Commercial Airline vs General Aviation

[Rnglgdj]

I was just wondering why there seems to be so many more interested in flying the commercial airline planes than GA that you can go to any parts of the world and see what it looks like. Maybe I am off in the numbers. Just a thought.

 

Besides taking a flight off and them going to bed what else is there. Oh yea getting up in the morning and making the landing.

 

I just threw it out for some discussion.

 

Don R

[tgibson_new]

Because so many more of use have flown commercial vs being GA pilots (or passengers).

[lnuss]

Besides Tom's comment, a lot more people seem to think of aviation in terms of airlines, and many non-pilots have at least somewhat of an admiration for and/or a desire to be an airline pilot -- it's more glamorous, just as a fighter pilot seems to be more glamorous than a bomber or transport pilot (think Top Gun), even though few people have a fighter pilot's outlook and attitude.

[ViperPilot2]

Part of it could be the challenge of learning the Systems like the FMC, learning about SIDS and STARS, and the allure of the Airline 'lifestyle'. That's why the Payware tubeliners get all of the Press and all of the Comments, because they're what everyone's waiting for.

 

It's all a matter of what floats your boat, whether it's GA, Military or Tubelining. They're all good, and anything that keeps us using Nine is always a good thing! ;)

[lnuss]

because they're what everyone's waiting for.

 

Not everyone, but it is a lot of people.

[chris_eve]

GA for me ... 'cos the main 'plane in FS1 was a Cessna and I never got out of the habit ;) Edited December 13, 2022 by chris_eve

[MAD1]

For me, I enjoy both - the GA e.g. Cessna, as it simulates what I can do for real, go to my local aero club and do a course for a Private Pilots licence (I won't, don't want to spend the money). My puttering around the circuit in the Cessna 172 default airplane I can imagine doing it for real. My sim setup has me parked outside the hanger at my local airport (a local guy did very good scenery about 15 years ago, including photos of the two small terminals, plus the terrain topography is realistic, the hills are in the right places!), I do a pretend walkaround, startup (including calling out "clear prop"), taxi, take-off, a few touch-and-go circuits, land, taxi back to the hanger, shutdown. Quite realistic (especially when I had the setup in my retired 1981 Mazda 929 car, left front seat, being in a metal cabin made the experience better than just on a desk. One can practice real procedures.

 

Then to change mental gear, just for fun, to do something that's impossible for me, to ever be a commercial pilot, and especially to drive a big tubeliner. That's unrealistic for me, as I'm not immersing myself into all the components that the commercial fraternity here in FlightSim have experienced and know about, but still fun and I learn a lot, it's mentally engaging. PS: I only had 6 hours solo in a Blanik glider in 1979, and only joy rides with my local aero club ever since, plus the commercial flights as a passenger.

Edited December 13, 2022 by MAD1

[ViperPilot2]

I forgot to say that I primarily fly GA airplanes (Cessnas, Pipers, DHC stuff), imagining that I'm some hotshot Bush Pilot popping and chipping around the country. But I'm kinda taking a liking to Military stuff, mainly Jet fighters now that I finally figured out how to land the dang things!

 

I do fly for DC-3 Airlines VA, so there's that in terms of 'larger' airplanes. The largest one I've flown to date is the C-17, so I guess I have flown Heavy Iron, of a sort. Just got in it and went. Maybe Tubeliners intimidate me because of all the W & B calcs (because some won't get off the ground) and the FMC stuff. Maybe I should take a page from MAD1's book, quit crying about it and just give it a go! I did make a list of Fuel Burn/hr. for the tubes I do have...

 

Larry... maybe I should have said "everyone in the Tubeliner Community" instead! :p

 

NOTE: "Tubeliner" is just my nickname for Jetliners. Not in any way trying to disparage anyone flying Jetliners; you guys way, way outnumber me, and we're all here to get along. :D

[lnuss]

NOTE: "Tubeliner" is just my nickname for Jetliners.

