If you're not interested in the actual flying part then I'm not sure if it is worth it?
I think the path for most people is first they get interested in flight simulation, frequently in the context of flying airline jets. They start learning how that airliner works. How to start it up. How to program a flight plan & performance figures into it. How to use the autopilot. The concept of SIDs and STARs (departure and arrival procedures) (and again how to program them into the plane) and finally learning about all the different types of approaches like an ILS approach which allows the plane to break out of extremely low level clouds (think 200 feet, sometimes less!). And finally, how to perfect landings.
They do all of that usually offline. On their own, or with some plugins that inject fake AI traffic to make it a bit more immersive.
Then finally, once they have a grip on most of the above, then they hop onto VATSIM to add the challenge (just at start) and fun of talking to ATC and listening to other pilots. It just is really a great immersion factor to know there is another human being operating the plane that you're taxiing behind.
But if none of that initlal stuff sounds very interesting to ya then (1) no problem!! It's understandably not everyone's cup of tear but then also (2) probably not worth getting into VATSIM.
But if VATSIM on its own kind of intrigues you then maybe you can live vicariously through people on Twitch playing MSFS on it, or YouTube searching "msfs vatsim full flight"
I think at first you can just spawn on runways with the plane on and treat it more as a game than a simulator.
Then you can start spawning at parking spots which will have your plane turned off. You can just youtube "<plane name/type> cold and dark start" and you'll get plenty of videos that show the procedure of getting the plane started (it is more complex than starting a car).
Above is true whether you start out flying a Cessna 172 or a Boeing. Neither way is technically wrong in the sim, lol.
Note MSFS itself has a "learn to fly" section which teaches you some fundamentals. You could consider that a lightweight curriculum.
Once you want to get more serious you could look up the FlightInsight youtube channel. Real pilots use it to learn. Also, there is a service similar to VATSIM called PilotEdge which is like a more realistic version of VATSIM. One of the things it offers is a training curriculum that goes into way more depth than MSFS's native one: https://www.pilotedge.net/pages/training-program-overview. But note this is if you really wanna take it seriously. It teaches you things like airspace considerations and more. It's frequently used by real student pilots.
> I enjoy flight sims, but I'm not sure I want to actually get a license.
This was me in late 2021 / early 2022.
I urge you to get a discovery flight! I did, and now I'm almost finished with my instrument rating. One of the best decisions I've ever made in my life. I love flying so much - more than I ever could have imagined.
Your wallet won't like it though.
If you use reddit I'd recommend lurking r/flying. Great community of pilots ranging from students to hobby pilots to 747 captains.
Totally fair point. I think VATSIM shines in IFR yet MSFS arguably shines at lower altitudes / in a more VFR way where you can sort of do whatever you want (i.e. don't have to fly an assigned heading or route).
I think flying VFR in an unrealistic way (ignoring airspace, altitude restrictions etc.) is plenty fun.
But, if you want to fly "realistic" VFR you could consider PilotEdge. It's like vatsim but more heavy on GA and commonly used by real life student pilots that want to practice procedures and ATC comms as close as possible to real life.
Step 1: Have an interest for it. It sounds like you might!
Once you know you want to, I think YouTube is a really fantastic resource. Also an active community on reddit (r/flightsim, r/MicrosoftFLightSim etc).
I recommend Microsoft Flight Simulator for most people just because it visually looks the best. People will say other sims have better flight dynamics but I'd argue that doesn't matter for 99.9% of people.
You need a pretty good PC to run MSFS though. There's also an Xbox version but it is less extensible. For example, you can't do VATSIM on Xbox.
I got my PPL irl last summer. IMO PilotEdge is fantastic for real pilots/student pilots that want to practice realistic VFR and/or IFR procedures.
But if you want to just "have fun" VATSIM is the way to go, at least for me.
Like PilotEdge I always use with a Cessna 172 and pair the sim up with ForeFlight. I'll expand my planes on it as I expand the planes I fly in real life. But the goal is to mimic real training as close as I can.
