8 hours ago, Glenn Fitzpatrick said:

Yes it is more a VFR simulator than a flow/procedure simulator.

If I don’t do the proper procedures and flows to start and fly the MV Porter or the PMDG DC-6 in a VFR context it generally doesn’t end well. The engines don’t start or I fall from the sky. Beats a chart on the wall any day.

Edited November 29, 20214 yr by Dominique_K

'I'm Petraeus and I'm an addict.'

My confession is that I'll record a flight when I'm piloting in the cockpit, and then afterwards replay parts of it, looking out of a passenger window at the scenery, perhaps in different weather, or a different time of day, or even a different airplane.

It's good to share this, but I'm not sure that listening to all you junkies is helping my own addiction.

I agree with Dominique_K's  original statement. As a retired earth sciences teacher, I see that studying the landscape to understand the processes that have formed it is a worthwhile activity within the sim. And yes, as someone else said that YT videos could be made as instructional videos in geography, i think is also a worthwhile use of the sim. I had even thought of doing that myself, but my skills in the recording/video making realm are severely lacking.

I am also have a deep interest in WW II, particularly the PTO. What I have been doing lately is flying in the vicinity of USAAF airfields in the Pacific and looking at the landscape to see how it was changed during WW II and see how it has or has not recovered in 80 + years.  Scars remain and current land use certainly is reflected by the changes made 80 years ago.

I think some nerdiness is OK.  We are limited in the use of this sim only by our imaginations.

Edited November 29, 20214 yr by jmfabio
text addition

I feel the same and for me THIS is where the game really really shines - low and slow flying to soak in the scenery. Shows off all these geographic features. 

I did try tubeliner flying in MSFS and was so so bored out of my mind. One reason is that from high up you dont see all that detail and the terrain far below looks like FSX.  I was in the A320neo twiddling knobs and poking at MCDU keys and it was only on the landing approach that I realized I'm just missing out on the great scenery from so high up. I find XP11 much more satisfying for tubes and thus I keep that for airliner hops and MSFS is for the lower and slower GA hops. 

I was flying in Colorado and Utah yesterday keeping it to 3,500ft AGL over the Rockies. I have been there IRL and to see it looking so so real blew my mind. I lose hours every day doing these short GA hops now. 

The only immersion killer for me is lack of flowing water animation in rivers & streams. 

 

2 hours ago, jmfabio said:

nd yes, as someone else said that YT videos could be made as instructional videos in geography,

 

That was me too 😁 !

2 hours ago, jmfabio said:

I am also have a deep interest in WW II, particularly the PTO.

I like to mix flying, geography and history too !

 I have flown parts of the Slot with the Corsair but found some the islands between Guadalcanal and Boungainville  disappointing. 

 Pushing my nerdiness a notch further, I have done a flight over the routes of two of the greatest retreats in history : the horrific Elphinstone retreat  from Kabul to Jalallabad in 1842 and the famous Anabasis.  Really interesting if you are in military history.

19 hours ago, Dominique_K said:

 

 Pushing my nerdiness a notch further, I have done a flight over the routes of two of the greatest retreats in history : the horrific Elphinstone retreat  from Kabul to Jalallabad in 1842

Last stand of the 44th! Totally down to Shelton's antiquated tactics and Elphinstone's health - should have put Mackenzie and his little band in charge!

Continuing the thread theme though, I have heard stories of simmers locating lost aircraft in deserts and all sorts of similar things while flying about in more remote regions of the MSFS world, and passing the info on to others in the respective fields. Much aerial research work that was done with expensive aircraft ( or more recently, drones ) is now possible in MSFS, reducing research costs enormously for historians seeking landscape evidence of Bronze Age settlements or similar pursuits. Same can be said for Google Earth of course, but MSFS is more tactile I think.

1 hour ago, DC1973 said:

 Much aerial research work that was done with expensive aircraft ( or more recently, drones ) is now possible in MSFS, reducing research costs enormously for historians seeking landscape evidence of Bronze Age settlements or similar pursuits.  

If you fly above the '42 retreat terrain low enough you see with clarity the relief choke points where the Brit infantry and the civilians were slaughtered piecemeal by the Ghilzais. 

1st Afghan War 3 - Google My Maps

For further researches, I hope you are right and that the improving sharpness of the maps with time will help. I recently flew over Irak to check some Mesopotamian sites. Not much to to see and the ziggurat of Ur is a bit toyish. I also went to the Cyrus Tomb that Asobo recreated in a 3D model in Iran. A brownie point for Asobo 😀.

One of the most interesting aspects of MSFS is that it could open wide new applications for the sim. As said earlier, you fly, most of the time, with a purpose and not only to deliver pax from point A to B. 

 

Edited November 30, 20214 yr by Dominique_K

8 hours ago, Dominique_K said:

If you fly above the '42 retreat terrain low enough you see with clarity the relief choke points where the Brit infantry and the civilians were slaughtered piecemeal by the Ghilzais. 

If you haven’t already read it, I can strongly recommend William Dalrymple’s Return of a King: The Battle for Afghanistan, about the 1842 war. One of the finest (and incidentally most readable) works of history I’ve had the pleasure to encounter.

On 11/29/2021 at 12:25 AM, Dominique_K said:

Flying has always a purpose, of one sort or another.  This is not one of the worst.   MSFS is the first to allow this everywhere in the world.

Love it.

Nice post, and something I’d been thinking about as well. Who's to say being able to replicate some of the steps (it can never be all) an airline pilot might have to make is a more worthwhile simulator use than replicating some of the emotional experience of dusk flying near the mountains of Tajikistan? I can understand the attraction of both to different degrees even if I don’t share it, but I’d never say procedure adherence is a more serious or worthwhile objective than visceral experience of flight in the world.

Edited November 30, 20214 yr by scotchegg