8 minutes ago, LRBS said:

In my opinion, leaving aside preferences, using a flight simulator and leaving it on and going to sleep, it's an interesting choice. I think that we can always reposition the simulator to any geographical position, in any situation (normal, abnormal, or emergency), and take it from there. 

Yhh this is the part i simply don't get. Why to leave it on for 8 hours and go to sleep when you can just jump to T/D, or even use time acceleration.

I guess its the feeling of "i did a long haul flight"... 

4 hours ago, roi1862 said:

What is the point of this other than letting your GPU and CPU waste electricity ? 

Well, some may consider it waste, but some feel it is worth the higher electric bill to simulate a long haul flight.  We all do things that others may consider a waste of time and/or energy.  The fact is that we all pay the cost to do those things.

Not to worry, though.  Electricity rates will likely increase further with huge AI data centers coming online which will consume a lot of power and run 24/7, so a lot of folks will be forced to cut back on their power consumption as it will simply be too expensive.

Dave

I chuckle when I hear folks mention AP use🤣. I throw the AP on in real life too🤣. I probably only have about an hour or so of free time to sit at the computer so my flights in sim are about an hour or so as well. Even during recurrent sims in real life, they will give you ground speed x 2 or 3 or zip you to a point because there is a LOT to knock out in the profiles. So, in general in real life, any one can hand fly an airplane. But where you make your bucks is in flight/crew management. flight, crew, time, risk and emergency management is where your skills come into play. Yeah, you should know how to hand fly, but that's the easy part 🤣. Early in my aviation career, a guy told me it's hours of boredom and moments of terror🤣. I remember this one unit in the USAF that made us hand fly the whole evaluation. They made you do a single engine, NDB raw data approach with a circle across the cockpit to a go around all by hand. You were busy as can be and had to depend on the evaluator to call your turn as you prompted them. We eventually got rid of that haze program. Use the automation to your benefit. Once automation becomes a hinder, kick it off. At the end of the day, fly your sim how ever you want to. Long haul, short haul, time acceleration, AP on or off, your prerogative. In the sim, I put the AP on early because I'm in single pilot mode. I have no one else to direct to get the gear, flaps, flight guidance panel and FMS functions🤣

2 minutes ago, G550flyer said:

I chuckle when I hear folks mention AP use🤣. I throw the AP on in real life too🤣. I probably only have about an hour or so of free time to sit at the computer so my flights in sim are about an hour or so as well. Even during recurrent sims in real life, they will give you ground speed x 2 or 3 or zip you to a point because there is a LOT to knock out in the profiles. So, in general in real life, any one can hand fly an airplane. But where you make your bucks is in flight/crew management. flight, crew, time, risk and emergency management is where your skills come into play. Yeah, you should know how to hand fly, but that's the easy part 🤣. Early in my aviation career, a guy told me it's hours of boredom and moments of terror🤣. I remember this one unit in the USAF that made us hand fly the whole evaluation. They made you do a single engine, NDB raw data approach with a circle across the cockpit to a go around all by hand. You were busy as can be and had to depend on the evaluator to call your turn as you prompted them. We eventually got rid of that haze program. Use the automation to your benefit. Once automation becomes a hinder, kick it off. At the end of the day, fly your sim how ever you want to. Long haul, short haul, time acceleration, AP on or off, your prerogative. In the sim, I put the AP on early because I'm in single pilot mode. I have no one else to direct to get the gear, flaps, flight guidance panel and FMS functions🤣

No issue with AP at all. I was just wondering why would people let the plane fly while they are sleeping or not even at home. 

Turn the sim on to full realism and see what happen when an alarm goes off you soon wake up.

You wake up and find you`ve crashed you were not there to put engine fire out and shut down the fuel and reroute the fuel lines on your 747.

2 minutes ago, roi1862 said:

No issue with AP at all. I was just wondering why would people let the plane fly while they are sleeping or not even at home. 

Hmm, well. Personally, even sitting at the computer for a long haul flight makes me wonder. It could be the thought of doing it. When they take over for the final portion, maybe they get that long haul feeling. Lets look at the real world side of it. When I flew long haul flights, you had extra crew members that allowed you to half it up. In the USAF,we had 24 hour duty days when augmented(extra crew). In actuality, you were not at the controls the whole time. You spent a portion of that time sleeping or relaxing. 

