I wanted to thank all of the many developers from Microsoft, LM, PMDG, ORBX, HiFi, Majestic, FSCaptain, FSDT, FlightBeam, REX and all the rest including the many very helpful people here who have added to our enjoyment of this activity for so very long.  BertP, RobA, SteveW, MartinW, BobS and so many others have been persistent resources for myself and others here and I would like to thank you all again for helping folks enjoy this fascinating pastime. 

I never became a RW pilot myself but my dad got his PPL when I was a little boy in the early 60's but only flew for a year or two after getting licensed probably due to lack of funds to support the hobby--he was a civil engineer w/ 6 kids.   I remember me and my neighborhood pal took one of his dad's typical A-frame sawhorses, which was sided w/ plywood about 2/3 of the way from top to bottom, to create a mock flight deck.  We drew avionics gauges on the plywood panel face and constructed a yoke out of a broom handle and cutout a handle/grip.  We would sit side-by-side with our legs extended under the plywood panels and pretend fly for hours.  

20y later came subLOGIC's MS Flight Simulator 1 for Apple 2, which my older brother owned, and we played that which was so amazing to me for its day.   FF thru the various iterations to what we have today, now 4 decades later, and it's nothing short of spectacular for what it offers.   And this is BEFORE MSFS Fantastic arrives!  As you well know many people can't relate to this idea, this fascination w/ virtual experiences on a PC interface, but I feel exceedingly blessed to among the...hopelessly addicted who enjoy this sort of thing.  As well, I'm an avid PC golfer using the outstanding TheGolfClub 2019, with its 100's of fantastic dev and user created golf courses.  As an avid real world golfer w a moderately low handicap TGC2019 game emulates what real golf is like so well it too is nothing short of remarkable.

For folks who find themselves being bored w/ simply flying, which I did in fact become many years ago, I would like to put in a big plug for FSCaptain which allows you to enjoy a career as a pilot and can be set up to keep you as on your check ride toes as care to be.  The developer staff are simply outstanding as models of what you would hope customer service should be like.  Thanks Dutch, Travis, and Peter!

Anyway, being fundamentally a lazy luddite, I just now upgraded to P3D 4.5 from 3.4 after assembling my new PC a few weeks ago.  This has rekindled my enjoyment yet again, and prior to this I was flying almost daily on 6.5y/o hardware and enjoying every second of it!  It's nice to be able to up the eye candy and I look forward now to picking up the last piece in my new build, Ampere 3080Ti/Titan whenever it arrives.  

Take Care everybody we're in for some turbulent times for quite some time to come.

Noel

I agree, we want to support all our developers be they a fully developed team or just a simple simmer knocking out something in their little "hangar".  They are the ones that breath new life into our sim platforms that become static or dull.  Now that many of us have a LOT more time to spend indoors, maybe its a good time to work on a few flightsim projects that have gathered dust.  I know I did with my "cockpit". 

I saw one simmer kind enough to grab one of my products so I said "heck, why not pay it forward", so I grabbed the Carenado Phenom 300.  Think about it.  Every little bit helps the developers right now, both big and small.  Even that new Orbx Africa landclass is looking mighty tempting...  😋

1 hour ago, Clutch Cargo said:

...so I grabbed the Carenado Phenom 300.  Think about it.  Every little bit helps the developers right now, both big and small.  Even that new Orbx Africa landclass is looking mighty tempting...  😋

The Phenom 300 is fabulous but didn't shine fully until our friend Bert Pieke strongly recommended Flight1's GTN750 so I bought it and the combination put it in the long term hanger.  I only use 4 planes now and it is one of them.  I would like to find a superb small regional jet sometime.  I'm spoiled by the 3 other planes:  PMDG 777, 737NGX, Majestic Q400