I never know where I want to fly, mainly because I don't have more than 30min/day available (2 babies 🙃) and I want to fly everywhere to discover the planet.

So I often see myself in front of the World Map and spend a lot of time choosing where to go!

So if you are like me, what is your technique?

PS: I know, big problems :))

While there are no gliders, I just make a weather-based search because I like to fly circuits under the worst weather conditions I can find around the Globe 🙂

I open badbadweather.com , opt for the preferred type, and go flying there.

A friend uses one among various mission-oriented apps, where you're given a task, and you have to plan it and perform the best you can, but most of the time I guess 30 min is not enough 🙂

I don't know if there's any way to save a state of flight in MFS, but it would be great, for when "emergency" calls a baby seater 🙂

Edited July 10, 20214 yr by jcomm

That‘s a good question. After many years of simming, I had the same challenge. To be honest, I need someone to tell me where to fly 🥴.

If you are interested in GA, here my suggestions:

1. Use some external tools, such as FSEconomy. After a while, I had a nice virtual bank account, full hangar with owned planes and plenty of miles. I discontinued after a few years…
 

2. Fly the big Tour (A Ridiculously Ambitious Trip Around the World), I started in 2018 and completed around 150 legs of +700 so far. Currently in South Africa. The original plan is uploaded on x-Plane.org. LittleNavMap is all you need to plan and log the trip, each Leg around 1h or so… TMB930 recommended…

3. Fly the MSFS BushTrips. Nice trips with plenty of short 30 Minute legs always coming with some nice explanations on the route. Not easy to catch up with incoming trips along with world updates. I currently fly Unalaska, not the best but still OK.

As a side Note: Since most of the destinations are totally unknown to me I often use Wikipedia during the trip to learn a little bit. For me now as important as the flight itself. 

Edited July 10, 20214 yr by urthgental

The Skypark.

I actually agree with the OP. We have the whole world and a variety of aircraft to choose from, but I too sometimes sit there looking at the world map for a few minutes, get confusticated, close the sim and go play Snowrunner instead. I have mentioned before that not just MSFS but its predecessors lack any real purpose to draw you in. Even the train sims give some structure, a timetable to follow, cargo to deliver and a career progression.

The add ons like FS Economy or going back a few years FS Passengers do not fully integrate snd generally you cannot save a flight or mission in progress to resume later. Most of the time I only have 45 maybe 60 mins at a time to spend on the sim, which isn’t enough.

I use OnAir, so pick a job that I can do in the time I have available. Don't need to worry about the $ since my AI pilots bring in more than I can spend 😉

 

G

I'm usually on a tour of somewhere so my next flight just picks up from where I left off. I've done the obligatory Lands End to John O'Groats via several routes, coast to coast USA. Am now closely following the coastline around the UK. No flight plan, just landing when I should stop simming and start work and taking off from the same place the next morning. The change of scenery as you go across any country is always breath taking. 

24 minutes ago, Elvensmith said:

I actually agree with the OP. We have the whole world and a variety of aircraft to choose from, but I too sometimes sit there looking at the world map for a few minutes, get confusticated, close the sim and go play Snowrunner instead. I have mentioned before that not just MSFS but its predecessors lack any real purpose to draw you in. Even the train sims give some structure, a timetable to follow, cargo to deliver and a career progression.

The add ons like FS Economy or going back a few years FS Passengers do not fully integrate snd generally you cannot save a flight or mission in progress to resume later. Most of the time I only have 45 maybe 60 mins at a time to spend on the sim, which isn’t enough.

Yes, I fully agree. I assume after the MS Flight desaster, Microsoft wanted to avoid the impression to ,gamish‘ the Simulator. And it turned out to be a wise choice. 

However, after the MS Flight Training the Instructor says: you can fly anywhere‘. But where do I start? And then? What comes next?

Especially on XBox, this will irritate players very soon. There is not nothing in the Simulator that pushes you to start MSFS again. The current BushTrip are nice but definitely not immersive enough…

And I talk about in game. There should not be a need to have such central element being addressed with various 3rd Party solutions…

Edited July 10, 20214 yr by urthgental

I agree with all you said, I have found a little program here called RandomFlightGenerator https://forums.flightsimulator.com/t/random-flight-generator/270848

This is really good as a starting point, and I also started to couple this with NeoFly to have some purpose.

I did a world tour for 9 months and frankly I made it shorter than I intended to (more than 400 legs on all continents) because I figured out I didn't always want to start from where I landed last time. Some days you want to do a night liner flight from your hometown, the day after that you feel like you would do some aerobatics between Tokyo skyscrapers listening to Jumpseat Media player https://forums.flightsimulator.com/t/release-jumpseat-player-jumpseat-media/386434

I think I just need some rules, so maybe I will start something like 1week/1continent so the next week I should find the kind of flight I want but on this other continent.

