3 hours ago, blueshark747 said:

VR Flight/Race Simming are actually my cheaper alternative hobbies, to my past more expensive hobby of car racing, building ,tuning ,modding.

These flight sim addons are pennies in comparison to costs of car performance parts, engine building and dyno tuning.

About $8k in both engine builds alone.

 

 

Thank God i left this time behind me.. 🥳

cheers 😉

Well.. sure, this hobby can be costly there is no doubting that. But many hobbies are. I have always been fond of photography for example and over the years I don't dare to sum everything up but I would not be even remotely surprised if that hobby has cost me several times more than flight sim. 

10 hours ago, AOB said:

I know there are some out there who are very rich but has anyone ever worked out the total cost of buying all MSFS add ons? I bought all the Orbx scenery for Australia/NZ but that is nothing compared to everything available. Are we dumb or what?

I am using MSFS since the initial beta and so far I bought zero scenery addons, two utilities (worth around 55 euros) and three planes (worth about 100 euro's) so... imho this really is an extremely cheap hobby. (BTW the only freeware I uses is LNM). I do know people who buy almost every plane and scenery there is: I'd call that dumb but well, if they have the money for it and like to buy stuff they only use once... be my guest. But anyway, I wouldn't call myself dumb, at least not in this regard. 😉

O, wait, forgot about Navigraph, yearly sub, so something like 90 euro's...? That still makes all this an extremely cheap hobby. 😉 Not feeling dumd at all here.

Hey, I buy a LOT of scenery and addons, no doubt about it. But I honestly couldn't tell you the last time I ate out (we're talking maybe 20 years here), and I'm far too polite to express my opinion of anyone who'd splash out on a take-away coffee with a ten part name. I can't remember the last time I bought any clothes apart from socks and t-shirts (which I usually buy from Lidl or Amazon - yep, I look like sh*t but I really don't care - after all I don't go out to fancy restaurants <grin>), and my sister was telling me recently about her step-son and his mate visiting them and going out to play golf at £175 a round. I drive a twelve year old Honda and get around 6 weeks per gallon (seriously - I just filled up for the second time this year!)

I'm not rich, just an old guy with no mortgage and a basic pension, but I know what I want to do and I can afford to do it. Doing what you can't afford to do is dumb. Anything else is gravy.

...think about those people like mine, who are crazy enough to even spent their money on building their own airliner cockpit 1:1. (Airbus A320 in my case) 😁

but i wouldn´t call me "rich" myself. This term is really relative, isn´t it?!

Edited July 20, 20223 yr by BerndB

Life is short,  you can't take it with you.  Everything in moderation.  Life needs to be balanced.

6 hours ago, Ridvan Celik said:

This reminds me of all the useless pointless motivational quotes posted on Instagram, the ones that have no substance. 

Ridvan, i agree to every single point from your post and your mother seems to be a wise person. But especially you first point makes me smile, because this is exactly that what all the, so called "social network" is about, in fact. I like to call it better "non-social network", because it uncovers mostly the non-social behaviors of humans and helps a lot in letting the people forget what social behavior between humans really feels like or means.

I'm pretty frugal, so I've only bought one airport (a large airport closest to my home where I fly* from IRL). But when considering things like a flight yoke, I figure whatever I spend on this hobby is WAY LESS than anyone who flies real aircraft for their "hobby". Heck, the cost of fuel for a single flight is likely more than the grand total that I've spent on MSFS, not counting the computer itself. And while a flight sim is not the same is real life flying, the scenery in the area where I would fly IRL is so good now in MSFS that I feel I get almost equal enjoyment from my much cheaper hobby.

* commercial flights, as IANAP

Edited July 20, 20223 yr by Keto Ketchup

Who said Money doesn't buy you happiness?  Yeah, but that was before there were MSFS addons...

If you really want to go broke get involved in restoring a classic WWII warbird. The fastest way known to man of turning large fortunes into vastly smaller ones.

I sure hope age 40+ simmers with spouses, kids and mortgages have fun hobbies to make them smile like a kid in a candy store at times.

What else is there to get excited about? You've already been sucked dry from most forms of selfish joy by now anyway, why start penny pinching with your last bit of happiness and sanity in flight sim payware🤣

 

Edited July 20, 20223 yr by blueshark747

15 hours ago, cianpars said:

Rich people are rich because they don't waste their money on MSFS addons.

Rich people don't buy MSFS addons because they buy a plane in real life. 😉

 

15 hours ago, AOB said:

Are we dumb or what?

No, it's our hobby. People spend money on their hobbies. Have you looked at how much model railroad stuff costs? Makes MSFS look cheap by comparison; you can easily sink 10 grand into a modest model railroad setup. I've blown a lot of money on flight sim stuff over the years, but I don't think I've gotten to the 5 figure mark yet. 

 

As to how much it would cost to buy everything, the nice thing about this hobby is that once you have the platform, you can customize it the way you want. I'm not interested in flying helicopters, so I won't buy any chopper addons. I don't care about flying fighters in MSFS because DCS exists, so I won't buy any military jets here either. The vast majority of available scenery holds no interest for me because even if I fly to where ever it is, I don't do it often enough that the default scenery isn't plenty. Anyone who buys everything available for MSFS is just collecting "pixel crack," because there isn't even enough time to use it all if you do.

 

There are tons of freeware for MSFS, much of it excellent (see flightsim.to for example). Evidently for some, there is a compulsion to buy add-ons which I don't share. My purchases are very selective, and I have no doubt I am getting as much satisfaction from simming, if not more, as those who put big bucks into it. But as is often said, to each his own.

This is why I don't have kids. 

5 hours ago, tup61 said:

I am using MSFS since the initial beta and so far I bought zero scenery addons, two utilities (worth around 55 euros) and three planes (worth about 100 euro's) so... imho this really is an extremely cheap hobby. (BTW the only freeware I uses is LNM). I do know people who buy almost every plane and scenery there is: I'd call that dumb but well, if they have the money for it and like to buy stuff they only use once... be my guest. But anyway, I wouldn't call myself dumb, at least not in this regard. 😉

O, wait, forgot about Navigraph, yearly sub, so something like 90 euro's...? That still makes all this an extremely cheap hobby. 😉 Not feeling dumd at all here.

I have bought a couple of utilities, a half dozen aircrafts,a and one airport scenery. I have saved a great deal of money with MSFS, over what I would have spent on any other sim trying to "dress it up".