I’ve never had the slightest interest in doing long haul. Until now. Just leaving the PC on for 7 hours seemed silly and a waste of electricity IMHO. This is an interesting idea though.

7 hours ago, suncoastflyer said:

Take a quick tangent here, my P3D does not do that. CPU usage stays high when minimised as if nothing changed at all. What's your actual usage? If it drops by more than 20% I'll be impressed (for you) and angry (at mine) that my sim doesn't "work".

Not to deviate from the topic, but I have to confirm that my PC does that also, almost no usage of cpu or graphics card when p3d is minimized. I can use Adobe software without issues at that time for example. 

The longer I think about it the better the idea sounds. I too like to do other things while en-route to a distant destination and having to exclusively use my PC for the sim prohibits me from doing longer journeys. During such a journey I want to kill the sim but still monitor my flight be it by using a phone app or a web interface. Things I would at least like to monitor are fuel reserves and position. I don't like the idea of the flight being paused at top of descent, but that could be optional. 

Now I don't think this should be included in the base sim though as it is for a very specific group of people, but it could be a great opportunity for a 3rd party developer. The whole process doesn't even have to be handed off to the cloud, it could just be a simple process running on your machine simulating the position of the aircraft based on weather information and aircraft performance at the time of closing the sim. When continuing a flight the sim should just check with the process and position the aircraft at the current position and set aircraft configuration and fuel reserves according to it. Furthermore the cockpit should feel used when you get back to it, so if it has become dark the lighting should be on for example. 

16 minutes ago, Raymond.Groenendijk said:

 Now I don't think this should be included in the base sim though as it is for a very specific group of people, but it could be a great opportunity for a 3rd party developer. The whole process doesn't even have to be handed off to the cloud, it could just be a simple process running on your machine simulating the position of the aircraft based on weather information and aircraft performance at the time of closing the sim.  

But again it is like re-inventing the wheel, it already exists re : the 787 !

3 minutes ago, domkle said:

But again it is like re-inventing the wheel, it already exists re : the 787 !

Haven't got that one my self, but as far as I can read that one skips part of the flight instantly. That has a way different feeling to it than having the idea that your flight is traveling in real-time but you're just not in the cockpit. Also that is tied to a specific aircraft. 

21 minutes ago, Raymond.Groenendijk said:

Now I don't think this should be included in the base sim though as it is for a very specific group of people, but it could be a great opportunity for a 3rd party developer. The whole process doesn't even have to be handed off to the cloud, it could just be a simple process running on your machine simulating the position of the aircraft based on weather information and aircraft performance at the time of closing the sim. When continuing a flight the sim should just check with the process and position the aircraft at the current position and set aircraft configuration and fuel reserves according to it. Furthermore the cockpit should feel used when you get back to it, so if it has become dark the lighting should be on for example. 

This sounds like the aircraft persistence request, if persistence needs to be a core feature, I don't see why this can be handle by 3rd parties. They seem to be very similar.

Also, it may be more simple if the cruise calculations are handle by the cloud (Microsoft) than running another addon just for that...

Just now, Raymond.Groenendijk said:

Haven't got that one my self, but as far as I can read that one skips part of the flight instantly. That has a way different feeling to it than having the idea that your flight is traveling in real-time but you're just not in the cockpit. Also that is tied to a specific aircraft. 

Yes it is tied to an aircraft and this is exactly my point . It shouldn't be a sim feature but an aircraft feature. Encumbering the sim with features that could be set into an aircraft  is not a good idea IMO. You just multiply the chances of having issues. 

About the real time, I don't really understand. We want here to skip the boring part of some long haul flights.  Simming is all about pretending.  

3 minutes ago, domkle said:

Yes it is tied to an aircraft and this is exactly my point . It shouldn't be a sim feature but an aircraft feature. Encumbering the sim with features that could be set into an aircraft  is not a good idea IMO. You just multiply the chances of having issues. 

