the desk that blares once tweaking time exceeds flying time. I remember my wife asking me after a multi-hour session "did you have fun flying?" (she's quite genuine about asking). It hit me like a slap in the face; although I said "yes" I knew the true answer was "no, I've just lost another three hours of my life that I'll never get back".

 

Ironically, I think I have things tweaked pretty well now, for the system that I have, it's just that some aircraft don't play well with Orbx scenery...on my rig. And this brings me to what I think is advice that's important enough to share. It comes in two parts...(1) don't ask too much of your setup, and if you're needing to spend a lot of time tweaking, then I'd say that by definition you're asking too much of it...(2) turn off the f***ing FPS counter, you'll lead a happier simming life without it. From the many, many performance-related threads I read on AVSIM, I've become convinced that for many people, FPS > x = happiness, FPS < x = misery, with the variable x depending on the individual. 

 

For me, even though I have no problem dialling down the graphics in order to get acceptable performance, I realised I had one further thing to accept; that I could have the really advanced scenery or advanced aircraft on the same flight, but not both, at least until I can afford to upgrade my system. My solution was to disable Orbx UK & Ireland (where I do a lot of flying) but keep Orbx PNW, Rockies, Fjords etc, where I also do a lot of flying. So in Europe and the non-Orbx US and Canada, I can fly the the RealAir Legacy and Dukes, A2A 172, Quality Wings 146, RAZBAM Metroliner without any problems. In Orbx areas, I'll fly the Flight1 Islander, A2A Cub, RealAir Scout, anything by SibWings, Carenado C182Q, DA Piper Cheyenne, Aerosoft Catalina etc. The Aerosoft Twin Otter and the Majestic Q400 seem to run well anywhere. Note that the criterion isn't add-on complexity or quality, just FPS performance. In other words, cutting my cloth according to my measure, as they saying goes.

 

Last night I flew from St. Maarten to St. Barts, using freeware Caribbean scenery in the Flight1 Islander and in the Aersooft Twin Otter. In the Islander I got 40-50 FPS, and in the Twotter 25-32, I think. That was before I followed by own advice and turned off the FPS counter. Fly the plane, not the counter. :smile:​   By the way, if and when you do come back to simming, I recommend starting with a landing at St. Bart's, if you haven't tried it already; it's a blast (just get some scenery for it first, the default FSX treatment is an insult). Then do it at Saba.  :Devil:  Just don't try them in the F1 Mustang. :P

 

The other reason FSX was so much fun when I started was that I would hop in to any aircraft I felt like flying, and fly it to anywhere, from anywhere, and anyhow. Then I started to learn about VFR, and IFR and started to learn to do both properly (still a work in progresss, ha ha). I went a  stage further and decided to follow a more real-world aircraft progression i.e. simple piston single, complex piston single, turboprop etc. All very well except for my aircraft-add-on-sl*t tendency, which meant I was putting new planes in my hangar long before I felt I was "ready" to fly them, and leading to frustration. I think it was because I was very unhappy in my real-world job at the time, and may have been tying to create a "sim career" in order to compensate. Well, I've changed jobs in the meantime and, while I still want to develop my skills in a realistic way, that's still secondary to my Prime Directive: have fun. My solution is a new project for the new year: after trimming down my hangar to about 35 different non-default aircraft, I'm making a complete, properly-planned flight in every one of them, even if that means not doing it properly. I'm also taking screenshots and posting them on a specific thread on my virtual flying club's forum, with a little one-paragraph review of each aircraft at the end. Who knows, it might entertain or be useful to someone. And I'm having fun again.

 

I've rambled a lot here, I know, but I'm getting to the point which was prompted by your mention, twice, of the Flight1 Mustang, an aircraft you obviously love to fly, but can no longer do so because of your move to P3D. Well, if that's where your fun is, maybe that's where you should be too. If/when you do return to simming, at least consider the following (which I know some will see as high sacrilege, but who cares): you're right, don't maintain two sims, it's too much hassle. But if you're going to invest the effort in one, make it the one that gives you the most satisfaction. If that's FSX, then go back to FSX and your Mustang and rediscover the joy. Just as it's unsatisfactory to be flying an aircraft because you feel you should, I'm betting that the same is true of the sim platform too. Just look at the guys on AVSIM who are still having a ball with FS9...and spending a lot more time flying than tweaking. Something to think about anyway. Best of luck.

  • Upvote 3

 

 

Share this post


Link to post

I have to give a plus 1 for the Mustang. I have never been able to understand why Flight 1 let that just die on the vine. As an outsider and no way to really know, I can not help but think that Flight  1 has been in the destroy Prepar3D or at least not support it fully mode. We all know that Jim is never going to win the award for being nice but I think their is some really bad blood between Him and LM. Hard to tell and we will never know. It has always been my opinion that Flight 1 likes to kind of hold back on what we simmers may want just because they got sort of a power thing going.

 

On a brighter note, I have taken the approach thanks to many of you here in this thread and got the Carenado PC-12 with all the fixes and patches loaded up. I most likely will not fly anything else for a while now. I am just tired of watching many dev's dragging their feet. I love Real Air Products but I don't think they spend a lot of time on our products. I mean it has been years since a really new product. That is fine and not complaint at all. This type of stuff I think has a great deal to do with some of the sour attitudes. I have bought a lot of stuff over the years, many times it was at least partly to support the dev's and in return their products would grow to meet our desires and needs. I was way wrong for the most part with that little dream. As a really funny guy say's you can spend lots of money and make ugly thing pretty but no amount of money will fix stupid.


Sam

Prepar3D V5.3/12700K@5.1/EVGA 3080 TI/1000W PSU/Windows 10/40" 4K Samsung@3840x2160/ASP3D/ASCA/ORBX/
ChasePlane/General Aviation/Honeycomb Alpha+Bravo/MFG Rudder Pedals/

Share this post


Link to post

Last year when Flight 1 released the King Air B200 for Prepar3D, they stated the sales of the B200 would help determine future upgrade of the Mustang to P3D.  How ludicrous  !!!!!! 

 

Obviously anyone reading AVSIM forums to gather marketing strategy could easily see the F1 Cessna Mustang was one of the highest desired aircraft for FSX. 

 

Now that Flight 1 has finally acknowledged there is a better sim than FSX, they really need to get into 2016 and "cash in" .  A few weeks of upgrade development would return tenfold to their coffers.


 
Quote

850237

WAT1460.png

Share this post


Link to post

I forgot to ask!! I am at the point of setting up my switches and keys on the PC-12. Does anyone have a LUA or key presses used on this plane. Could not find any info over at Linda website.


Sam

Prepar3D V5.3/12700K@5.1/EVGA 3080 TI/1000W PSU/Windows 10/40" 4K Samsung@3840x2160/ASP3D/ASCA/ORBX/
ChasePlane/General Aviation/Honeycomb Alpha+Bravo/MFG Rudder Pedals/

Share this post


Link to post

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
Sign in to follow this  
  • Tom Allensworth,
    Founder of AVSIM Online


  • Flight Simulation's Premier Resource!

    AVSIM is a free service to the flight simulation community. AVSIM is staffed completely by volunteers and all funds donated to AVSIM go directly back to supporting the community. Your donation here helps to pay our bandwidth costs, emergency funding, and other general costs that crop up from time to time. Thank you for your support!

    Click here for more information and to see all donations year to date.
×
×
  • Create New...