Aviation is boring

[Lionel Mandrake 7]

Now that got your attention, didn't it?

It's quite true, though. Aviation is boring. It promises, and works very hard to deliver, safe, predictable results - the minimum fuel used and the minimum gin spilled, as airline types put it. Aircraft older, and in some cases better qualified, than their pilots take off, fly to somewhere and land on it, untouched by human hand except possibly to dial another number into the autopilot.

And we seem happy to simulate this safe but uneventful state of affairs. Of course there are those who simulate fast jets and air combat - often unsuccessfully, in my view, as the lack of inertial feedback is far more obvious if one indulges in turns above rate 1.

Instrument training has always been the most satisfactory form of simulation because instrument flight is (or certainly ought to be) stately.

Unfortunately now it is also terminally dull thanks to the computer and GPS. In a twin-engined aircraft there is now little to do (in a single-engined one, of course, one spends all of one's spare time in gloomy contemplation of the harsh earth beneath, wondering where to forced-land).

Simulator programmers always try to be ahead of the game. For example, Denham (EGLD), where I trained, is a small and unpretentious little field just inside Heathrow's control zone, but is represented in X-Plane 11 as a major airport with all kinds of things it never had, still hasn't, and might never have. Therefore designers will doubtless be just as keen promptly to 'switch off' VORs and other traditional navaids provided in the simulation as budget-conscious aviation authorities are with the real ones.

While this is of course correct from the training point of view I have to say that pressing the 'Direct-To' button on a GPS - simulated or real - is pretty poor entertainment.

What I would like, and would be prepared to pay a reasonable price for, is an historical flight simulator, preferably based on X-plane or, if not, as good as.

For example, I should like to try flying at night around the USA (perhaps carrying the mail) in a suitable period aircraft like a YB-10, using only airway light-beacons and four-course 'A-N' radio ranges, assisted no doubt by a copy of Mr. Jeppesen's famous notebook.

Would this not be more difficult, more demanding, and therefore in general more fun?
 

[qqwertz 781]

You can do that with FSX, FS9, and P3D. There are a lot of very well modelled historical aircraft out there with which you can fly in old-fashioned style. A2A Lockheed Constellation, PMDG DC-6, Flight-replicas DC-4, a lot of historical Boeings from Captainsim, and some nice models from JustFlight, for instance. A very good freeware model is Manfred Jahn's DC-3. And if you want to fly even pre-VOR navigational challenges, the Milviz Bobcat is equipped with a 1930's navigational system. 

I recall I've even read about historical scenery, but that may have been for FS9 only.

Peter 

[mrchrsrider 66]

Man simulation encompasses so much more than just pressing the direct-to button and flying to a "destination". While the task of pressing a button is boring; pressing the button gives me the ability to explore places on a daily basis that would cost me an incredible amount of money and time that I do not get in real life which is in turn exciting. And it gives me the sense of accomplishment when I get there (in real time, no fast forwarding) in the sim. Which if you have done an actual 4 + hour flight is a difficult task in itself, just to stay occupied and engaged and requires a ridiculous amount of self control. Maybe not the kind of difficult you want but difficult non the less. I have flown places in the sim that I dream to go in real life. I have created photo scenery and shot approaches on the sim that when I was able to do the same thing in real life was identical and that place was not foreign to me because of simulation. For me simulation has made me a better airline pilot and so spending "x" amount of time is not a waste of time for me. It is able to be tailored to each individuals needs and wants and you never beat the game, because the user creates the game and sets the parameters. 

Ultimately while "cruise" and "autopilot" and "button pushing" is in itself a boring task. It's just the means to explore a place, or environment that you don't normally get to explore in daily life. The difficulty is it is always different "ie real weather, time and season" and flights while they may be similar are not ever the "same".  

And for yourself you have the ability to fly the constellation or a 747 that you may never experience in real life. 

Just my view on the subject. 

[hs118 707]

Very much agree with the other commenters regarding the OP's points.

If you truly try to simulate the real world experience of flight planning, pre-flight, full air traffic control, and real world weather, the GA experience is far from boring.

Should all that work not be enough, try military flying with all of the above AND having other people shoot at you.

Simulating the air mail flights of the 1930's in real world weather across the Rocky Mountains is a great idea.

There is more than enough to keep flight simulation from being boring.

[busdriver 258]

To the original poster - respectfully, not sure if you are a real world pilot or not, but I suspect not. Real world aviation is never boring... Not even the simplest flight in the pattern in my Cessna is ever boring. While the sim is an amazing thing to have on a home computer, it hardly comes close to truly simulating a real word flight, and the multitude of dynamics that occur when flying a GA aircraft, or an airliner. 

