mid-flight a bit boring?

[Cornelius Edgerton]

I'm a complete flight noob but it seems most time between taking off and landing you pretty much just set autopilot on and do nothing? Yeah it's relaxing and you can enjoy the view but other than that it's a bit uneventful. Is that how it is in real life?

[Maki Nishikino]

Check out VATSIM, it has always kept me busy. Also, when flying VFR you can grab some VFR charts and hand fly the whole thing.

[Leather]

Have you ever flown before? That’s how actual flight is. Assuming you’re doing everything right, the actual flight portion won’t be eventful. You don’t have to do the autopilot, which means you will have to actively fly and pay attention.

[Harmonica]

Got your checklists and briefings done captain? What's your go around procedure? What's your alternate landing? Checked weather on the ATIS? etc etc Failing this you can of course ask your co-pilot how their weekend was (this will work better when we can share cockpits, admittedly).

[FlippinFlow]

that when you play with your ipad like real pilots..

[...]

or stand up go make snack , grab a drink, bio , maybe even go outside for a walk depending on how long the flight is :)

[Moga CMDR]

Don't do long hauls. I prefer island hopping, short flights. Lots of action.

"is that how it is in real life" Thankfully. ^_^

[Harmonica]

And also if you want more stuff to do you can fly closer to the ground :)

[Storm]

i found this last night but havnt tested it.
https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/flight-simulator-speed-up-time-sim-rate-fast-travel-7043#:~:text=By%20default%2C%20Flight%20Simulator%20will,and%20%2B%20key%20on%20the%20numpad.

[FlippinFlow]

I try to find flights that are like 40-90 minutes. Thats cruise alt for a little while then landing setup. Flightaware.com is a handy site for finding real flights that look interesting and gives you an idea of the duration.

You can also speed up time, i've never been into that as it always crashed fsx.

[Moga CMDR]

Yeah use sim rate if you want to prematurely have incidents unrelated to your skill ^_^

it's a bit touchy, and messes up the AP and co pilot a bit. But yes its a commonly used feature.

[WeirdWizardDave]

Fly low. That's what I do, I stick to GA (small prop planes mostly), short hops (20 mins to an hour flight time usually) and fly under 1000ft, often as close to the ground as I can, weaving in and out of hills, buildings, etc. Sure it's not realistic, you'd never be allowed to do that in real life. But this is a fantasy, it's my own world where I can own planes and fly anywhere I want and never risk my own or anyone elses life. So why would I stick to the rules?

[BigVern]

That's the nature of a flight sim... Not done it yet in FS2020 as still puddling about in the hedge clippers, but in FSX or X-Plane once stabilised at cruise altitude, I just pop some background music on media player, head to the cabin view (if available) and enjoy the tunes along with the engine noise and scenery. Very Zen.

[J4MESOX4D]

Just like in American Truck Simulator and ETS2, I pick trips that are typically 30-45 minutes. I did a flight earlier from LAX to San Francisco which was 1 hour and 2 minutes long and it felt pretty decent. Sometimes more trips in a session and a bit of variety makes all the difference than doing a single big one.

[BulletMagnet]

Unless you fly 100% online with realtime everything, you can skip certain flight phases - so no problem planning a 14-hour flight, going through all the preparations, takeoff, climb and as soon as you're bored with cruising, skip directly to top of descent.

[Zephyrus]

Originally posted by Cornelia Edgerton:

I'm a complete flight noob but it seems most time between taking off and landing you pretty much just set autopilot on and do nothing? Yeah it's relaxing and you can enjoy the view but other than that it's a bit uneventful. Is that how it is in real life?