SIM usage

  • I know we aren't supposed to talk about other SIM's here and criticize them and is not my intention so I won't do anything of the sort. I want to share my experience with the community after attempting to use MSFS on my Xbox today after several weeks of sitting dormant and not using it. My attempt was to SIM myself into oblivion (Sunday being a me day before Monday) as I love nothing other than to fly when I'm not fulfilling home responsibilities or work, or anything needing my attention outside the realms of flight. I "live to fly" "fly to live". But I digress, to be frank, I didn't enjoy using it and it felt laborious and exasperating setting up a flight, switching menu's, switching screens, switching aircraft, waiting for things to load, setting weather, clouds, wind, fueling etc. etc. I could go on but those of us here who use it as a second SIM know where I'm coming from and can empathize. At this point I don't feel like firing it up regularly because of the aforementioned above. So I shut the Xbox down and opened Aero Fly and I was flying with none of the hassles that MSFS presents. So the reason for this post is to have others share their experiences using and or not wanting to use MSFS regularly after some elapsed time and to share their experiences as well.

    Discuss......... ;)

    Edited 6 times, last by douglas55 (January 23, 2023 at 6:14 AM).

  • Don’t know about x-boxes but in my recently acquired cheapo cheerful PC Steam FSX I like 8) saving an idealised setup and at some point loading it back up again. My ancient but excellent rediscovered PMDG planes are great fun and I’m grateful for all the more complex and pernickety sim choices I can make.

    In mobile I tried to keep all my Aeroflys until the recent annual size and version inflation and I’m still stumbling into new to me or semi-forgotten features in offshoots like the initial Android’s surprisingly sophisticated old Aerofly 1. Mobile X-plane ‘12’ (!), the occasional look at I.F, PC FS2004, several cheap n cheerful mobile R.C. trainers and a space shuttle mobile sim all entertain me. I have many more dusty C.D.s to check out.

    The variety in keeping all these simulators going helps me enjoy Aerofly more and the totality dissipates much of the frustration from less favoured qualities or cultures in individual sims.

  • My experience with Flight Sims only started about a couple years ago and my preference is for casual short 30 to 60 minute flights for sightseeing not real life pilot training or being an airline or airforce pilot fantasy.

    FSX - decent selection of aircraft including freeware, very outdated 3D scenery graphics, fastest loading flight sim after Aerofly FS series, best glider thermal soaring experience using free CumulusX! program (with this it has user configurable cumulus cloud based thermals).

    X-Plane 11 - widest selection of aircraft including freeware, most aerodynamically and flight systems correct flight sim, scenery graphics not much better than FSX, very costly in money and/or disk space to get photo-real scenery (Forkboy2 and Orbx TE about 4TB storage). Take the longest to load up for flight especially if using Orbx Lib and Orbx TE scenery (like 5 minutes with SATAIII SSD and PCIe NVME SSD).

    Aerofly FS 1 - fast setup, only Swiss Scenery, only handful of aircraft, but does have usable thermals with optional visual cueing.

    Aerofly FS 2- fast setup, USA West coast photo-real but only CA, NV,AZ,UT,CO have autogen and airports and not many airports, New Mexico, Idaho, Wyoming states have no coverage while Oregon & Washington have photo-real tiles but no autogen or airports. A few more aircraft than FS1 and some very expensive Just Flight addons and costly addon sceneries mostly of no interest to me. Autogen building & trees is very sparse and mostly missing except for a few metro areas, lot of 2D white roof rectangles rather than actual 3D buildings, no real road objects. Thermal soaring sucks.

    Aerofly FS 4 - fast setup, denser autogen building & tree coverage, USA West now has WA and OR state autogen with some airports, still less than ideal airport coverage with respect to non-internationals, GA aircraft selection even with $40 dlc is pretty much barebones with no LSA, Ultralite, or bush planes. Photo-real scenery detail is good but not great (Yosemite National Park not very good Half-Dome landmark is pretty bad). New Mexico, Idaho, Wyoming states still not included. Thermal glider soaring still sucks even after the recent update to make it easier to accidentally run into thermals but thermals are still to narrow in diameter to be able to stay circling in one.

    MSFS 2020 - bought it, several crashes while trying to install it, when not crashing got about 10% download after almost 2 hours due to 2 Mbit/sec MS server even though had a 100 Mbit/sec internet service at the time (now 700 Mbit/sec). Turns out my old house with to expensive to replace coax cable wiring induces random network packet dropouts which MSFS netcode cannot handle without crashing so I refunded on Steam before the 2 hour limit was exceeded. I am pretty sure that MSFS 2020 streaming scenery and updates is not ever gonna work for me, so Aerofly FS 4 is it for sightseeing flights (well except for the pretty much non-existent selection of aircraft suitable for sightseeing flights).

  • The C172 and 152 are good for site seeing....no.....?


    Myself, I use the EC-135 and UH60 Blackhawk for site seeing.

    Not for me, those big old door frames right at eye height obstruct the view out the side (not using TrackIR).

