My favourite moments of 2019:
DCS: Flying with friends, as @BeachAV8R said, is always the best.
- Flying strike jets with my dad. Him in a Viggen, me in an A-4 or Mirage 2000. Flying self-designed missions and watching him grow from stalling every 5 minutes to flying a successful strike mission with BK90s.
- Flying WWII combat and Christen Eagle aerobatics with my 13 year old brother in law.
- Flying Mirage 2000 with @schurem. That was so much fun! Sorry, no pics cause I didn’t have a ‘screenshot’ binding in DCS yet back then. Too bad I couldn’t attend the rest of the evening!
As for ‘new stuff’, I am very excited to fly the Mirage after the overhaul: it already looks so much better in the cockpit! I also got @Baltic_Dragon 's NTTR campaign for it. I still fondly remember his Caucasus Mirage campaign.
X-Plane:
The Christmas Flight (so far) has been amazing: I’ve learned to read approach charts, fly DME arc approaches and ILS landings in the Dornier, and for the first time done the entire event in real-time. And Alaska has been amazing in VR. Even with default scenery. This was also my first ‘big trip’ in X-Plane in VR and I loved it.
Hardware:
Managed to not buy a new CPU/Mobo/RAM or GPU this year, still trucking on with the i5-4690K on 16GB DDR3, and the single-fan GTX 980Ti, though that one is getting even more noisy of late: may have to replace the thermal paste, never done on a GPU.
Very happy with my new VPC T-50CM2 flight stick with 200mm extension. Built a tiny frame for it, planning to build some sort of non-transforming simbox once we sell the piano. Yes, I am very lucky with my girlfriend. Did I tell you yet that she encouraged me to buy the VPC stick when I was in doubt because of the price?
The feeling is so much more real, especially in VR, and the amount of buttons is simply stunning. In DCS:M-2000C I’ve even bound the seat raise/lower command, that is how many buttons I have! And I can finally bind all the buttons I need in order to stop using the keyboard in FC3!
Looking forward to flying the M-2000C NTTR campaign in 2020, and to improving my virtual cockpit even further.
Hoping to fly with many more of you!
And I am looking forward to finally re-discovering all those magnificent FC3 fighters in VR! All of the Flankers and Fulcrums especially.
Happy holidays and a merry new year!
May your skies be clear, sunny and blue
With sunrises rendering pixels in all hues
May your Flankers be flying across the Caucasus plains
Whatever you fly from your simpit, helo or plain
Old airplanes from the 40s or even before
In sims deemed civilian or Great Battles of war
This was the year the DCS Tomcat was born and
The year in which grew the just released Hornet
We said again: we should fly together much more!
As a hole in the ground once more we bored.
The darkest days in the North are almost gone too
As for some, the Chrismas Flight has ended in Attu.
Others are trudging on faster and faster, except @NEVO
Who is sticking to the choice of his slow helo
Wherever you may go, whatever you may fly
May you encounter the most beautiful clear blue skies!