Work: Also with the long hauls came the work you have to do along the way. ATC, oceanic clearances, nav error checks, weather avoidance, fuel checks, divert checks and position reports. Now days with ADS C, position reports are done for you. How do you stay awake🤣. There are country entry/exit procedures you have to contend with. There are also specific things to do depending on the region you are flying in. You also have the crew to interact with along the way. All those discussions about company rumors, stocks and golf swings keeps you going.

Now imagine flying long hauls in the sim without that work. Well, that could be why they do it🤔. Maybe they are thinking, I have no work to do anyway, so just sleep/leave until it's time for descent. Even with ATC, I have a hard time flying in sim over an hour and a half. I mainly look for locations with busy arrival/departure procedures and fly to or from them. I then find an airport about an hour away and fly it lol.  
 

2 minutes ago, G550flyer said:

Even with ATC, I have a hard time flying in sim over an hour and a half. I mainly look for locations with busy arrival/departure procedures and fly to or from them. I then find an airport about an hour away and fly it lol.  
 

Yes i am the same. I usually purchase only small challenging airports and island airports, and i fly to them from somewhere an hour and half or two hours max. 

Give me time to inspect the scenery/weather and plan the arrival. That's all i need. 

1 hour ago, G550flyer said:

I remember this one unit in the USAF that made us hand fly the whole evaluation. They made you do a single engine, NDB raw data approach with a circle across the cockpit to a go around all by hand. You were busy as can be and had to depend on the evaluator to call your turn as you prompted them. 

SAM FOX, baybeeeee!!  😉

12 minutes ago, Bob Scott said:

SAM FOX, baybeeeee!!  😉

That's right!!!!🤣

Nowadays, I am flying smaller turboprop machines most of the time and barely use a tubeliner. However, some of my fondest memories are Cross-the-pond events on Vatsim. They were about 8 hours long, required a lot of concentration to get communication correct and concise in an environment that was shared with 1000 other pilots. It was epic. Heck, maybe I should do that again.

Another reason in my early days was my virtual airline, which required that flights were done on Vatsim, which excludes time acceleration. So I did quite a few transatlantic flights in real time. No I didn't go to bed then. I have a desk job and used to work during those flights. They were kind of the perfect hobby for me. Work for 15 minutes, have a look at the scenery, work again ...

Back in FSX and P3D, I would almost exclusively do long-haul flights. Since the release of FS2020, I'm pretty much only doing short-haul to medium-haul stuff. Im putting it down to an improvement in the way the sim looks and being able to appreciate the virtual world a bit more.

Interesting topic...and responses.

If you're flying for a Virtual Airline...they (that I'm aware of) do not allow time acceleration to file a PIREP for the flight.

Twenty years ago...I did, make a few long haul, real time flights flying for a VA...all for some silly points applied to a virtual flight record.  🙂 

No longer fly for any VA...just enjoying the sim. GA, Commercial, Small, Large, Prop, Turboprop, Jet...it's just for fun now...and on the rare occasion I do make a long haul...it's definitely with time acceleration...a 3 hour trans-Atlantic (or trans-Pacific) is equivalent to the same time to make a "short", real time, domestic flight.

1 hour ago, qqwertz said:

I have a desk job and used to work during those flights. They were kind of the perfect hobby for me. Work for 15 minutes, have a look at the scenery, work again ...

That i can do ! 

Tip for long-haulers, which i use whenever i do these long 15h+ flights: ALT - ENTER to put the simulator in a window and minimize it. Everything will still work obviously but your GPU (and to a good extent the CPU) will use way way less power.

And with this i'm out 

9 hours ago, roi1862 said:

Yhh this is the part i simply don't get. Why to leave it on for 8 hours and go to sleep when you can just jump to T/D, or even use time acceleration.

I guess its the feeling of "i did a long haul flight"... 

Because the flight never happened. You just jumped from A to B. Same as time acceleration, why even bother? Just fly some leg in real time using the same time your accelerated long-haul would take.

In my case, because i register all flights on my VA, i NEED to perform the whole flight if i decide to fly for 20h. Everyone has their "needs" :)