CLE_GrummanTiger

This one looks promising! I'm going to try the Spacedesk app first (as it's free) and see if I can't just put my Little NavMap on that.

Ahhh that’s too much. I guess I’m looking for something either free or cheap.

Wondering if there are any apps out there that would enhance my experience flying in MSFS. Something like a MFD or navmap.

I can see where this can be loads of fun! It was just a modest first flight of 15NM in a C-172...a very short hop, but mostly to see how the thing works. I now have almost $275 in fake money earned! Time to grind 'em out and pocket the moolah towards buying my first plane!

Really wanted to feel the need for speed, so I took up a TBM 930 for a spin, from startup to landing. There were a few hiccups and some extra stuff I need to learn, but overall it was a success. The biggest difference I noticed between piston and turbo is a very distinctive and significant "lag," if you will, between the throttle input and the reaction from the engine. Piston is nearly instantaneous, whereas turbo takes a few ticks to kick in. That's something I'm definitely learning to have to compensate for. Also, I need to begin my descent way earlier as I was cruising around 25,000 ft instead of the 5,000 or so I'm used to in the C-172. Also, the G3000 is obviously very different from G1000, so I need to get a better handle on that more. Especially if I want to use autopilot so I can increase the sim rate and inflate my hours flying, ha! I like how some of the more obvious controls are overhead and not cluttered in front of me. That gives me a better sense of where what is. I would've had about 45 minutes or so under my belt for this flight if not for the fact that I was apparently not cleared for landing (oops). Actually, that was probably because I never went into the downwind leg and was too busy trying to descend as quickly as safely was possible to land.

So, tried my hand at flying under Rainbow Bridge at Niagara Falls. Literally a split second after taking this snapshot, I apparently "crashed" into thin air (stupid developer restriction, not at all "realistic" if you ask me!). But at least I came away with a nice screenshot!

That's....pretty cool!

Miniseries is probably what inspired the flyover, lol! Watched it a couple of months ago.

It all really depends on your monitor's resolution and refresh rate (if any, but those are becoming common now). For the sake of a starting point, I have a 35" ultrawide monitor with a resolution of 3440x1440 and a refresh rate of 100mhz (144 is a common starting point for a lot of newer monitors, but 100 is still nothing to sneeze at). You can see my specs below in my signature. Today, I flew in Russia to the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone in a C-172 and I was clocking at a very acceptable 60fps with mostly high settings and a couple of medium settings here and there. Mind you, there wasn't a lot in the way of buildings or high-res textures. If you fly around say, London, at just a few hundred feet AGL, you'll notice an enormous performance hit. In short, your PC's performance in MSFS2020 will vary and depend greatly on where you fly and the conditions, but those will be relatively consistent over time, so it's your monitor that will dictate the PC's performance. You asked what to expect from a high end system using a 3080 card with 64gb of RAM (which, honestly, is overkill where 32gb will be just fine). You can very reasonably expect 60fps or possibly more with a monitor using 1080p resolution. At 1440p resolution, 60fps is still very attainable but maybe with a couple of settings knocked a notch down. 4K resolution is where it will be most demanding and would probably require you to knock down a few settings for smooth gameplay, but at 4K resolution, it's worth it. Then there's VR, but that's a whole other thing (but the 3080 is more than capable for that).

Maybe the most poisonous place on Earth, I thought maybe I'd take a short flight over the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone because...why not? Took off from a little airstrip to the south of Chernobyl (Dryer Airstrip or something like that...SHORT runway!) and waypointed the #4 reactor. Screenshot shows the infamous reactor with sarcophagus below the plane and the doomed city of of Pripyat just ahead. I didn't think to fly over the city to see if the famous ferris wheel was there (probably, but too lazy to fly back there). Total flight time was just 30 minutes with a few minutes spent circling around the toxic area.

Attempted Aspen to Telluride in a C-172. A few times. Kept stalling and crashing shortly after take-off trying to avoid mountains. Guess I’ll need to learn to fly a turbo before trying that again. And nav aids. Did complete a couple of landing challenges, though!

Once...long ago! Hail fellow Clevelander!

Ahhh, thanks. Good to know. Maybe they’ll address that in a future update with a small on screen display a la fps display.