About the real time, I don't really understand. We want here to skip the boring part of some long haul flights.  Simming is all about pretending.  

I personally think it should be neither a sim nor an aircraft feature, but something made available by a 3rd party. For me personally it doesn't have to be too accurate either, as long as I can jump back in the cockpit after a few hours and have made progress (and burn fuel) without having to keep the sim running.  

Real-time or not is a personal preference and that has all to do with the way someone pretends, but you're right about that it has all to do with pretending. 

Personally I don't like time jumps or time acceleration because it strips away the feeling of a long flight. If I fly within the same time zone as I'm in and use the current time I want it to get dark in the sim at the same time as it gets dark in reality for example. I would pretend to have a rest in the back and do something else completely. Currently I do this by having the sim run on my desktop, switch to a wing view and do something else on my laptop. But I would do stuff like this more often if I can just start a game, watch a movie or do some work on my desktop machine.  

20 minutes ago, Noooch said:

Also, it may be more simple if the cruise calculations are handle by the cloud (Microsoft) than running another addon just for that...

It actually would be, but I don't think this feature will be important enough to be included in the base simulation as it is probably a bit of a niche feature... A poll among the user base might prove different though. 
 

25 minutes ago, Noooch said:

This sounds like the aircraft persistence request, if persistence needs to be a core feature, I don't see why this can be handle by 3rd parties. They seem to be very similar.

I think these two come very close, but they are not the same. Persistence is all about wear and tear and the state and position of the aircraft where you parked it. Simulation of a moving aircraft when closing the sim would probably be out of scope of that specific feature request. 

8 minutes ago, Raymond.Groenendijk said:

It actually would be, but I don't think this feature will be important enough to be included in the base simulation as it is probably a bit of a niche feature... A poll among the user base might prove different though. 

For me it's a win-win, even if there is not a majority requesting it, maybe that is simply because they didn't think about it (I personnally didn't).

But if it becomes available for everyone (core feature), I am confident more and more simmers will use it and it will become a must-have pretty soon.

14 minutes ago, Noooch said:

For me it's a win-win, even if there is not a majority requesting it, maybe that is simply because they didn't think about it (I personnally didn't).

But if it becomes available for everyone (core feature), I am confident more and more simmers will use it and it will become a must-have pretty soon.

Neither did I and I also see it as a valuable addition now, so you might be right. It won't be a must-have-for-launch feature for me though as I'm sure I will have plenty of fun with the base sim for quite a long time. But I wouldn't mind if it will be added as a core feature somewhere down the road. 

This is something that Sailaway (https://wp.sailaway.world/) does, with customizable options for what it should do in the cloud when you’re not running the program (eg sail in a straight line, sail according to waypoints you set, maintain your last heading, etc.). I’ve long thought this kind of feature would work well for FS long haul.

James

You could go further with that kind of "cloud computing the flight":

 

Imagine you start your 747 flight across the half globe. Switch that flight into "offline mode". Switch off PC.

Go drink a cup of coffee or go shopping. Come back, switch on PC and do some funny VFR hops with a Cessna (look at the sky and see the contrails of your 747?). Switch off PC and watch TV. After then, several hours later, you switch on PC, load a F16, start somewhere and chase for "your" 747 and do a little formation flight with "yourself" 😉

Land the F16 and take over the control of the 747 again for landing.

And then, ups, wife calls for dinner, you ask here at AVSIM forums if one want to take over your plane and land it.

 

The more I think about, the more I'm sure, such a system is the basis for shared cockpit and could be expanded which much more possibilities. We will see ...

2 hours ago, Johnny19 said:

Not to deviate from the topic, but I have to confirm that my PC does that also, almost no usage of cpu or graphics card when p3d is minimized. I can use Adobe software without issues at that time for example. 

Turns out I was pretty wrong, kinda angry at myself for never minimising the sim and only tabbing out. Big Facepalm 😅