Initially, when flying, I would typically have the airfields labels turned on, so I could see exactly where they were. But it made the flying almost pointless, with the only challenge being the actual landing. So I turned off the labels, and then just referred to the VFR map. But, again, this still seems like a hell of a cheat, just following the magenta line until a visual of the airstrip is obtained. And referring to air charts, or Ordnance Survey maps instead is out of the question as I fly in VR.

So, I decided to not use any visual reference aids at all. Just get a basic heading, from the route planner, before I start, then off I go, hopefully in the rough direction. Now, I’m flying an ultralight, so have a good idea of how much drift, if any, needs counteracting, so I do my best to take that into account. Then it’s a just case of tuning into the destination airport, and announcing my location. When it comes back with something like I’m 12 miles Southwest, then I know to fly 12 Northeast, to get me roughly in the neighbourhood. Then I just start scouring the landscape like mad as I get in close. It can take several radio calls to keep assessing where I am in relation to the airstrip. And the info you get is very basic, rounded to the nearest mile, and only eight compass headings on offer.  Having the landing runway number also helps enormously, as it allows you to narrow down the landing options, and look for a field, or strip of grass, that matches the correct orientation  

With some of the obscure farm and field airstrips, they are often less obvious, and sometimes nigh-on invisible. So it is enormously rewarding when you finally get the landing strip in your sights. I’ve just had the best flights I’ve ever had doing this, and seeing as low-and-slow farm-hopping is my thing, I’m in heaven. Can’t wait to start planning more and more of these flights. I shall start to build up a catalogue of good quality payware and freeware sites across the UK with this type of flying in mind.  If you wanted an even bigger challenge, I guess you could time the flight so that the light was starting to fail as you reach the destination.  Making the urgency to locate the field all the greater.

Yup, that is one of the realistic aspects of this sim for sure. If doing this sort of thing does float your boat, check out the payware, Neil's Tours UK Farm Strips, of which I think there are now eight volumes. They are comparatively inexpensive (less than a tenner each) and usually include 20 or so smaller airfields.

Now in fairness to MSFS many of these airfields are already in the sim, either as genuine selectable airports, or visually there on the terrain owing to the nature of the scenery, but what often is not there, is the buildings and the cars and aeroplanes parked up on these fields; in real life, spotting these is what helps to pick out where an airfield is, because as you say, in real life even pretty large airports really do blend into the surroundings, especially at low altitude when you are looking through a bit of atmospheric haze.

Just now, Chock said:

Yup, that is one of the realistic aspects of this sim for sure. If doing this sort of thing does float your boat, check out the payware, Neil's Tours UK Farm Strips, of which I think there are now eight volumes. They are comparatively inexpensive (less than a tenner each) and usually include 20 or so smaller airfields.

Now in fairness to MSFS many of these airfields are already in the sim, either as genuine selectable airports, or visually there on the terrain owing to the nature of the scenery, but what often is not there, is the buildings and the cars and aeroplanes parked up on these fields; in real life, spotting these is what helps to pick out where an airfield is, because as you say, in real life even pretty large airports really do blend into the surroundings, especially at low altitude when you are looking through a bit of atmospheric haze.

Funnily enough, I have been looking at Neil’s Farmstrips. The only thing that halted me from purchasing, was seeing the promo video featuring a bear overlooking the proceedings. Just wondering if there are any more inappropriate objects waiting to pull me out of the immersion?

Well, I can tell you that having flown from Camphill a lot in real life, one of the first things I did when I got MSFS, was to land at the default Camphill (UK gliding site in Derbyshire) and noticed that it has the sound of crickets at night. This is a mistake of course; crickets in the UK are not nocturnal like they are in the US, so whilst you do hear them at night in the US, you don't tend to hear them at night in the UK, only the daytime.

This confirmed early on for me that whilst some of the natural features in MSFS do add a bit of atmosphere, they're not always as accurate as they could be, but how much this annoys you depends on your knowledge of the local flora and fauna I suppose. As far as I'm aware this cricket noise is not altered in the payware version of Camphill which is in volume 7 of Neil's UK Farm Strips, but then again it is a gliding site so unless you are actually exploring the scenery in the dark, that wouldn't be a major issue. What is does do however, is add all the glider trailers in the field next to the entrance and the control van and some vehicles on the airfield, and these - in addition to the fairly recognisable from the air shape of the mown grass on the field - are usually what help you to spot it from the air.

So I guess that some of the natural stuff probably needs excluding from the scenery unless you want your sim to have the Beast of Bodmin Moor in there lol. Maybe worth letting the developer know about that stuff so they can exclude it from the scenery in a patch if it bothers you?