I can understand your desire to upgrade to a newer and better-performing PC. The one you have is definitely decent, but not enough if you want an improved graphical experience. It's a bad time to do it with the extreme semiconductor shortage and sky-high demand, but building a PC will offer you the best bang for your buck if you can wait for the market to normalize (which, I admit, could be a long time). If you're willing to spend a little bit more, this PC offers you everything you could want for MSFS2020: https://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/desktop-computers/xps-desktop-special-edition/spd/xps-8940-se-desktop/xd8940se071h?AID=7060520&cjevent=0df0c2dd7d3011eb811900140a24060f&cjdata=MXxOfDB8WXww&gacd=9614781-23761182-5750457-265988609-127889515&dgc=af&VEN1=12578053-7060520-05MGj5BcJhcM2xb4mDAq80g-Ziff%20Davis,%20LLC-https://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/desktop-computers/xps-desktop-special-edition/spd/xps-8940-se-desktop/xd8940se071h&dclid=CL6HvcjJl-8CFTGswAodXrMKmg

A local-ish flight, took the C-172 for a spin from KBKL (Burke Lakefront off downtown Cleveland) to 3W2 (Put-in-Bay). This was my first real flight, I guess you could say? Did a basic flight plan with Little NavMap with Cedar Point as a waypoint, hoping to see those roller coasters and other rides like I used to when I flew with my dad in his Tiger (I was sorely disappointed, by the way). In any case, I pretty much stuck to the flight plan, leveling off at 5500 ft but it took some finagling with the elevator trim to keep it there after I discovered that the autopilot just kind of wanted to do its own thing (what is with that?). A little bit surprised there was no ATC at Put-in-Bay, I guess some small airports don't bother with that if it's not busy enough? So, I figured out which way I had to land and landed I did! Side question, does time acceleration work in manual flights or do I need to enable autopilot for that? Eventually I want to use it for longer duration flights but don't want to crash if time acceleration doesn't lock in my flight controls.

If you're only running it on one monitor, then you're fine, but I wouldn't be sure you can run it at high settings. Medium, for sure, but high might be pushing it a bit. With 3 monitors, you're ripe for some seriously immersive flying! Why not use all three? For about the same money or maybe slightly more, you can get a PC with much newer (read: better) video cards. At least go for a PC using either an NVIDIA 3000-series video card or AMD's Radeon 6000-series. That's what I would do in your shoes. Look at Newegg.com or microcenter.com for some nice prebuilt ones. They usually offer far more selection and better bang for your buck.

It's not a bad PC, but what really matters is the monitor you're using. What resolution and refresh rate is it? That will tell us if the PC you're eyeing will be sufficient for high settings.

Thanks to the two of you who responded. I guess I should be more specific and say I'm looking for freeware. The only add-on I'd ever be interested in buying is aircraft and possibly some airport/scenery (especially if close to home). Looks like it's probably FSEconomy vs NeoFly.

Have any of you played the sim with FSEconomy to add a bit of fun and realism? I've read about VATSIM and virtual airlines, but I'm not sure that's for me, especially considering I'm hard-of-hearing and would have an enormously difficult time understanding anyone over ATC. Maybe there's some other alternatives to FSEconomy that I don't know about? Seems like a fun way to add hours and practice to flying. If I don't go broke first.

Agreed, but man...that DX12 update is gonna be HUGE, it'll be like downloading the sim all over again.

Been reading through the manual and playing around with the software a bit to get my feet wet. I'm trying to find out if it estimates duration of flight or time to waypoints? It would help to know roughly how long it would take not just to the waypoints, but also to the top of the climb and top of descent so I know when to descend (obviously for climbing, I level off once I hit my target altitude, I suppose length of time doesn't really matter so long as I maintain the optimal climb rate, correct?).

Nice rig! For flight control, if you want total immersion and realism, you may want to look into a yoke setup, but those can be pricey (especially the high-end brands like Honeycomb). If you're looking for something like a HOTAS or just a joystick, Thrustmaster offers a number of nice products that can fit your needs, as does Logitech (but Thrustmaster is often considered the better brand of the two). The problem, however, is that flight controls are like GPUs now, extremely hard to find and very expensive on the used market. You may want to check out the sell/buy section of the forums here or look up on Offerup.com for anybody that might be selling controls nearby you.

Asobo already addressed this with talks with devs and will be including replay at some point in the near future. When? *shrugs*

Good point, I have the standard version, so there's not a lot to choose from at the moment but the Bonanza looks like a good stepping stone. Downloaded Little NavMap...it does look like it's probably what I'm looking for, but man, there is A LOT in this software! It'll take some time to wade through it all.

Thanks, this info is helpful! I've been reading/watching about basic flight planning and a lot of them mention winds aloft, but you're right, I think I'll keep the winds to a minimum until I get some practice in navigating and flying for a while. I also want to get my feet wet with autopilot, so I'll be fooling around in that as well. I plan to do 1-hour hops to put in a lot of this knowledge to practice. It's slowly coming together. I figure once I'm comfortable with the 172 and have flown a lot of hours and the flight planning becomes rote, I'll move on up to the turbos. I'm going for as much realism as possible here, so no, I'm not doing unlimited fuel. The only assistance I'm using for now is highlighting taxiways, ATC comms (I don't even know where or how to answer to ATC, but that can come later), and I think I'll let the sim correct for gyro drift after reading about it. Sounds like something I don't want to trouble myself with.