Anyone else play Microsoft Flight Simulator?

[dogememe]

I really know very little about airplanes and flying but I spent a few hundred bucks on some controls and I find it really fun. Aviation and airplanes have always fascinated me and being a pilot is a dream of mine. Sadly for a few reasons not something I could ever actually do.

Previously I was playing MSFS2020 but they recently came out with MSFS2024 and I "upgraded" to that... they've improved a few things and majorly broken some others. Feels like it's in beta. Crazy to charge $200 for a game that's in beta but such is life.

The real pilots in here will laugh at me but the controller set I have is optimized for Airbus so I tend to fly the big planes. Today I managed two decent flights from KSFO to KAPC in an A330, one with clear skies and one with realtime time and weather in which I couldn't see anything and had a crosswind. I think I'm ready to open an airline. What type of oil should I use in my fleet of A330s? Is O'Reilly Full Syn Euro 5W-40 acceptable? Or should I use something thinner like Royal Purple 0W-80?

All jokes aside, anyone else play this game, and what's your setup? I know it's not a game in the traditional sense but I find I can play it far more than most other games without getting bored as I can always try to improve something about my flying or try different planes or airports.

 

[cptbarkey]

Not the latest, but remember playing it fondly quite a bit. I used to go to a friends house and we tinkered with it on his dads very expensive PC in the 80s. I believe we had to flip over the 360k floppy once or twice. Later on an Amiga which was much smoother. The last major combat flight simulator I used to play very heavily was F-19 Stealth Fighter with many sorties into Iran. I tried F-16 3.0 a few times but it was over my head. Good times.

 

[Jetronic]

I played some MSFS 2.0 Trying to get that f-5 type plane to go supersonic

 

[MRC01]

I really know very little about airplanes and flying but I spent a few hundred bucks on some controls and I find it really fun. Aviation and airplanes have always fascinated me and being a pilot is a dream of mine. Sadly for a few reasons not something I could ever actually do.

The real pilots in here will laugh at me but ...

I'm a real pilot and not laughing at you. MSFS has very nice looking scenery but I find the flight dynamics in XPlane to be more realistic. In both real life and in the sim I fly vintage tail draggers and more modern single engine airplanes like Cessnas and Mooneys. I've never flown a jet in real life but I have flown the F4 Phantom in XPlane and managed to land it in one piece.

For controls I use CH pedals and a CH Yoke with throttle/mixture/prop levers. The rudder pedals are essential for flying a decent simulation. Especially if you want to do fun maneuvers like spins.

 

[wavinwayne]

My 18 year old son plays it occasionally on Xbox. He has successfully landed a military fighter plane in our back yard and very spectacularly crashed an Airbus A380 in the same yard.

 

[Dave Sherman]

I still play Flight Simulator X. I've flown the airliners lots of times, and geeked out when I got hooked up with one the virtual airlines. Was a bit challenging when the virtual airline uses the metrics from FS to grade you on whether you were flying efficiently, correctly following requirements for staying under 250 KIAS under 10,000, making your flight on time, and getting penalized if you make rough landings or make excessive movements that would be uncomfortable in a real plane. Had to set your payload according to how many virtual passengers you were carrying, and if it was set wrong it would detect that, and you had to figure how much fuel you needed. Once the flight was over you'd see how much "virtual fuel" you'd cost the airline, and how much they made from the "virtual passengers".

 

[JohnnyG]

Long ago. I no longer have a machine that will run it. (the old DOS version of course)

 

[dogememe]

I'm a real pilot and not laughing at you. MSFS has very nice looking scenery but I find the flight dynamics in XPlane to be more realistic. In both real life and in the sim I fly vintage tail draggers and more modern single engine airplanes like Cessnas and Mooneys. I've never flown a jet in real life but I have flown the F4 Phantom in XPlane and managed to land it in one piece.

For controls I use CH pedals and a CH Yoke with throttle/mixture/prop levers. The rudder pedals are essential for flying a decent simulation. Especially if you want to do fun maneuvers like spins.

Oh yeah, having rudder pedals is so much better than just rotating the joystick... Makes a huge difference and more realistic

Maybe I should have got X-Plane instead of MSFS, it's so much cheaper haha.

 

[dubber09]

I used to play a bit when was much younger, there was F-117 game I liked. MS FS... bought one and force back joystick but didn't play it more than a dozen times, also loooong time ago.

 

[Pew]

Have you thought about getting into WarThunder or DCS?

 

[Cujet]

No recent experience on MS flight sim. Although I do have a good set of controls for the prev version.

I had young co-worker (geek type) who loved MS flt sim, come fly my (real) plane one day. It was interesting, he was able to fly the plane OK at best (like a novice), but exclaimed that he felt everything, unlike sitting at the computer. He struggled with maintaining altitude during turns, dealing with the G forces of a 60 degree bank, and had no idea zero G was so simple.

 

[MRC01]

I had young co-worker (geek type) who loved MS flt sim, come fly my (real) plane one day. It was interesting, he was able to fly the plane OK at best (like a novice) ...

Funny similarity. A few years ago I took a coworker (software engineer) for a local flight in my C172. I gave him the controls for a while and he said the seat of the pants experience made it totally unlike the simulator. Even though we were VFR, if there is an ILS then I tune it on the approach. As we turned final he looked at the VOR in my panel (a vintage 1980s model with needles) and asked, "Why are we above glide slope?". I asked him how he knew and he said from MSFS. It shows that people can learn useful things from flying the simulators even just for fun. I told him the runway is 10,000' long, more than 5 times longer than we need, the ILS glide slope is for big jets, we are VFR so we don't need to fly the ILS, we don't even need it, I only set it just for reference, we fly slower and our approach angle is a bit steeper. After landing we'll still take the first taxi turnoff, and that's a courtesy to free up the runway sooner for everyone else.

... He struggled with maintaining altitude during turns, dealing with the G forces of a 60 degree bank, and had no idea zero G was so simple.

Not surprised. The 2 G of a 60* level turn is more than people can experience in cars. The highest performance cars on R compound tires can get close to the 1.4 G of a 45* turn.

 

[Owen Lucas]

I had the chance to fly in a sim for a Dassault Falcon 7X.

It was very humbling when I got into the seat and the instructor said "Ok now, turn on the plane". I had no idea what to do! He started flipping switches on the ceiling and adjusting all kinds of settings on the navigation system.

We had a lot of fun including the instructor setting the baggage compartment on fire, turning off the displays, deploying the RAT, and shutting down the engines on an approach with supposedly enough room to glide into JFK. The plane was vibrating, we were losing altitude, I was trying to glide it into the airport but I pulled up to much hoping to gain altitude. Maybe I should have tried to gain speed by pitching downwards, I couldn't find that sweet spot and my emotions got the best of me. I realize I broke a sweat by the time the screen froze (upon impact).

I was also given the chance to fly around free style, I flew under the Verrazano bridge, next to the Statue of Liberty, and over Manhattan. We did some acrobatics if that's what you can call them. I did a barrel role and some really deep dives and recoveries IIRC which caused damage to the plane (besides the faults the instructor threw at me), as you can see with the warning messages below. This model does not have a yoke and only a joy stick which pushed back a lot when trying to make this abnormal maneuvers, but it is still possible to overpower it, you just have to push through the feedback.

I was also given a ride during a bad storm, oh man, it ain't easy being a pilot!!!!