What is your perfect experience

[tkyler]

As I chip away on the MU2. I realize that in a way, I'm trying to create my perfect sim experience. When I got into simming...It was VATSIM that caught my interest. At the time..there really wasn't any good 3D cockpits for xplane and I really wanted the immersion of being in a cockpit while flying on VATSIM. I was most interested in short IFR hops of 2 hours or less yet wanted to fly decent distances. Not being interested in airliner complexity or long jaunts.... I needed some speed, yet simplicity....and hence the MU2 project was born. As I test fly it now, getting ready for the update...I realize Im' really enjoying it and thinking, "hey...this would be fun on VATSIM"...yet of course x-plane still needs scenery. Notice that I mess with scenery too? I wonder if I'll ever get to the point where I can do an aiport to airport flight in IFR conditions with a great 3D cockpit...flying over scenery worth looking at (when popping out the clouds of course) and dealing with good ATC along the way. That's what I'm after. I'm wondering what other simmers are after or what experience they'd really consider a cool sim experience.

-Tom Kyler

[eaglewing7]

I love the idea of ultra realistic 3D cockpits, super realistic handling characteristics (in all phases and realms of flight), and realistic ATC like VATSIM, but there is one missing element in all of this.

Good scenery can't fill in the gap, it can help, but here is what we are missing.

This will be very difficult to simulate, but the feeling of flight, the movement. Lets face it, when your actually at the controls, there is a large element of feel to everything you do. Of course that is very difficult to simulate without some sort of full motion system, but if enough of a realistic illusion could be created, it would be nice.

[larjeet]

Tom I think this is as good as its been so far

Edited February 19, 2012 by larjeet

[Charlie]

My perfect experience is anytime that my sim runs over 20fps

[OlaHaldor]

My first incredible flight sim experience began with MSFS2004. It was the King Air B200 from Aeroworx. I flew it for hours! When I tossed the simulator after some heated debates on a forum, I was so sick of the whole simming community I was part of.

But almost two years later, I found a video on YouTube of a heavy plane landing. I was speechless. You could see the weight and force of the plane work as the landing gear touched the ground. I instantly ordered it.

Happily, I was tipped about a new plane coming for X-Plane 9, and I was thrilled like nobody else. It was the MU-2

I've never heard of it before, nor seen such a plane - but the visual quality was enough for me (yes I love eye candy!). Constantly following the road from A to Z led me into refreshing the MU-2 website many times a day. And then! Suddenly it was released. It made a good impression on me.

Flying with a yoke, a throttle quadrant and such made the experience real for me. Adding an iPad to the lot to control radio stack, check waypoints and such is a great way to get more into the sim. I fly short hops like Tom here. 2 hours tops.

Now I enjoy any twin prop plane really. I don't know what it is about them - they have me under their spell. The Duchess and the Dash 8 are great planes too, and worth every penny.

Edited February 19, 2012 by OlaHaldor

[Dozer]

As I chip away on the MU2. I realize that in a way, I'm trying to create my perfect sim experience. When I got into simming...It was VATSIM that caught my interest. At the time..there really wasn't any good 3D cockpits for xplane and I really wanted the immersion of being in a cockpit while flying on VATSIM. I was most interested in short IFR hops of 2 hours or less yet wanted to fly decent distances. Not being interested in airliner complexity or long jaunts.... I needed some speed, yet simplicity....and hence the MU2 project was born. As I test fly it now, getting ready for the update...I realize Im' really enjoying it and thinking, "hey...this would be fun on VATSIM"...yet of course x-plane still needs scenery. Notice that I mess with scenery too? I wonder if I'll ever get to the point where I can do an aiport to airport flight in IFR conditions with a great 3D cockpit...flying over scenery worth looking at (when popping out the clouds of course) and dealing with good ATC along the way. That's what I'm after. I'm wondering what other simmers are after or what experience they'd really consider a cool sim experience.

