Antipodeslonghaul

Seems like this could be a great one. A350's currently used on the Singapore to JFK and Newark nonstops (current longest), and should be next year finally on the Sydney-London nonstops. But great for any type of flight. I do love the A350!

Yes. I've been using this list: https://www.flightsfrom.com/top-100-airports And then random number generator to find my next destination.

That's weird that the other person could use it. I'm used to the greyed out weather when resuming a saved flight (i.e. on PMDG), but not on freshly started flights.

I'll give them credit for the effort. My last flight on EVA Air, the video was so cringeworthy, I couldn't bear to watch it. And the flight before that on Qatar Airways, the video was lame as well. I remember Air France had a great safety video a few years ago. But it would be kind of neat if safety videos just focused on the barest of bare essentials. Maybe they could throw in a brief individualized segment, where you'd see your actual specific seat number on the screen, and you'd get a little visual reminder on the location of the nearest exits based on the configuration you're on and how they work. Found the old Air France video.

It's nothing new, but recently I've been getting the situation a lot where I'll be driving, pull up to an intersection, and a pedestrian is standing at the crosswalk staring at their phone. I'll wait a few seconds, lose patience, try and drive, and at that very moment they'll suddenly step in front of my car causing me to slam on my brakes. And of course pulling up behind even a single car waiting at a red light. Almost a 50/50 chance of missing the light nowadays, as the driver in front will keep staring at their phone when the light turns green and then speed off just as it turns yellow.

Amazing article! Thank you for posting it. Fascinsting that a similar situation encountered in 1492 still exists even today. I feel a sense of comfort when learning about these people. I wonder what diseases they have circulating amongst themselves. Surely they must have some, just not the same mixture we have in our modern world. If you suddenly dropped them in the New York subway they'd probably have little of interest to get themselves mugged, and they'd probably be able to fend for themselves in a fight. But ultimately the thick clouds of all sorts of infections they're not used to might get them.

I couldn't for the life of me remember who's said exactly what. Just that there's been a huge chorus of praise for 2020 and its seemingly only rightful heir 2024. Parrots keep screeching about how all the other sims are dead. Feels a bit like Salman Rushdie when one expresses the slightest doubt on here. My main points of curiosity for 2024, I haven't been able to figure out yet, or maybe not public information yet: 1) Will there be a normal pause function like in P3D that you could use for PMDG's TOD, where you can see whether both your time and fuel planning worked out? Despite all the lengthy explanations, this is still missing in 2020. 2) Will the weather radar work at least as well as it does in P3D?

Barrow to Murmansk was no problem. Time and fuel worked out just as expected. Upper level winds and weather seemed reasonably realistic. Noticed again the slightly strange issue with the spot plane view being able to rotate only around the vertical axis. Also up near the pole the FMC cruise page showed some weird optimum and maximum altitudes. I do fly at a low fps limit in cruise. I have no doubt there's some more weird stuff there. Would be cool to fly to the South Pole in the southern summer.

I didn't know about this one, but apparently it's been a topic here on other sims in past decades as well. The weird thing is, I vaguely remember flying close to the pole here in MSFS, maybe about one year ago. I don't remember the specifics, it might have been Dubai to New York. I don't remember any problems other than one couldn't adjust the view in the outside spot plane view near the pole, but that worked again once one got further south. Anyway, out of curiosity I've just departed Barrow Alaska for Murmansk in Russia, which will take me right over the geographic North Pole. I'll report back.

I may try time compression at some point. I've got absolutely nothing against it, just personally I prefer to slowly watch my long hauls unfold, checking into the cockpit from time to time. Yes, exactly, I head to the galley, chat with passengers and flight attendants, watch movies and take naps in the crew rest area, but most of all do boring administrative work like taxes etc. yawn. I'm sure Captain Dubois of Air France 447 wished he'd just remained in his seat. I don't know why I do my flight simming like this. I definitely have some sort of attention deficit disorder and just focusing on one thing at a time like using time compression, or just doing short flights would certainly have its advantages. Now I'm just thinking of a more extreme case like a ship simulator. I've never tried one, but I can imagine someone doing maybe a one week or even longer cruise maybe in a container ship, like Yokohama to Long Beach all in real time. Just take walks on the deck, watch the clouds. You won't see land for at least a week. I'm sure in such a case using time compression or just doing relatively short and exciting voyages like the Panama Canal or Dover to Calais would be good as well. But if someone would enjoy leaving their computer on for a week or longer and just checking things on the bridge from time to time, seeing how the weather develops, making minor course adjustments, maybe it's relaxing, why not?

Actually on PMDG so far I can go all the way down to 6 fps in cruise (limit frame rate) and flights work out fine. I'm sure one needn't go that low, but it seems to bring down temps a lot. Of course go higher during departure and arrival.

Ha! But it is one whole cent cheaper. Act fast while it's still on sale.

I guess as long as I'm not completely away from the computer, like out on the road stuck in traffic, I can just set an alarm at the rough ETA for TOD. If I happen to be busy doing other stuff, all I need is maybe one minute to race to the computer, go into developer mode and pause. That'd be more or less like FSX or P3D, just less convenient. It'd be good to have the best of both worlds, like you can assign a key for active pause so you can watch the giraffes feeding off acacias or whatever you fancy while suspended in mid flight, and assign another key for the pause function that currently exists in the developer mode that pauses everything, which for example PMDG could then utilize. But anyway I did plenty of flights in FSX using live weather from Active Sky and often used pause. I never bothered with historical weather though, just went along with the changes when resuming a flight.

The way I'm experiencing the pause issue is, say you wake up around 7 am and set off on a roughly 12 hour 737 BBJ flight. As long as you don't save your flight in between, the pause at TOD sort of works. You can take note of your ETA at TOD occasionally throughout the day. Also taking note of your estimated fuel on arrival at destination as your flight progresses. But now it's around 6:30 pm, you're about to reach TOD, but kids are screaming, cats are meowing, dogs are barking, the spaghetti is overcooking, life outside the virtual cockpit. You don't get back to your computer til around 8 pm. The fuel and your position have been paused all right. But elapsed time since takeoff is now maybe around 12 1/2 hours instead of about 11 hours, what it should be. It's not a huge deal, you can just try and fine tune the time slider back to roughly where it should be. But if you're a flight planning geek, you can pretty much only plan your fuel burn and just forget about your flight time. What's so strange is that if you go in and out of the developer mode any time as often as you wish and pause there, you can totally pause both fuel and time no problem whatsoever, and resume your flight. Sure, the live weather will continue to update as you resume, so it won't necessarily match, but one could use Active Sky to fix that if one were very particular. Just haven't figured out how to link developer mode pause to PMDG's pause at TOD. So yeah, I basically agree with your statement up there. It's anyway still no real pause at TOD. The whole thing does what jet engines do with air, and it'll be a lot more annoying with the 777 when you want to really try and mimic long haul rw flights, perhaps departing with a delay, where you're running a tight schedule in addition to being worried about how much fuel you'll have when you arrive. But oh well, there are worse things.

Ha! I like that kind of humor! I've actually really been enjoying my long hauls in the BBJ1 recently. It's a bit slow cruising, and payload is usually only 3000 kg or so, like 20 pax and a few extra bags. The 777-300ER is still very current for rw flights, and can more or less keep up with the 787's and A350's out there. I've never been interested in time compression. I am however a sucker for pause at TOD, and am still hoping for a pause function in MSFS..... I know, I know, there's the developer mode pause. Just a really easy P keep it simple stupid pause that would work, would be great for 777 long hauls.