Jump to content
Sign in to follow this  
curt1

Airport user or collector?

Recommended Posts

I've been thinking about this for awhile now.  I've purchased over the years numerous airports from various developers to enhance my simming experience.  I have many from Orbx, FSDT, Fly Tampa, Flightbeam, LatinVFR along with a handful of others.  They're all very good, and I'm not complaining about them at all.  So what's the problem?  I have only so much available time to enjoy all these, and how do you determine if you're getting good usage value?  I have enough payware airports where I may only fly into them once a year, or maybe not even that if I'm distracted into buying the latest offerings.  If I'm not flying into them, than that makes me an airport collector doesn't it?  I'm at a point where I need to draw a line, but that's tough to do when FT will release a gorgeous Las Vegas, and LVFR has a great New Orleans, and on and on it goes.  Has anybody else been weighing the cost versus return ratio of their airport sceneries?  

  • Like 5
  • Upvote 2

Share this post


Link to post
46 minutes ago, curt1 said:

Has anybody else been weighing the cost versus return ratio of their airport sceneries?  

Not quite. My addon airport list is up to 120 with the latest addition of LVFR KMSY.  The incremental cost is nil for me.... I'm single and kid is grown and I'm retired.  This hobby occupies a major part of my day each day.  Also, as I've mentioned before, it is hard to think of a hobby that costs less than this one.  Even bowling is more expensive.

I use my LogEdit logbook editor to help pick places to fly from/to, and to pick the airframe in which to do it.  This program provides a couple of small reports such as top 10 destinations, number of flights/hours by type or registration number, etc.  I also save most flights after I park at the gate and secure the aircraft for the next flight, and I'll keep that scenario for a long time.  Then I only have to look at the directory listing of all my saved flights and maybe pick the oldest one as the next one I start.

  • Like 2
  • Upvote 1

Dan Downs KCRP

Share this post


Link to post

Same here, but I like to fly round the world operations so I pick my purchases to align to my RTW routes. I get much better usage out of them for this reason, but there are many gathering dust also! 

Share this post


Link to post

It would be nice to have all airports worldwide in a good quality. So you could fly anywhere anytime without asking "Which airport do I own?"

 

That's not collecting, that's how it should be.

 

Karl

  • Like 1

i9-9900K@5,0   |  32GB 3200  |  2080TI  |  4K 55"  |  MSFS | P3D V5

Share this post


Link to post
1 hour ago, curt1 said:

I've been thinking about this for awhile now.  I've purchased over the years numerous airports from various developers to enhance my simming experience.  I have many from Orbx, FSDT, Fly Tampa, Flightbeam, LatinVFR along with a handful of others.  They're all very good, and I'm not complaining about them at all.  So what's the problem?  I have only so much available time to enjoy all these, and how do you determine if you're getting good usage value?  I have enough payware airports where I may only fly into them once a year, or maybe not even that if I'm distracted into buying the latest offerings.  If I'm not flying into them, than that makes me an airport collector doesn't it?  I'm at a point where I need to draw a line, but that's tough to do when FT will release a gorgeous Las Vegas, and LVFR has a great New Orleans, and on and on it goes.  Has anybody else been weighing the cost versus return ratio of their airport sceneries?  

Couldn't have said it better. Asked myself this many times over the years but still can't resist some of the latest offerings. Then I fly to some defaults when I see an interesting Atlas Air trip I want to do. It's a hopless addiction.

 


Vic green

Share this post


Link to post

I keep a set of maps that show where my addons are, and when planning a flight, I use that visual aid to help choose city pairs for a flight.  I get around to most of my sceneries...much of it depends on the kind of flying I'm doing at the moment.

I've been having something of a renaissance of late, recovering a fair number of airports that I thought were lost to me in P3D by updating them with ADE/GSX2.  Just flew a nice leg from Ben Gurion to Dublin, two sceneries I've resurrected for use in P3D during the last couple of weeks.

Agree on the cost...a decent scenery is less than a dozen golf balls, a decent airplane add-on is at par with a round of golf at the better local courses, and a decent simming PC is rivalled by the cost of a good set of golf clubs.  So I don't feel bad about the cost since you won't find me chasing a little white ball across somebody's lawn every weekend.  🤪

Regards

  • Like 1
  • Upvote 1

Bob Scott | President and CEO, AVSIM Inc
ATP Gulfstream II-III-IV-V

System1 (P3Dv5/v4): i9-13900KS @ 6.0GHz, water 2x360mm, ASUS Z790 Hero, 32GB GSkill 7800MHz CAS36, ASUS RTX4090
Samsung 55" JS8500 4K TV@30Hz,
3x 2TB WD SN850X 1x 4TB Crucial P3 M.2 NVME SSD, EVGA 1600T2 PSU, 1.2Gbps internet
Fiber link to Yamaha RX-V467 Home Theater Receiver, Polk/Klipsch 6" bookshelf speakers, Polk 12" subwoofer, 12.9" iPad Pro
PFC yoke/throttle quad/pedals with custom Hall sensor retrofit, Thermaltake View 71 case, Stream Deck XL button box

Sys2 (MSFS/XPlane): i9-10900K @ 5.1GHz, 32GB 3600/15, nVidia RTX4090FE, Alienware AW3821DW 38" 21:9 GSync, EVGA 1000P2
Thrustmaster TCA Boeing Yoke, TCA Airbus Sidestick, 2x TCA Airbus Throttle quads, PFC Cirrus Pedals, Coolermaster HAF932 case

Portable Sys3 (P3Dv4/FSX/DCS): i9-9900K @ 5.0 Ghz, Noctua NH-D15, 32GB 3200/16, EVGA RTX3090, Dell S2417DG 24" GSync
Corsair RM850x PSU, TM TCA Officer Pack, Saitek combat pedals, TM Warthog HOTAS, Coolermaster HAF XB case

Share this post


Link to post

This is a brilliant topic. I've been having very similar thoughts. The fact of the matter is that I only have time to fly in the weekends, not in the least because an average flight takes me 2-3 hours from setting up the sim to seeing my passengers disembarking at my destination. As such, I do wonder how much sense it makes to keep buying airports, but the reason I still do so has to do with this:

59 minutes ago, kand said:

Same here, but I like to fly round the world operations so I pick my purchases to align to my RTW routes. I get much better usage out of them for this reason, but there are many gathering dust also! 