-Tom Kyler

My ideal sim experience is pretty much exactly this. Except with more emphasis on systems simulation and navigation and less on the scenery. I used to fly gliders back when I thought I had more money and the world is beautiful from above, but I always thought that sim scenery could never be close enough to the real thing to be worth investing any effort into, at least on my aged PC. I'm probably wrong about that - flying over Tasmania with Smellybeard's Australian roads scenery (it's just roads converted from OSM data) and seeing the ridiculous roundabout with a railway crossing on it in my parent's town was very evocative, even if it was just grey ribbon roads and grey ribbon railway against green blurry ground. I can always fly at night - the runway lights are pretty even on a low-quality PC!

I haven't flown on VATSIM for ages. I used to fly regularly, with FS9, but didn't fly enough practice SIDs and STARs in XP9 to be confident I'll be able to fly online without embarrassing myself. I'll be back online as soon as I have internet on my main PC again though. 2-hour flights are definitely ideal, ideally navigating VOR-to-VOR (no GPS or FMS thanks, but 1970s-generation inertial nav is fine )

With my FS9 VATSIM flights, it was an exercise in plate-spinning. Could I fly the aircraft precisely and operate its systems correctly and navigate accurately and communciate appropriately with the VATSIM controllers? The answer was often 'no'. One of the longest flights I flew online was with Dave Maltby's freeware Comet 4, from London to Helsinki I think. Somewhere over the North Sea I accidentally shut down two engines while trying to set the fuel pumps, and it took a little while to restart them. I ended the flight about a mile from the threshold when I completely botched the ILS approach and hit the ground. A bit anticlimatic really. I look forward to repeating the flight in Guy Montagu-Pollock's Comet 4 - I'm beta-testing it now and it hits all the right buttons. It's a labour of love, polished and polished and polished - lovely to fly, lovely to look at, very accurate flight model performancewise, and puzzling 1950s British instrumentation to add to the challenge/reward of flying it.

[zoltron_rulez]

My perfect experience is anytime that my sim runs over 20fps

Dido.

[Simmo W]

I recognise much of the above in my own ‘feelings’ (it’s a very personal thing eh?). Like Ola, seeing the physics of planes in xplane was a big buzz, the way vehicles move in-sim is a big plus.

Creamy-smooth fps adds a heap to the immersion, so you may see that I’ve lowered my XpX settings a little to keep the frames up. So any add-on that risks this would not be appreciated. Conversely, a high-res, high quality scenery is really cool too! Especially if animated well

Variety, imagination, great night lit effects and subtlety add a lot to a good scenery. I hate repeating myself, but just look at Javier’s LESA, pump a few dozen of those out and anyone will do well!

Even though I think the plausible terrain is cool and very powerful (and I KNOW, it will get better), flying around your local area with good photoscenery adds a lot to the experience.

Anytime I fly from an airport that is really well integrated into the terrain, to another nearby one that’s just as good (I rarely fly more than 30 mins at a time), with great cloudy weather and a killer plane, is a moment to savor. It’s not one thing, but the combo of elements. I had that feel with your KSEA and the default 747 last night, seeing it all run at 25fps at dusk, with all the houses and my CBD in the distance (sorry!), with a low fog layer...it was a good flight!

[TedG]

I find a "cool sim experience" in:

-Hand flying a Beaver or Husky 50-60nm ducking around and under crappy weather and terrain.

-A 1-3 hour max tricky procedural flight. Generally speaking my flights are no more than 2 hours or so....but the more complex the SID/STAR the happier I am.

-A smooth hassle-free sim experience within an immersive environment (i.e. VATSIM and populated airfields lol).

[Blodhemn]

Used to love the Dash 7 on FSX, would love to see that on X Plane 10.

[larjeet]

I decided to have some fun wth Paint dot net and make a new startup Screen for Xplane10 it sort of sums up my perfect Simming experience.

Edited February 26, 2012 by larjeet