    Helicopters are not great for me as I use an X-Box like (Logitech F710) controller which requires using a button for collective and throttle plus the EC135 and UH60 cockpits have too much of the visuals taken up by the cockpit interior and you are too busy flying the aircraft to have time to be looking around much.

  • The presumed requirement for expensive 3D graphics software to adjust Aerofly saddens me, I’d like go play with the instruments and clouds which I don’t think are even available in the FS2 developer packs?

    I had vastly changed the appearance of a very rare twin add on for MS Flight Simulator 98 to make it resemble the big Piper Aztec I was then training on, I was very pleased with (non functioning) ‘chromed’ cowl flap knobs! Sadly I lost it later in a Windows/hard disk? crash. I got an Aztec in an inexpensive Steam Combi with FSX a couple of weeks ago and it is great fun.

    My first flight sim fiddling was in the early Eighties with the 256 x 192 pixels Sinclair ZX81’s 16 kilobyte cassette tape loaded flight simulator. A half of the listing was in BASIC so I could turn down the alien speed and climb rate of its ‘high performance piston twin’ to match my experience with a struggling 90 mph (not knots!) flying school Cessna 150. It was a great help with the radio navigation element of the PPL course which was compensation for the 15 minutes loading time at 300 baud. No one knows what that means today!

  • I dont really feel busy flying Heli's.

    1) No rudder pedals (twist grip for rudder) Dont use rudder to fly, only taking off and for landing.

    2) I use the Airbus throttle and joystick to fly em

    3) Auto pilot and let the Heli fly itself (unless I want to change direction)

    Piece of cake really ;)

    But, I see what you mean with the Eurofox, no doors in the way looking out and down when flying. :thumbup:

  • I'm not using a joystick, throttle quadrant, or rudder pedals, or yoke, because I do not have my game pc on a desk with an office chair to sit in, I use an X-Box controller sitting on my couch with the game pc hooked up to an LCD TV. Also, while I am a casual flight simmer, I don't fly fixed or rotary wing aircraft using the co-pilot function nor I do long flights requiring the use of the autopilot (if there is one).

  • I dont really feel busy flying Heli's.

    1) No rudder pedals (twist grip for rudder) Dont use rudder to fly, only taking off and for landing.

    2) I use the Airbus throttle and joystick to fly em

    3) Auto pilot and let the Heli fly itself (unless I want to change direction)

    Piece of cake really ;)

    You try profi mode in the R 22? Obviously with assists and autos and easys off.

    You would LOVE a twenty minute trial lesson in a real helicopter. Just don’t like it too much💰

  • The presumed requirement for expensive 3D graphics software to adjust Aerofly saddens me, I’d like go play with the instruments and clouds which I don’t think are even available in the FS2 developer packs?

    I had vastly changed the appearance of a very rare twin add on for MS Flight Simulator 98 to make it resemble the big Piper Aztec I was then training on, I was very pleased with (non functioning) ‘chromed’ cowl flap knobs! Sadly I lost it later in a Windows/hard disk? crash. I got an Aztec in an inexpensive Steam Combi with FSX a couple of weeks ago and it is great fun.

    My first flight sim fiddling was in the early Eighties with the 256 x 192 pixels Sinclair ZX81’s 16 kilobyte cassette tape loaded flight simulator. A half of the listing was in BASIC so I could turn down the alien speed and climb rate of its ‘high performance piston twin’ to match my experience with a struggling 90 mph (not knots!) flying school Cessna 150. It was a great help with the radio navigation element of the PPL course which was compensation for the 15 minutes loading time at 300 baud. No one knows what that means today!

    My first flight sim? "Solo Flight" from Sid Meier & Bill Stealey! In many aspects revolutionary, because it required you to use VORs (which I am very fond of even today) because you could not see elevation changes. Oh, and it had changing weather, random malfunctions, running out of fuel, auto-generated missions and a flight debriefing with scoring. My brothers and I would team up, one having the task of keeping track where we were because there was no GPS to tell us - these flights were sometimes nerve-wracking when you were forced to fly through dense fog.

    So this is Aerofly FS 4 to me: easy to get into, quick to start, immersive in VR and just about enough realism to keep me coming back for another round. And enough VORs and planes without GPS to keep me guessing we're I am. :P

  • Yeah, its pretty much impossible to control the R-22 with just an X-Box controller.

    The R22 IMO, is the spawn of Satan for Helicopters. Unstable, god awful thing. They should be banned from existence. lmao :D I hate that thing.

    I only use keyboard, mouse, game controller for MSFS. I wont put flight controls on my Xbox for it. To me, (again IMO) its not worthy. I have no issues flying with just the game controller.

    Edited once, last by douglas55 (January 23, 2023 at 8:37 PM).

  • You would LOVE a twenty minute trial lesson in a real helicopter. Just don’t like it too much💰

    I most likley feel I could fly a real Heli, had the opportunity to take control once on a private flight. With some training I could do it for real. I also fly RC Heli's too with no issues. Wanted to be a Heli pilot since I was a kid. ;) Its in me to fly. Pilots run both sides of my family. I feel more comfortable in the air instead of being on the ground and I drive for a living.

    Edited 2 times, last by douglas55 (January 23, 2023 at 8:39 PM).