@Swe_Richard, why don't you consider a much cheaper glider pilot license ?

That's what I have since 1980 last century, it's not that expensive to maintain even now with the new EASA rules, and, honestly, the most rewarding way of flying other than a jet fighter aerobatics training like the ones I had at the Portuguese Airforce 🙂

I have given up with this 'sim that needs no addons' thing, I am just grateful that it is already quite good out of the box, but I would love some addons like EnvTex or REX.
That way we could choose the sky colours to our liking at any time of day - there can be no disagreement then.   

These sky colour / environmental packs weren't too expensive anyway if I remember. 
An issue might be that the sky colours are procedural now I believe, with maybe no third party access, rather than a texture based palette like FSX / P3D.

Edited November 17, 20214 yr by bobcat999

Just now, jcomm said:

@Swe_Richard, why don't you consider a much cheaper glider pilot license ?

That's what I have since 1980 last century, it's not that expensive to maintain even now with the new EASA rules, and, honestly, the most rewarding way of flying other than a jet fighter aerobatics training like the ones I had at the Portuguese Airforce 🙂

Hmm.. Gliding you say. Well. Haven't really thought about it but the more I do, the more interesting it sounds. Not sure if I can do gliding at ESNU though... 

1 hour ago, Swe_Richard said:

Hmm.. Gliding you say. Well. Haven't really thought about it but the more I do, the more interesting it sounds. Not sure if I can do gliding at ESNU though... 

Sorry for OT!

The local gliding club at ESNU have a Grob and a Fournier. 🙂

I believe they are TMGs, "touring motorgliders" since they fly into airspace C (ESNU is a towered airport).
 

13 hours ago, FlyIce said:

Finally took my "discovery flight" at nearby flight school in a Cessna 172. If I have to summarize my whole experience in one sentence, it's that the whole experience in real life flight is just so remarkably similar to my MSFS flights at the same airport with the C172. 

 

Love your post.

<tongue in cheek ON >

We have been told so many times, by real pilots, that our poor simulation would never ever reach the real thing and we didn’t know what we were talking about when asking for better FDE ou engine simulation ! You are a ray of sunshine after them raining on the parade 😄 .

<Tongue in cheek OFF>
 

Go for it and keep on posting your experiences.

 

 

 

 

13 hours ago, Carts85 said:

Nice post… An reassuring to know that MSFS is getting us armchair pilots as close to the real thing as we can hope for from a desktop sim.

If in 2050, when I’ll be 65 if we’re not using tech like something from Ready Player One I’ll be so upset, I want my haptic suit! 🙂

In 2050, planes will be a thing of the past! We will be teleporting!

So I guess we'll then have to scrap all of our flying cars they were predicting in the 1930s 🙂

15 hours ago, FlyIce said:

I want to go ahead to learn my PPL, but at the same time, I couldn't help to marvel what an incredible wonder done by MSFS 2020. What a dream! 

I took my first discovery flight at my local airport in 1994 after using MSFS many years prior.  Everything in the cockpit was familiar to me, I even knew about ILS approaches, which I wouldn't need to learn for another year.

I got the PPL in 40 hours, went on to college and a commercial pilot's license, and never looked back.

It was the sim that got me into the flying.  I can't imagine what it's like now with MSFS2020.

9 hours ago, bobcat999 said:

I tried flying in real life also.  I didn't like it.  Poor frame rates and the sounds were a bit off, so back to MSFS for me!  

If you were part of a certain sector in this forum you would have immediately blamed the aircraft manufacturer/flying school and demanded your money back on the grounds that the experience was not as advertised at launch. 

About 2 decades ago I did a intro flying lesson in a piper warrior 2 at my local airfield. I did the take off and landing myself (with the instructors help). I can barely remember what it was like now but I will say flight sim experience can help!

14 hours ago, nas123 said:

I tried a real flight( takeoff, climbing, cruising around for 50 minutes and partly the landing) in an DA40NG some weeks ago after 40 years of flight simming. I agree that the MSFS visual was close to to real flight, but the feel of speed, winds, bumps, down and up drifts etc. are not very real there in the sim compared to the real thing.

Do you fly in VR?  If not, you should try it as I think the visual sensation of speed and bumps is way more life-like in VR than if you are looking at a flat monitor.  Of course, you still miss out on the real-life flying sensations of G-forces, gravity, etc on your body (perhaps the combination of a motion simulator along with VR headset would help there).

I did one of these years ago (maybe back in the FS 5.1 days) in Greenwood, Indiana. I told the instructor about my sim experience and he said to show him what I could do. So, he let me taxi to the runway, take off, do all the turns in the air and line it up for landing. There was a cross wind that day and he took over at that point - and I was very happy about that. Indeed the feel of the moving air and airplane isn't there. But, I think that, if he had passed out, I could have landed that thing. (Or, at least I want to think that!)