G8tr, if you like flight sims, you need to find a way to transition to VR. Budget roughly $2,000 - VR systems work better with great graphics cards.
If you have to build a new PC now but $2,000 is too steep, either a) get the VR headset now with an average graphics card, then upgrade it during the holidays, or b) build a strong PC now and get the VR headset during the holidays.
Either way, I think you'll need more SSD space for your flight sims but a second SSD can be added later.
Hi CL, you might want to try the free Apollo50 DLC that was released last July by a group of guys from this community. It's also on the flight-sim.org site or you can use the link in my signature below. Most of the same team are working on a bigger project covering the Hawaiian islands - there's a thread in this forum with preview screenshots.
Checkout this forum post on the freeware 152 - it has pics and it sounds like the flight model was improved after the initial release ...
Is the c152 worth it to start my ga carreer?
The default 172 is a good GA starting point and has a bit more airspeed vs the 152.
Denver has them as well as the South Florida DLC airports and other DLCs. Are you referring to the original airports that are included with FS2?
In the Apollo50 download, there's a carrier just off the coast of Cape Canaveral near the splashdown area.
Flying an IFR route makes the upfront predictive work easier but with VR, where users like to do more sightseeing, predicting becomes much harder 
Now I understand why IPACS was working on Vulkan support last year ... this guy was entertaining to listen to for 20 minutes
From an earlier Jeff post ...
Site wouldn't load last night - approx 9pm CST.
Noticed the RC8 logo is now in the banner, maybe that's the root cause
Watch as the invisible high rise buildings on the coast slowly materialize into view.
This is to be expected when autogen is used to create high rise buildings.
Basically what happens with autogen buildings and trees is that they are generated within an approx 6km radius of your aircraft but not beyond that (this saves GPU processing power). For low height houses and trees, you don't notice the fading effect because they blend in with the ortho tiles as the background.
However, with tall autogen objects like high rise buildings, where the sky is the background, you will notice the fade-in effect.
The solution is to use actual 3D building objects for any structure you want to see at long distances. IPACS South Florida add-on has an awesome Miami skyline of tall buildings you can see from very far away (like in real life). It's one giant custom 3D object.
When I was experimenting with lighted radio towers 18 months ago, I tried using autogen to create 1m x 1m x 500m towers. You could see the flashing lights from great distances but the radio towers were invisible until you got within 6km of them. I switched to radio tower 3D objects from ZoSoChile and now you can see the South Florida Towers add-on from great distances.
Enjoyed your article, Kenneth! However, I was a bit disappointed that the Apollo50 project wasn't mentioned in the community freeware paragraph - I believe it's the most-downloaded scenery on flight-sim.org. Maybe you haven't tried it yet???
I don't have the pointctrl system but after watching a few of the youtube videos, it doesn't appear to physically interfere with using the yoke or throttle quadrant levers and functionally they co-exist like a traditional mouse would.
The pointctrl finger units do go to sleep when they are are out-of-sight of the HMD-mounted receiver or when the sleep timer expires (configurable in 10-sec increments). You do have to click one of the finger buttons to wake it up when you plan to use pointctrl (battery life would be a problem without sleep mode).
This demo video of the prototype shows how you can use knobs by clicking then raising or lower your finger to "turn" the knob ...
how do you map the physical buttons to the ones dispayed in the virtual VR cockpit
The pointctrl buttons are just mouse buttons - think of it like attaching a small mouse to each hand.
Instead of using a traditional mouse to drag the mouse pointer over to the gear handle, you just reach for the gear handle with your left hand and click the left button on the pointctrl unit that's attached to your left finger to toggle the gear state like you would do with a mouse click.
I agree, it would be nice if the transition was smoother. Here's the best I could do to match that window photo using the FS2 cloud and visibility sliders ...
Are you using a monitor or VR? I'm assuming a monitor so you may want to try using the Windows10 display calibration tool to make sure your monitor settings are giving you the best / most accurate image possible (enter 'calibration' in WIn10 search box).
I just checked FS2 on my monitor at 30,000 ft over Key West and the sky looks blue, not dark / space-like.