 

My nickname, from a passenger standpoint, is "airborne mailing tube." I'm just a GA guy, though I did (thanks to a neighbor) once spend a couple of hours in a 757/767/ simulator-- fascinating. Except for the systems, I felt strangely at home there, even from the right seat (I instructed from the right [or rear] seat for years), since in so many ways it was "just another neat airplane." Most of the systems, however, were beyond me operationally, but my neighbor took care of that (he was an instructor there at that time). Neat stuff...

[Rnglgdj]

Thanks for the replies guys. As I said I was wondering and would think a lot of people would want to get the PPL and would practice all the meneuvers to at least solo and get their shirt tail cut off.

 

Don

[Qballbandit]

C'mon, 747 vs. 150? No comparison! :)

Kidding aside. What did we dream of as kids when thinking of, seeing, or traveling by air? The cool cats up front and the amazing machines they were commanding.

Don't get me wrong, low slow flying is a blast and has it's magic, but the cool factor comes in full swing on a big Boeing or the like.

 

Neil

[lnuss]

C'mon, 747 vs. 150? No comparison!

 

Very true. From the C-150 you can see a lot more, and at your leisure, even open the side windows to let the ambience in. It's even better in any of the Piper Cub derivatives, whether the J-3 or the Husky or anything in between, with those clamshell doors. You get a REAL sense of flying, vs systems manager.

[ViperPilot2]

C'mon, 747 vs. 150? No comparison! :)

Kidding aside. What did we dream of as kids when thinking of, seeing, or traveling by air? The cool cats up front and the amazing machines they were commanding.

Don't get me wrong, low slow flying is a blast and has it's magic, but the cool factor comes in full swing on a big Boeing or the like.

 

Neil

 

When I was a kid, we lived on the 26/8 Approach path for Stapleton Airport. Those noisy cigar tubes flew over our house all day and all night. But when I went to the airport to pick someone up or drop them off, what caught my eye were all the GA airplanes parked on the ramp of Combs Aviation, which was on the North side of the Concourse. Whenever you drove West back towards Downtown, you would pass Combs and all of the Cessnas, Pipers, Navions and other planes parked there.

[defaid]

 

Kidding aside. What did we dream of as kids when thinking of, seeing, or traveling by air?

 

Neil

 

Looking out at the clouds from above and discovering what they looked like in moonlight. The earliest flight I remember was on a BEA Trident. I think it was from the UK to Mallorca but the flight is more vivid than the rest of the holiday.

 

Hovering around UFOs, shooting them down and repelling an alien invasion. It didn't occur to me that they might shoot back.

 

Noseing around forest canopies looking into birds' nests and hunting for monkeys. Equally naive...

 

Rescuing stranded fishermen. Even back then I had some idea that a big jet wouldn't fit onto a gravel bar.

 

Crossing the desert to land on a high plateau filled with dinosaurs.

 

Crossing the impassable mountain range to find cities with glittering palaces. And turkish delight.

 

Following the river to its source without running the risk of being eaten by cannibals. Crashing and escaping from the cannibals. Unless that day the cannibal was that very pretty girl I had a crush on.

 

D

[billythebassman]

I have always felt that it would be a good idea to have two flight simulation programs; one for jet airliners which many people enjoy and one for GA.

 

There is a world of difference between flying a plane and programming a plane to fly itself. The efforts to combine both in one sim have, IMHO, been the source of unnecessary complexity and instability in the flight sim experience.

 

What are the common factors between, for example, landing a Bonanza in a crosswind and a thousand mile trip in a 737. Wouldn't dividing these simulated activities into separate programs contribute to more optimization in both ...and a tighter more reliable code?

[lnuss]

I have always felt that it would be a good idea to have two flight simulation programs; one for jet airliners which many people enjoy and one for GA.

 

... Wouldn't dividing these simulated activities into separate programs contribute to more optimization in both ...and a tighter more reliable code?

 

Both? Wouldn't that also imply that gliders need their own sim, that blimps and hot air balloons each need their own sims, that helicopters need their own sim?