You can use maps in VR. For SteamBR I use OVR Toolkit. Still a bit of a hassle but works pretty well considering it is not official.

Downside is if you don't want to obscure your view outside you need to place it somewhere inside the plane. This is mostly on the right side a bit down. So you have to turn your head pretty far to the side each time you want to look at the map and the window needs o be pretty big to be able to read stuff well.

This has the effect, however, that you don't want to be glued to the map all the time. So you need to memorise it a bit, which is kind of good in a way. 

19 minutes ago, Chock said:

Well, I can tell you that having flown from Camphill a lot in real life, one of the first things I did when I got MSFS, was to land at the default Camphill (UK gliding site in Derbyshire) and noticed that it has the sound of crickets at night. This is a mistake of course; crickets in the UK are not nocturnal like they are in the US, so whilst you do hear them at night in the US, you don't tend to hear them at night in the UK, only the daytime.

This confirmed early on for me that whilst some of the natural features in MSFS do add a bit of atmosphere, they're not always as accurate as they could be, but how much this annoys you depends on your knowledge of the local flora and fauna I suppose. As far as I'm aware this cricket noise is not altered in the payware version of Camphill which is in volume 7 of Neil's UK Farm Strips, but then again it is a gliding site so unless you are actually exploring the scenery in the dark, that wouldn't be a major issue. What is does do however, is add all the glider trailers in the field next to the entrance and the control van and some vehicles on the airfield, and these - in addition to the fairly recognisable from the air shape of the mown grass on the field - are usually what help you to spot it from the air.

So I guess that some of the natural stuff probably needs excluding from the scenery unless you want your sim to have the Beast of Bodmin Moor in there lol. Maybe worth letting the developer know about that stuff so they can exclude it from the scenery in a patch if it bothers you?

Minor details, like the sound of crickets, wouldn’t be an issue. But lions and tigers and bears, oh my! Not in good old Blighty, at least 😂. 
 

But, bears aside, his work does look pretty good. Especially when you consider that it works out to about 50p per site. I’ll try and find out if the more exotic of the creatures has been curbed with an update.

55 minutes ago, kakihara123 said:

You can use maps in VR. For SteamBR I use OVR Toolkit. Still a bit of a hassle but works pretty well considering it is not official.

Downside is if you don't want to obscure your view outside you need to place it somewhere inside the plane. This is mostly on the right side a bit down. So you have to turn your head pretty far to the side each time you want to look at the map and the window needs o be pretty big to be able to read stuff well.

This has the effect, however, that you don't want to be glued to the map all the time. So you need to memorise it a bit, which is kind of good in a way. 

I’ll definitely keep that in mind, although I don’t have the Steam version, I have the MS Store version. At the moment, I am quite happy being map-less. I’m also on the limits with my current system, so the fewer open windows and dialogue boxes the better.

Doesn't matter where you bought it as long as you use SteamVR. And Oculus Headset might have a similar window function natively, I read.

Going back to Neil’s UK Farm Strips.......  I was initially looking at the smaller packs, but just discovered the “Mega” pack, containing 51 airstrips for a piddling £7.70. Well worth a punt at that price

https://www.simshack.net/products/uk-airfields-farm-grass-strips-scenery-mega-pack-1779#customerreviews

Ah, I’d need to dig into it a bit, because I don’t use Steam. I fire it up through Oculus, as I have a Quest 2.

Okay, so I just bought Neil’s UK Farm Strips. I figured that at £7.70 for 51 airfields, it seemed rude not to. From what I have seen so far, I am very pleased. No marauding wildlife to report as yet. And it’s quite nice that the package contains a .pdf outlining each and every airfield, along with any pertinent information, and a diagram showing the layouts. Very handy, and a nice way to plan one’s flights. I’ll dig a little deeper, and, if still happy, I’ll bag another couple of collections from the series that contain the airfields that really interest me.

Edited February 10, 20215 yr by Bilbosmeggins

Tiny airfield is a parking lot LOL

Other than that

https://www.bushleaguelegends.com/addons/msfs/msfs-mods

https://www.bushleaguelegends.com/addons/msfs/msfs-scenery

Thank you. There looks some interesting stuff on there. The Scottish ones might come in handy, as I’m working my way up there now, as part of my UK circumnavigation. I’m currently parkedup at Carlisle. 

4 hours ago, Bilbosmeggins said:

The Scottish ones might come in handy, as I’m working my way up there now, as part of my UK circumnavigation

If you pick those up, be sure to check out Barra, which is configured with markings for a STOL competition.  Lots of fun to be had there with Grravel.

I will be sure to check out Barra. It sounds a blast.