This thread will be about some sort of revelation to me.
As a primer, I play around with flight sims since the 90s. I flew mostly fighters. From a SPAD XII to a Zorgon Peterson Fer-de-Lance, if it was fast, nimble and made “pew pew”, I had fun with it. I never was interested in airliners.
Something changed recently. It might have been my experiences with the previous two Mudspike Christmas Flights. Or the fact that I’m getting more settled on the backstraight of my 40s. Whatever it was, I decided to dig deeper into learning about civil aviation.
I dabbled in general aviation aircraft occasionally in the past 3 decades. I am quite familiar with steam gauge Cessnas, as this is close to what I know from fighters - only much slower. For our flight to Norway, I finally installed MSFS2020. I opted for an VFR trip and removed the GPS from my DHC-2 Beaver. Screens in aircraft kind of overwhelm me. I hate the menu diving. After the usual intial struggle with the simulator it all worked out. I had no issues with the aircraft and enjoyed the trip up north.
For the next Christmas Flight destination I realized, VFR won’t cut it. I wouldn’t have enough time to put in that many legs. As I looked for faster options, I selected the CJ4 business jet, mainly for her sleek lines and high cruising speed. I had to learn her Rockwell avionics suite though. And you know what? It wasn’t that bad. In fact, I found it rather clever. I learned about proper flight plans (for simulation purposes anyway) with Little Navmap. I studied stuff like SID, STAR and approach procedures. It seems like Asobo has integrated the Working Title mod for the CJ4 into the main game. The simulation depth was impressive. I finally understood how much of a game changer the introduction of FMS and advanced auto pilots was for flying. I’m kind of surprised how little of this can be seen in military jets like the Hornet or Viper with their crude AP modes.
Anyway I was kind of hooked and wanted to go bigger. Before going on a shopping spree, I thought why not first try the default aircraft from Asobo. After all, my experience with the CJ4 was quite good.
It turns out that for one of the many A320 version that ship with MSFS2020, Asobo has integrated the iniBuilds A320neo. So I planned to first try this before digging deeper into more complex mods, like the free FlyByWire A32x or even the Fenix payware.
This was 2 weeks ago and I’m still learning about the default iniBuilds A320. I’m impressed and think I can sink many dozens of hours before I’m bored. In fact I can’t even comprehend what those other products can even do better.
I found a very good Youtube channel by a real life Airbus pilot who explains all the systems in great details. His 17 part tutorial series takes you from a cold and dark state and puts you systematically through all flight phases. I can highly recommend:
He’s using the Fenix mod and some more payware addons. Still you can find most of these features in Asobo’s ‘base’ model and try it on your own.
I can’t recall how many times I said “Boy, that’s really smart”. The whole workflow and user interface shows how much thought the Airbus engineers put into designing their aircraft. The whole learning journey helped me to appreciate the well oiled machine that is modern aviation. There are so many things that work together in harmony. Be it the people (crew and cabin, technicans on the ground, ATC, logistics), procedures to handle the chaos or technology that supports all that.
I was wrong with my assumption, that airliners are boring and I’m glad I challenged my self to at least try it out myself.
If there’s one takeaway from my long winded ramblings it is that we’re really living in an amazing simulation era. Simulators on PC have come so far and give you so many insights into an alternate reality.
