A small question regarding VA's.

[Paul Smith]

Hi all,

You may find this surprising but in the 7 years I have been flightsimming I have NEVER, yes NEVER, been involved in an FS online activity, e.g. ATC, Multiplayer, or VA's. I'm not a loner or anything, but when in FSWorld I suppose I prefer the solitary freedom it gives.

Recently I have been thinking about joining a VA of some kind. I mainly fly heavies (to be precise, the 744 and 773). I use the standard MSFS aircraft only.

What I wanted to know is do any VA's use the standard MSFS aircraft? All the VA's I have come across seem to utilise non-standard addon aircraft. Just a thought.

What I was wanting to wait and see about, however, was to inject a bit of "realism" and maybe get addon packages, one featuring the 744 and one featuring the 773, with realistic panels (FMC, Overhead panel etc.) and do all the licenses in FS first before joining. Just to add a bit of fun. I've never did any of the licenses, I learned to fly myself, which was fun. Also, having flown aircraft in real life, well, that's it sorted.

The thought also crossed my mind about starting my own VA, although I would need to look into this thoroughly first.

Anyways, just curious as to the VA community... it seems a very interesting thing to be part of.

Cheers

Smithy

[JanniCash]

Not surprising at all. It took me more than 5 years to get involved in a VA and I still don't feel the need to fly online.

I think the reason why most VA's use a lot of add-on aircraft is that it would be rather hard to represent any kind of airline with the few stock aircraft, that come with FS2004.

There are for sure VA's out there that allow to use standard FS2004 aircraft, as well as payware or freeware add-ons.

When looking for a VA, you should be more concerned about what you expect that VA to add to your flightsimulation experience. Do you want it to be modeled after a real world airline, or is fantasy ok? Do you want to have a large variety of aircraft (doesn't look like) or something specialized. There are airlines that require flying online and others where that is up to you. Do you want minimum hours per month requirements, a rank system that limits the aircraft you can fly or whatever?

Also think why after 7 years you are all of the sudden looking. Maybe you're tired of doing what you always do? You said you mostly use the big stuff (744, 773). That is very different from me. 74+ size aircraft are normally used for ranges with 5+ hours of airtime. When I want to do a 5+ hour flight, I make sure that I actually have something to do up there, so for that I would allways chose an airplane like the DC-3 with some added IFR equipment but the GPS removed, so I have to navigate by VOR/ADF and constantly monitor altitude and course because of the lack of an actual autopilot (yes, I do muck about in the aircraft.cfg and panel.cfg quite a lot). I seldom have 5+ hours in a row for flying though. The natural choice for me is a VA with a preference on short distance flights of usually 1-2 hour duration.

Just some random thoughts.

Good luck.


Jan

[JanniCash]

Giving this a second thought I actually loaded the default B737-400 and flew it from KDFW to KMCI. I didn't touch any of the default Jets for a few years (sometimes a prop though). Now I remember why (cough, cough).

To tell you the truth, the FS9 default aircraft are like the base model of a car. No CD, no power steering, no power windows, no aircondition, no automatic and NO CUPHOLDERS! Even my scooter has automatic, remote starter and a (self installed) stereo for my MP3 player!

I've just rearranged the del Sol download section. Just for the fun of it you should download our Kittyhawk B737-200 with the analog Berretta panel and "feel" what you're missing. I would be very interested what someone with mostly default FS9 aircraft experience would say about it. I've organized things in a way that the original FS9 folders (especially Gauges) are almost untouched, which makes a later removal rather simple. A total of 5-6 files need to be copied into central locations. Other than that, removal of our aircraft is as easy as deleting a folder.


Jan