 

So I wouldn't think that different sims are needed. Quite the contrary.

 

Even without aircraft a large part of the work will be identical. The scenery, the aerodynamics (mostly), the lighting, the weather, , the road traffic, the boat traffic, and everything else that makes up the world of the sim will be the same for ANY type of aircraft, from blimp to SST, and navaids and much else in the various aircraft would be the same for most any aircraft. So the way they do it now, with just different aircraft models and code to support the differences needing to be changed from one to another.

 

So with the current arrangement you don't have to duplicate all of the above things EXCEPT the aircraft itself, and you have only one program to market to people who like to fly all manner of different aircraft. For example, though I prefer to fly Cubs to Barons to Stearmans most of the time, the occasional Jet fighter or bizjet is neat, and gliders and helicopters are nice for a change of pace.

 

Since the biggest part of the work is designing the actual world, including aerodynamics and all the above mentioned stuff, how would it save, optimize, or make for "a tighter more reliable code?" Remember, ALL of the above mentioned stuff has to run at the same time. It's a very, very complex undertaking.

 

If you're a coder, check out the freely available code for Flightgear, a free simulator that has been getting better and better for decades: https://www.flightgear.org/

 

If you're not a coder then I don't think you quite understand what all is involved.

 

What are the common factors between, for example, landing a Bonanza in a crosswind and a thousand mile trip in a 737.

 

So go through the above comments, the lists of much of what is needed in ANY sim, and I think you can answer this.

[mallcott]

Not everyone, but it is a lot of people.

 

Not me. I only ever fly GA. Gave up on airliners year ago. But I do occasionally fly multi-passenger military transports....

[billythebassman]

I guess it just seems to me that one type of sim could emphasize aerodynamics and the other could prioritize complex avionics systems. Much of the instability and "update chasing" that we are seeing today arises when one causes issues with the other. I think that many would agree that they spend far more time troubleshooting than actually flying because sims have reached the point where no one is capable of pleasing both camps and the results can often look a lot like chaos.

[ViperPilot2]

The "instability" billythebassman refers to in the Sim occurs because of the complexities in modeling all the features of the specific Airplane and/or the aftermarket Scenery one is flying into and out of, in addition to the Sim itself creating everything else in 'the World' at the same time... correct?

 

I mean, we all read about it here all the time; "(he/she/they) have the [insert Payware Airplane] and whenever (he/she/they) fly into [insert Payware Airport], (he/she/they) get Stutters, Error Message, OOM... or any other matter of Sim failure.

 

The more complex the Add On, the more it taxes the Sim. I mean, we're talking about a Sim that was designed almost twenty years ago! Something's gotta give...

 

That is why I avoid Payware Scenery and most Payware Aircraft, especially Tubeliners. I have to tailor my 'Sim World' to the capabilities of my rig. Small, Freeware Scenery and mostly Freeware airplanes. Carenado's GA stuff is my limit with Payware airplanes; they work well and don't put a lot of stress on the CPU/GPU. Plus, during the Holidays the FS stores usually put Carenado's FS2004 stuff on Sale for less than $10.00 a piece (but so far I haven't seen any Sales yet).

[lnuss]

I guess it just seems to me that one type of sim could emphasize aerodynamics and the other could prioritize complex avionics systems. Much of the instability and "update chasing" that we are seeing today arises when one causes issues with the other. I think that many would agree that they spend far more time troubleshooting than actually flying because sims have reached the point where no one is capable of pleasing both camps and the results can often look a lot like chaos.

 

In other words, the airliners would fly like cardboard cutouts and the GA types would have to forego instrument approaches and other fancy electronic type stuff?

 

And note the comments above about how many of the problems are caused by add-ons. Many (not all) add-ons are designed for pretty, with minimal attention given to behavior, and many sceneries have plenty of flaws too. Don't get me wrong, the sims have software flaws too, as does ALL software (except maybe "print("Hello World"); ).

 

I think that many would agree that they spend far more time troubleshooting than actually flying because sims have reached the point where no one is capable of pleasing both camps and the results can often look a lot like chaos.

