After reading through our Best Flight Stick list from last week you probably ran out and bought a new flightstick. You’re now amazed by how much more immersive the game is using a proper stick instead of your Xbox controller, but why stop there? This week I’ve gathered up a few resources that will help improve your knowledge of Microsoft Flight Simulator, and actual aviation in general, to help you get the most out of your newfound hobby of flight simulation.
Create A Realistic Flight Plan
Instead of flying around all willy-nilly, you can easily create a flight plan from the World Map within Microsoft Flight Simulator. Just click on whatever navaids you want to add to your plan and then follow them to your destination.
If you’re feeling a little adventurous you can create one outside of the game and then load it up to have a realistic flight plan to follow in-game. There are several sites that have navigation maps and flight plan creation tools out there. For a quick and painless option, you can head over to SimBrief.com to easily create a plan that, after a few clicks, can be loaded into the game. There’s even a simple tutorial by Q8Pilot that will have you up and running in no time.
Add Head Tracking for FREE!
For anyone interested in controlling their in-game view without using their hands you’ll be happy to know that MSFS is getting official VR support later this year and shipped with TrackIR support right out of the box. That’s pretty cool if you own either of these devices but the rest of us are left out in the cold, or are we?
Anyone with an Apple product that has a TrueDepth camera (iPhone X or later and iPad Pro) can use their device with the built-in TrackIR support for Free! You’ll need the free OpenTrack software installed on your PC and the Head Tracker app on your phone. Follow this quick setup guide and you’ll have your virtual cockpit up and running in no time.
Discover New Places To Visit
There are so many landmarks across the globe it’s tough to figure out where your next sightseeing flight should be. You probably already buzzed the Statue of Liberty, flew under the Golden Gate Bridge and tried to find a ghost town hidden in the Grand Canyon, so what’s next?
The underside of the Golden Gate Bridge
You can take a look at the map over at flightloc.com to get plenty of great flight ideas, ranging from visiting landmarks you didn’t know existed, far off locales with amazing scenic views, and some iconic or challenging airstrips to land on.
Get Some Help From A Squirrel
When I hit the ‘Expand All’ button and saw the insane number of dials, buttons, and control surfaces that needed to be assigned an input, I quickly closed the settings and ignored they existed for a couple of days. Then I came across Squirrel and his tutorial videos on YouTube. After watching a few many of those extra buttons and dials will be familiar and you can start getting more out of the game. I can even take off and land without crashing now.
FSEconomy
I was talking about MSFS to a couple of gamers at work and they posed a question, “What’s the point? Just to fly around and look at stuff?” Um, yeah!
So what if that isn’t enough? You can complete the challenges and run through the checklist of achievements that are part of the game. If that still isn’t enough then you might want to check out FSEconomy. This nifty little program adds a persistent world element to MSFS (and many other flight sims as well). Your job is to fly planes “carrying” cargo or passengers from one airport to another. You will start out with rentals, but after you complete enough jobs and earn some virtual cash you can start buying (and renting) your own planes. If only MSFS had something like this built-in.
One-Stop Mod Shop
If there’s one thing I’ve learned about the flight sim community it’s just how much time people spend trying to make your in-game experience better. Even though MSFS has been out for less than a month the modding community is already hard at work. They’ve already started creating new planes and liveries for you to add to your game, like an improved A320 or the legendary P-51 Mustang. Others have started adding models for their favorite airport while even more have started fixing some of the issues created from the AI taking the 2D views from Bing and turning them into 3D models. Instead of trying to list them all here, I recommend heading over to MSFS Addons or Nexusmods. Some of these mods are going to cost you some money but there are a bunch that are free.
Lookin’ for a fight
Find More Like-Minded People
Believe it or not, you aren’t the only person who has fallen in love with Microsoft Flight Simulator. There’s a whole community over on Reddit that is more than happy to share their thoughts on the game. Some are novice flyers looking for advice, others have been flying virtual (or real) planes for decades. In any event, you can find a wealth of information, some worthwhile, some not so much on these subreddits:
- https://www.reddit.com/r/flightsim/
- https://www.reddit.com/r/MicrosoftFlightSim/
- https://www.reddit.com/r/homecockpits/
If you’re looking for even more flight sim info and news you could also head over to flightsim.com to keep up to date on all the sims out there.
