January is National Hobby Month so I thought I’d take time out from business related blog posts to share a little about my main hobby – Flight Simulation.

I’ve always been in interested in aviation and my main hobby (away from watching sport) is desktop flight simulation, using Microsoft’s Flight Simulator – currently on it’s 10th version. I find it strange that when I tell people what my hobby is the mock and label is sad, geeky, pointless etc… before they have given the hobby any thought – fortunately I’m thick skinned so don’t let the comments get to me. The last time I checked Flight Simulator was the best and longest running PC ‘Game’ franchise  that Microsoft publishes and has been on the go for over 20 years.

Approaching Rotterdam - this scenery was free!

First of all, it’s not a game but a simulator. If you want to play a game get an X-Box. A degree of knowledge about flight will be needed to be able to competently operate the aircraft that come as standard when you buy the product. If you are lacking in this area there is a very comprehensive help file to get you started. As with most ‘gaming’ titles there is a huge community following for flight simulation (the FS community made the main news a few years ago when one of the major sites was hacked and destroyed) and it is this community that makes the hobby so much more enjoyable. There are many sites with huge membership numbers all dedicated to helping people get the most from flight simulator and to offer advice about anything and everything.

Mach 2.02 - Also free

It’s the community that is the heartbeat of the hobby. There are many 3rd party add-on developers who release new aircraft, scenery, weather engines etc… for you to purchase and install into the main simulator (payware) and a big group of dedicated developers who create their own add-ons and donate them to the community for free (freeware). Many of the payware aircraft add-ons have been endorsed and certified by real-world pilots who fly jumbo jets, puddle jumpers and helicopters in their day job as being as close to the real thing as it gets. In fact many of the high-end payware add-ons come with the actual aircraft manuals from the real thing due to them being so complex – thankfully not all the add-ons are massively complex and do not need weeks of study to understand!

You've got to operate this cockpit as a real pilot would

It’s all well and good having a community that chat via forums, but many people also fly online with each other via the built in multiplayer system (not very good) or connecting via free servers to huge online networks. This allows you to be able to fly online with you friends all over the world whilst being guided by air traffic controllers – these are real people not a computer voice. Many of these controllers do the same job during the day at places like Heathrow, JFK, Seattle etc.. and come home and give their time to the hobby.

There are also ‘Virtual Airlines’ which as the name suggests are groups of people who have formed their own airline, which are great for people who want a bit more structure to their hobby- I help run one that has been around for over 12 years now and is still growing.

Welcome to Hawaii

I have taken my hobby one step further and have helped develop/test some payware add-ons in the past, and also work as the reviews editor for a popular community know as Mutley’s Hangar. Developers will willingly donate their products to use to write about and report back on any problems that we come across. You can view my work here and change the ‘Author’ box to Rob Scott.

Of course, all this comes at a price. There is a famous saying ‘£50 for FS and £1,500 to run it)’, referring to the fact that you need to have a specially built PC to get the most from the flight simulator due to the huge demands it places on your system. To put it simply, and off the shelf model from PC World wouldn’t be good enough.

It's easy to become immersed in this hobby

As you can see, the world of Flight Simulation is probably a lot different to how you probably perceived it to be and can be used as an educational tool. There are real world pilots who use desktop flight simulators to practice their approaches and landings at an airport prior to them taking to the sky for real.

Do you have any hobbies that people, at first,  do not fully understand?