I agree completely. I'm easily distracted and I like flying everywhere. It keeps the sim 'fresh', as I always have a new flight to do and a new place to explore. 

Like Bob I use maps to keep track of all my airports, and I draw routes between city pairs based on Flightradar24. I color code thr routes so I have a quick sense of how long the flight will take, and this helps me decide on the flight I want to do. My destination catalog is no so extensive that I can fly nearly everywhere, in every environment, with every sort of weather that I may want, and I can tailor the length of the route to the type of equipment and length of flight that I want to fly. Do I spend a ton of money on that? I certainly do. One can wonder if I really need so many airports, and I probably don;t. But, as is probably clear by now, I love jumping around the globe. Last Saturday I flew from Brisbane to Hamilton Island with a Qantas Link TFDi 717, and the week before that I flew from Madrid to Bilbao with a Vueling Aerosoft A320. Going even further back I flew from Miami to Guatamala, and then to Bogota with a Martinair PMDG 747F. And I loved every one of those flights!

This is what I love about Flight Simulator: I can pick to fly anywhere in the world, so why not make use of that? Personally I can afford to buy these addons, and so I'll probably keep doing that for the foreseeable future.

But I will say this: I almost only buy airports when they are on sale, and I am NOT looking forward to P3Dv5... as I'm afraid I'll be needing to pay all sorts of upgrade fees :P


Benjamin van Soldt

Windows 10 64bit - i5-8600k @ 4.7GHz - ASRock Fatality K6 Z370 - EVGA GTX1070 SC 8GB VRAM - 16GB Corsair Vengeance LPX @ 3200MHz - Samsung 960 Evo SSD M.2 NVMe 500GB - 2x Samsung 860 Evo SSD 1TB (P3Dv4/5 drive) - Seagate Barracuda 2TB 7200RPM - Seasonic FocusPlus Gold 750W - Noctua DH-15S - Fractal Design Focus G (White) Case

Share this post


Link to post
2 hours ago, downscc said:

I'm single and kid is grown and I'm retired

I'm with you on that one. 😁

  • Upvote 1

Share this post


Link to post

Good thread.  Another point of view is that by buying these airports we're supporting developers.  I know it's very hard and time consuming to develop an airport of the quality we get from our high end developers.  I've been updating several airfields to a better than default stage, and it takes a lot of hours for me just to make these updates (they're uploaded here in avsim).  I'm sure it takes significantly longer to produce a high end product. 

I don't buy every airport that comes out, just some of the ones I see flying into.  Flying for a virtual airline is a good way to set a criteria of which airports to buy.   

  • Upvote 3

dv

Win 10 Pro || i7-8700K ||  32GB || ASUS Z370-P MB || NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 Ti 11Gb || 2 960 PRO 1TB, 840 EVO

My Files in the AVSIM Library

Share this post


Link to post

I have Avia weather App on my Android,with airports grouped in folders,that's how I keep track of the 100+ payware airports on P3D. I fly real routes mostly,using Flightaware and Sim Brief to generate the flight-plans. Better than spending it on Boose.....


Jim Driscoll, MSI Raider GE76 12UHS-607 17.3" Gaming Laptop Computer - Blue Intel Core i9 12th Gen 12900HK 1.8GHz Processor; NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 Ti 16GB GDDR6; 64GB DDR5-4800 RAM; Dual M2 2TB Solid State Drives.Driving a Sony KD-50X75, and KDL-48R470B @ 4k 3724x2094,MSFS 2020, 30 FPS on Ultra Settings.

Jorg/Asobo: “Weather is a core part of our simulator, and we will strive to make it as accurate as possible.”Also Jorg/Asobo: “We are going to limit the weather API to rain intensity only.”


 

Share this post


Link to post
4 minutes ago, PATCO LCH said:

Any of you guys ever use defaults?

Nope! 

  • Upvote 1

Orman

Share this post


Link to post

Thanks everyone for expressing your thoughts.  It's true the cost of payware airports are not a lot when compared to other hobbys, but I tend to wait until a holiday sale comes along to justify my occasional trip there.  I'll fly heavies for six months, then I'll flip to GA and fly into smaller airports for a time.  Vic, no, I never fly into a default airport.  That's like eating a cheese pizza without the cheese.

Edited by curt1

Share this post


Link to post
25 minutes ago, PATCO LCH said:

Any of you guys ever use defaults?

I personally avoid defualt airports like the plague, even ones that have been modified or dressed up with ADE.

  • Like 1
  • Upvote 1

Avsim Board of Directors | Avsim Forums Moderator

Share this post


Link to post

I use Air Hauler II and basically open a base at most all of my favorite payware airports, which is right at 120. I've been guilty of buying two or three airports at once and not getting to them all before I've bought another that I just had to have. Lately I've been pretty good about using Simmarket's wish list I add basically everything I think I'm interested in to it, then go back and look for things on sale. I might have twenty or more things on that list at any given time. It serves as a good cool down period, I don't do as much impulse purchases this way and save a little cash too.


RE Thomason Jr.

 

 

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...