Sometimes when I look things up, I find forum discussions from over 15 years ago. It's interesting observing how at first you might not realize it, and then they make references that make you look at the date and you realize you're reading a back and forth discussion that took place over a decade ago and it's still available to look at. Do those people still have those same interests? So many little meaningless questions.
Anyways. Randomc omment but your comment reminded me of this lol.
great so can I login with my youtube account now? I don't think I ever migrated it to a Google account (despite being asked to like a million times - would always say "later") and now I have no idea how to login to it.
Umm...I guess 'citation needed' on the VAC ban part? Valve has a very strict zero-tolerance policy w.r.t VAC bans. As far as I know, reversals are rare and only happen in mass when VAC bugs out and detects a legit program as a cheat which results in an incorrect ban wave which then gets reversed.
I'm pretty sure that if I got access to your account and got your account banned, you'd be SOL.
On the other hand, VAC bans now only affect the single game that the cheat was used in, so your entire Steam library won't be trashed. Exceptions to this include early Source games (e.g. cheating in CS:S will get you banned in TF2) and HL engine games (e.g. CS 1.6 ban also affects DoD)
I dunno, I submitted a ticket a few weeks back for a refund and got a human. I guess his first reply was canned but when I called him out on it, he was helpful and provided me with a full refund. (I had added funds to my Steam wallet to buy an item on the marketplace and then got a 7 day market ban making me unable to use the money. A few mins later the item I wanted to buy had already been sold.)
Yeah it's weird especially since you just get done reading about how they get away with getting hit between the wings and then you get told "if you want to see this for yourself, watch the video" ... lol
Ahhh soooo annoying that it requires a Nexus 6. This sounds so awesome but I do not want a 6" phone. I'm hoping the next Nexus phone will have a smaller variant (and it will undoubtedly support Project Fi)
Yep. HL2 was the first game to require it. You would buy the game at best buy and then you'd need to go download this strange program and tie the game to your account.
A lot of people were super pissed. Gabe Newell said "I know, I know, but trust me: this is going to be AWESOME in the future" - boy was he right :)
I like the look of my iPhone 5s much better. This iPhone 6 thing looks like a Galaxy. The throwback to iPhone 1 is interesting but count me out. Not liking the design at all
The protruding camera is also really weird. I wonder if Jobs would have signed off on that...
Who knows though. Maybe once I hold one personally I'll end up liking it more than the 5s. But I would be surprised :)
I was sad to have to unfollow "Wimp.com". It was (and I guess sort of still is) a site that would upload 5 new videos a day. They'd be anything from funny to cute to jaw dropping to inspiring to just plain interesting. But you could pretty much bet on them being great.
A few months ago they decided to turn their titles into clickbait. It was so incredibly frustrating to see them go down that path. I don't know if their quality bar for videos also dropped, or if that's just my disappointment seeping through.
Does anyone know why Uber doesn't easily just give you your own rating? If I know my rating is low then I know I should work on improving it if I want to continue using Uber...
Seems kind of like a win-win-win for all three parties (Uber, driver, myself)
I think the path for most people is first they get interested in flight simulation, frequently in the context of flying airline jets. They start learning how that airliner works. How to start it up. How to program a flight plan & performance figures into it. How to use the autopilot. The concept of SIDs and STARs (departure and arrival procedures) (and again how to program them into the plane) and finally learning about all the different types of approaches like an ILS approach which allows the plane to break out of extremely low level clouds (think 200 feet, sometimes less!). And finally, how to perfect landings.
They do all of that usually offline. On their own, or with some plugins that inject fake AI traffic to make it a bit more immersive.
Then finally, once they have a grip on most of the above, then they hop onto VATSIM to add the challenge (just at start) and fun of talking to ATC and listening to other pilots. It just is really a great immersion factor to know there is another human being operating the plane that you're taxiing behind.
But if none of that initlal stuff sounds very interesting to ya then (1) no problem!! It's understandably not everyone's cup of tear but then also (2) probably not worth getting into VATSIM.
But if VATSIM on its own kind of intrigues you then maybe you can live vicariously through people on Twitch playing MSFS on it, or YouTube searching "msfs vatsim full flight"