[Chock 17,769]

Flying around on an autopilot may be boring, but aviation itself could never be boring, it encompasses such a vast subject that you could never know all of it or fail to find a new challenge offered by it. And that is probably even more true in simulation than it is in the real world, since you can fly pretty much anything you like, where you like, and even when you like historically with the aid of some suitable scenery. You should probably check out places such as Golden Age Simulations, which makes a number of the very mail aeroplanes you desire and the scenery to go with them, many of them are available for FSX and P3D.

Here is a review of one of their old ones I did a few years back - the Boeing Model B40 - which was an aeroplane specifically designed to carry mail in those early days of aviation. It should give you an idea of what to expect of those Golden Age Simulation aeroplanes: https://www.avsim.com/pages/0809/GAS/B40.htm

[flyforever 267]

It's important to introduce variables to aviation. A good sim will have real weather, some probability of failure, a challenging environment, and a purpose. That purpose could be to fly from A to B efficiently, on time, and safely. Or delivering cargo to some exotic destination. Flying with live ATC is extraordinary and challenging.

More importantly, aviation is about the dream of flying, so it's letting one's mind and fantasies take him or her into a world full of possibilities.

For me simming is like reading a good book. Some pages are great, and some are good, but one must read all the pages in order to enjoy it.

[pracines 823]

If one plans and flies a modern airliner correctly, there are so many NOTAMS to read/consider, position reports, monitoring of systems/real weather, and if possible random failures/emergencies are set it can be a busy situation. These things require add-ons, but the closest thing available today to what you're referring to is in MS Flight Simulator 2004 (FS9) A Century of Flight in a simulator package. Though its possible to create something like you describe, for it to be that limited, will doom it from the start, because its such a small corner of aviation. Aviation grew fast from the beginning and continues to grow leaps and bounds. Light beacons had to be replaced very quickly, because of how unreliable the method was. VOR's are very reliable, but in comes GPS and suddenly VOR's become more and more extinct. Who knows what will replace GPS, but there will be something. 

 

[Patco Lch 1,465]

3 hours ago, mrchrsrider said:

. Which if you have done an actual 4 + hour flight is a difficult task in itself, just to stay occupied and engaged and requires a ridiculous amount of self control

Especially with the wife lurking around with that "is that all you're going to do today" look .

[Lionel Mandrake 7]

Thank you, all, for your replies.

qqwertzde, alas, I have ruled out M$'s flight simulator, in all its versions, because I have never in all these years been able to get it to work at all, never mind properly. I have never tried P3D because AFAIK it is a re-skinned FSX, with all its faults, and definitely very expensive and with absurdly restrictive Ts&Cs. X-plane attracted me because it allows one to make one's own aircraft, and its performance and reliability seem to be generally much better than the others. I'm aware of the large amount of investment people have put into M$'s product but regrettably life is too short to struggle any more with what has always been a difficult application to use and which now many see as a 'dead product'.

mrchrsrider, roger your point but as I mentioned the simulated interpretation of the place where I qualified is so wildly different from reality that I certainly wouldn't trust the programmer's idea of what any other places look like. As to 4 hour flights and so forth I greatly admire both your skill and your patience; I would not be an airline pilot, driving busloads of drunks to Torremolinos, for a pension.

Mr. Street, I always have X-plane on 'current time' and 'current weather', and have joined VATSIM in the hope of being able one day to use their simulated ATC - I bet they haven't got anyone who is anything like as rude and unhelpful as the real Luton Approach. The time will come but at the moment I'm still working on the hardware.

busdriver, I am a qualified but medically grounded pilot, formerly at the Pilot Centre, Denham Aerodrome, when I worked at Martin-Baker, which is a mile or so from the field. One's view hinges I suspect on one's definition of 'boring'. For example, the company's old CTP, who egged me on, was not boring, having been in the same squadron as the fellow who was busted for flying a Hunter through Tower Bridge, and is still flying the RV-8 which he built, at the age of 80 or so. His eventual replacement, however, despite having ejected from a Hawk and done all kinds of other stuff, was as boring as hell.