1 hour ago, urthgental said:

As a side Note: Since most of the destinations are totally unknown to me I often use Wikipedia during the trip to learn a little bit. For me now as important as the flight itself. 

I suggest you use BushTalk Radio! https://forums.flightsimulator.com/t/release-bushtalk-radio-audio-tours-bushtrips-exploration-sightseeing/360826

But a feature like RandomFlightGenerator would be a great addition to the core sim indeed.

Edited July 10, 20214 yr by Noooch

If I don't have a particular goal in mind, I often check out the current community events that are mentioned on the official forums or the MSFS Discord.

There are all kinds of events there, from virtual airshows, formation flying, guided tours through a certain region from a flightsimmer who lives there, or even flights teaching you about historical events, like this flight from Malta to Sicily that is happening tonight and that will give a guided tour on the locations of Operation Husky, the Allied invasion of Sicily in World War 2.

https://forums.flightsimulator.com/t/the-bush-divers-invitational-sicily/418880

As far as from MS/Asobo their focus appears or did on Bush Trips and Landing challenges. As you get a score with landing challenges, but I get bored quickly. Supposedly we are getting Discovery Flights in the SU5 update I think, and you get a score on those I think? Everyone almost has asked for a Career Mode, optional of course, since it was released. I am not sure if they want to do that since there are so many programs already, SkyPark, OnAir, NeoFly, FSEconomy ( I think ), etc...

Someone needs to make a simple app that spins and lands on destinations or routes or something? You could try to fly to ALL 37,000 + airports 🙂 I will say MP helps, but a lot of people don't want to use multiplayer for various reasons. We pick a different area every few weeks, and also different countries too. And it's not like you think, where everyone is trying to crash into each. Yeah sometimes a person, me, will do a roll or something in the PT-17 Stearman 75, 3rd party in Ecommerce store(s) and  Market Place. Usually we just chat in voice, chilling. We get a lot of international people too, and it's cool to hear about where they live, etc... And sometimes we fly where they live the next MP event!

When I can't decide for an individual flight, it's always back to Alaska!

I do mostly short flights less than 120 miles as I am interested by the transition parts of a flight, takeoff, climb, approach, landing. Cruising long haul is not for me.

I do it the old fashion way. I open Google Earth, spin a bit the globe. Stop it at random. Select a  place, any place that I find worth a look, slant the image a bit to check the profile and select  another point. Then set up the plan with LNM.  

Just off the plane.  GE brought me to Flores, Indonesia.   I  took off from  Mutiara WATO. with a destination West to Bima WADB as the landing looks cool enough in a bay. A couple of volcanoes on the route. 71 nm, about 45 minutes in the Corsair. Yesterday I did the same, less exotic for me, Cannes Mandelieu towards Nice and then South for a landing in Propiano. 

I sum it up : throw a dart on the globe, draw a 100 nm circle, select another airport, and do your planning . Works well for me. 

 

With MSFS I am doing what I have never done with previous sims, because the only "planet" I had to watch was made by... ORBX! Now that we have the real thing to contemplate and visit, I have done a number of round the world tours with various aircraft. leaving from the airport I landed at the day before, short and long hauls.

I am alternating airplanes and trips. For exemple, I am presently on a low and slow tour around South America which I started from Fort-Lauderdale Executive, landing with my GA airplane at Turk and Caiman, San Juan Porto Rico, Guadeloupe Le Raizet, Fort-de-France, Rochambeau and now Manaus, I will be today on my way to Santorem following the Amazone, and so on... 

But every other day, I switch to another plane and another trip in a completely different environment to break the monotony such as Nice, Salzburg (CJ4), Salzburg, Dubai (Longitude), Dubai, Stockholm (787 mod), Stockholm, Azores (Longitude), Azores, Miami (Longitude), Miami, New-York (FBW A320), New-work-Chicago (FBW A320), Chicago, Tokyo (787 mod), Tokyo, Sydney (B748 Salty), etc... 

If you dont have time for long flights, simply choose shorter routes and your starting point is found immediately, your time available will dictate your next stop.

If I generate a flight plan A->B->C-> ... ->X, where A, B, ... are airports, is it possible to interrupt the flight at a given airport and to continue from there with the same flight plan in another MSFS session?

Edited July 10, 20214 yr by Nemo

If you like to fly airliners and are looking for real world airliner flights to do, check out: www.flightsfrom.com

You can select and airport you are interested in departing from or arriving at and then apply some additional filters.

For example if you want to find 737 flights to/from Nice then it would look like:

https://www.flightsfrom.com/NCE/destinations?aircrafts=737&durationFrom=6&durationTo=546

Edited July 10, 20214 yr by Greazer