 

That is FAR from true, at least in my experience. FS2000 was a miserable sim, and 2002 a mild improvement, but FS9, FSX and P3D (at least through V2) were mostly flying, with little troubleshooting involved, except when we added a new aircraft or a new scenery. At that point my friend that I flew with all the time would work out aircraft issues (mostly performance and handling, but sometimes making it less of a resource hog), and I usually dealt with any problem scenery add-ons, such that other than the modifications that we made to those add-ons (and the fun of doing so) we basically just flew together online (even with a separate voice communications program, he in Dallas, me in Denver) from FS98 through P3D V2.4. I'm still on P3D V2.4, though I have FSX also installed, since 2020 needs Win 10 and I'm on Win 7.

 

Oh sure, there were a few sim flaws that we had to work around, but that is something that you HAVE to do with ANY complex software, and a flight simulator is one of the most complex pieces of software ever written, whether for a PC or for a large computer or even for the airlines' full motion sims. An example:

 

A friend who, at the time was an instructor on the airline sims, invited me, along with a couple of neighbors, to spend some time in a 757/767 full motion sim. It was wonderful, with all of us having a great time, getting some marvelous sim experience. When I was on Final Approach for KDEN runway 35R in the sim, with other airliners visible (night time), car lights moving on the roads, etc. expecting that I was going to nail the landing, there was a loud CLUNK and the sim froze. Froze in that not only was it suddenly locked in one spot, but I couldn't even move the yoke which, BTW, was suddenly thrown into a hard LEFT and frozen there.

 

And THAT was in a multi-million dollar full motion, full visual sim that actually replicated the real world very well indeed, until that moment.

 

It's just a fact of life, son, and your proposed solution would just mean that there are two programs, costing more for each, with each selling fewer copies (a LOT fewer, even combined, because of loss of function), which would each have the same problem(s) that you are complaining about. After all, what do you expect from a $50 program for a PC, which is only THAT cheap because of high volume sales, and is surprisingly (at least to me) very well done indeed, given the economics and complexity.

 

BTW, you'd have to learn to program some complex stuff yourself to truly understand how much of a problem that complexity is. Your outlook is impractical, to be kind.

Edited December 16, 2022 by lnuss

[billythebassman]

You may have read recently that MSFS celebrated ten million copies used. Assuming only a quarter of them paid full price, that is one hundred and fifty million dollars in sales.

 

For this kind of money, I think we could expect more.

[JSkorna]

You may have read recently that MSFS celebrated ten million copies used. Assuming only a quarter of them paid full price, that is one hundred and fifty million dollars in sales.

 

For this kind of money, I think we could expect more.

 

Like what? A full motion flight training simulator?

[ViperPilot2]

I guess it just seems to me that one type of sim could emphasize aerodynamics and the other could prioritize complex avionics systems. Much of the instability and "update chasing" that we are seeing today arises when one causes issues with the other. I think that many would agree that they spend far more time troubleshooting than actually flying because sims have reached the point where no one is capable of pleasing both camps and the results can often look a lot like chaos.

 

Then stop fooling with the Sim, go out and fly!

 

I've started to see lots of posts in this Forum from folks trying to do the same things to Nine that others were trying a Decade ago in an attempt to make FSX "run better"; Overclocking, cranking up the Throttle on the Graphics Card, and all of the other 'fixes'... to no avail.

 

Look at it this way; no matter what aftermarket chachkas or hop up kits there are on the Market, a Yugo is still just a Yugo. It'll run the way it runs, because that's the way it was built. Nine is the same way. It was written and compiled at a time when Computer peripherals were what they were. To expect a current GPU or CPU to make the Software run better when the Software itself can't exploit all of the advantages of the Hardware is a fallacy, in my humble opinion... and the Replies are reflective of that.

Edited December 16, 2022 by ViperPilot2

[lnuss]

Amen, Alan.

[caphavoc]

+2.

 

Regards,

Dorian