Chock, thank you but as I mentioned I've given up on M$'s flight simulator, which is in my view no better than their operating systems. In the 1970s I worked for a company (Nascom Microcomputers) which had Bill Gates as a subcontractor, writing our BASIC interpreter. I had to do the documentation half of his job for him because the lazy so-and-so simply wouldn't. I've never met him, but I've spoken to him on the phone a couple of times, and so can't really summon up enough of the awed respect in which the wretched fellow now seems to be held to spend any more time trying to make his stuff work.

flyforever, believe it or not I've never subscribed to this 'dream of flying' story. My experience of aviation (which started in 1963 in a Vickers Viscount) has always suggested to me that here in the UK at least it is largely a matter of paperwork and radar, a sort of aerial chess. I view aerobatics as mere Blaginism and have never attended an air show, except Farnborough in professional or semi-professional capacities.

pracines, at Martin-Baker there was the story of Sir James, who, having bought an airliner (a BAC 111), stepped into the cockpit during a flight and quickly returned to his seat, muttering "They're not doing anything in there. They're just sitting there, throwing switches."

Thanks for the recommendation but as I mentioned I've never been able to get M$'s product to work at all - before settling on X-plane my computer expert and I spent nearly a fortnight trying to get two different 'editions' of FSX to install on either of two high-end systems; eventually, having spent a lot of time on forums, he said "Apparently this is a 'known problem'." and I said "Well, that does it, then; it's sacked."

 

 

 

Edited October 30, 2017 by Lionel Mandrake
typo

[JYW 2,980]

The challenges, itineraries and fun to be had by armchair pilots, are as varied as the armchair pilots themselves.

To fans of tecnological wonders like the 777, the thought of toddling along in a Tigermoth, keeping ones eye out for visual reference points would perhaps be as boring as driving through Chipping Norton in a 1958 Morris Minor. 

Horses for courses as they say. 

As a fellow X-Plane user, might I suggest that you would perhaps enjoy something along the lines of the fairly recently released DC-3 from Vskylabs.

http://store.x-plane.org/VSKYLABS-DC-3C-47-Flying-Lab-Project_p_660.html

It is not a 'study level' model but it's vintage offers the opportunity to make some seat of the pants, eyeball-reliant flights.

Cheers.

[qqwertz 781]

1 hour ago, Lionel Mandrake said:

I have ruled out M$'s flight simulator, in all its versions, because I have never in all these years been able to get it to work at all, never mind properly. I have never tried P3D because AFAIK it is a re-skinned FSX, with all its faults, and definitely very expensive and with absurdly restrictive Ts&Cs.

Hello Lionel,

since I don't know exactly what your FSX problems were, I cannot make any claims. However, for me personally, the reason to switch to P3D was precisely to avoid the recurring problems I had with FSX. To me, P3D is FSX without issues, but a lot more powerful when it comes to graphics rendering.

I have only tried the demo of X-11, but from what I have read it appears that, at least for the time being, P3D is the way to go if you want to fly complex airplanes that are not GA. If you are sure you want to use X-11: the PMDG DC-6 was even first released for X-11 and then for FSX/P3D.

Peter

 

[HighBypass 2,339]

7 hours ago, Lionel Mandrake said:

Aircraft older, and in some cases better qualified, than their pilots take off,...

I LIKE that statement LOL! 

I've got FSX:SE to do what I want it to do, more or less. 

Sometimes I do enjoy getting the big iron into the sky, hand flying for a few thousand feet (doesn't take very long given today's powerful engines!) then pressing buttons and letting it follow the magenta line. I'll just watch the terrain roll by below me and enjoy some basic weather effects. Most of the terrain has a decent mesh, some of it is even photoreal, but at least with an atlas I can see where I am (I know GPS gives me lat and long, but they are just numbers sometimes).

Conversely, I've recently enjoyed taking a C-46 Commando for a couple of flights (the freeware one, not the recent Just Flight release). It seems to behave quite nicely, given that I'm a layman with only a few (non solo) hours in gliders. Couldn't get the radio to tune in to Glasgow's NDB for some reason. I'd just taken off from Manchester VFR, requested flight following from the default sim ATC, and just meandered up north to bonny Scotland, no doubt flagrantly busting all kinds of airspace restrictions growling around at 5000 feet most of the way 

About the modern navigational crutch that is GPS, sometimes I wish all the satellites could be turned off, especially when HGVs try and go down roads not meant for them! 

[Boomer 1,619]

2 hours ago, PATCO LCH said:

Especially with the wife lurking around with that "is that all you're going to do today" look .

OMG...no kidding, brother. ..heavy sigh.

[busdriver 258]

Very sorry to hear about the loss of your medical. I hope you get back in the air soon!