My open letter as an airline pilot about the influence of Flight Simulator and LTT on my life

[MooseCheese]

Hello all

As I do on many free Saturday mornings, I’ve just been enjoying the WAN show vod with a cup of coffee.  I’m not often one to comment, but so many of Linus’ remarks about Microsoft’s new Flight Simulator resonated with me so deeply I felt I had to (over)-share!

The reason I started watching LTT (well, NCIX tech tips #19) about 11 years ago was because even 3 years after release, Flight Simulator X was itself a complete performance hog.  Then 13-year-old me wanted to learn how to overclock as I’d heard this would help quite a bit and crucially didn’t cost anything.  

The part of the WAN show discussion which specifically made me want to write this, was about the educational value of flight simulators and how they might facilitate entry into a career in aviation.  When I first flew on an aeroplane aged 5, I immediately decided I wanted to be a pilot, but I’m pretty sure it was my dad’s decision to buy me a copy of Flight Simulator 98 (old, even at the time) when we got home which cemented my obsession with flying.

Growing up, flight sims were all I wanted to do with my free time.  I found the rabbit hole of things to learn to be almost bottomless, from fundamentals like principles of flight, all the way to hunting for questionable English translations of operating procedures for the airliners of the Soviet Union.

Once I got to be a teenager though, the reality of the expense of getting a pilot’s licence started to seem very daunting.  I was able to do a fair bit of flying and gliding for free with the Air Cadets, but even a Private Pilot Licence seemed a long way away.  Amazingly flight sim ended up being of great help with this too, as after appearing as a guest on the then popular FSBreak podcast, I netted a job offer from a co-host.  I should explain here that for flight simulators, third party content plays a far more prominent role than it does for just about any other game.  It’s extremely common for users to spend hundreds of pounds on additional aircraft, scenery and utilities modifying everything down to how the game keeps time.

In my case, I was writing scripts for a company called Angle of Attack, who provided video training for some of the more complex aircraft DLCs of the day.  This had me poring through real world 737 documentation to turn it into something watchable and hopefully enjoyable for the average user.  Crucially for me, it earned me enough money to start taking flying lessons.

Since money was the limiting factor on how much I could fly, I was usually pretty determined to find ways of making more, and having learned to build PCs from watching LTT proved to be a way.  I’d met many people through the flight sim community who wanted something optimised for the game, and it was easy to considerably undercut established builders who made PCs marketed to simmers and still turn a profit.  I thought it might tickle anyone from LMG reading this to know, you essentially paid for one of my most memorable training flights – my first solo cross-country flight from Blackbushe, Surrey to Goodwood, West Sussex back in 2014.

After working on my private licence at the local flying club, I was accepted onto an airline’s cadet programme to earn my commercial licence.  I’ve been flying the Airbus A320 family since late 2017 and earned my Airline Transport Pilot’s Licence at the beginning of this year (for North Americans reading this, you can fly performance class A (equivalent to part 121) aircraft in Europe on a CPL).

The short version of this then, and what I’m really trying to say is that whilst flight simulators can simply be fun in the same way as any other PC game, they can also be a fair bit more than that.  As is so often the case, I think you absolutely nailed it with your hot-take on the WAN show.

As a closing note, I’d just like to say thank you.  I remember in your vlog on your thoughts about retiring, you mentioned that you sometimes question how meaningful your work is.  For what it’s worth, in my case I think it was instrumental in getting to where I’ve always wanted to be in life.

[Tristerin]

Dope

[Intergalacticbits]

2 hours ago, MooseCheese said:

I’d met many people through the flight sim community who wanted something optimised for the game

What would be optimized for MFS?

From the videos I've seen it runs kind of crappy on even high end multi-core systems like a 3950x with a 2080.

When people spend that much money on their hardware they expect games to run well or at least to be optimized for certain hardware specs. I wish MS would take that into account and do something about it.

 

 

I just ask because MFS is on my list of games I want to try when ever I finally get a decent gaming rig going again.

I tried playing MFS 2004 many years ago and you know it ran crappy on my hardware then too.

Back then to me it just seemed like it churned a lot during gameplay. If you know what I mean and I did have good hardware for that time (around 2007)

I'm guessing it runs better now but on what hardware or what kind of other optimizations?

 

Great story dude. You must be loving your life right now.

 

[Pickles von Brine]

My cousin is also work on his pilot license. It is pretty awesome to see how much of an influence this has had on your career! Fly safe!

[MooseCheese]

2 hours ago, Intergalacticbits said:

What would be optimized for MFS?

Sorry, should have been clearer, I meant that I built systems optimised for FSX or X-Plane back when I was still at school.  At the time there was quite a lot you could do to tailor a PC for flight sims specifically, particularly FSX. 

 

• In terms of specs, the sims were very CPU bound, but didn't play nicely with hyperthreading so you'd essentially be gunning for the highest overclock you could get on four cores.  So you'd ideally want a binned i5, or i7 with HT disabled (the 4770K tended to overclock better than the 4570K for example, so the premium was still worth it for some), paired with a 1 DIMM per channel board (this usually meant ITX) and a good cooler. 
• Otherwise it was just the usual thing of pairing the best (single, SLI degraded performance) graphics card you could afford (usually nVidia as AMD had some driver incompatibilities with various texture mods). 
• After that, installation also had to be done very carefully as FSX was more than just a little unstable.  There was an enormous laundry list of things to do, but some of the ones I remember off the top of my head were changing the install directory to the C drive root (outside of programme files), modifying the game's CFG file as there were some options incorporated into a service pack which were never included in the settings UI, and performing restarts and game loads at tactical times between add-on installations.
• For people with a second PC, I'd configure popular utilities like weather engines and online clients to run on a network to offload them from the sim PC.
• The final stage was to clone the entire Windows installation with the sim and add-ons installed from a known good point, because FSX was a big octopus with tentacles in every facet of your system, from registry, to appdata, to programdata.  Invariably it would corrupt itself at some point down the line and this would save having to spend the ten hours or so it took to configure all of this again.

 

I was part of the MSFS Alpha from the get go, back in October 2019 and so far as I can tell it doesn't really have any of these peculiarities.  I don't think you can optimise for it, so much as you can just throw resources at it.

 

3 hours ago, Intergalacticbits said:

I just ask because MFS is on my list of games I want to try when ever I finally get a decent gaming rig going again.

I tried playing MFS 2004 many years ago and you know it ran crappy on my hardware then too.

Back then to me it just seemed like it churned a lot during gameplay. If you know what I mean and I did have good hardware for that time (around 2007)

Haha, that sounds like Flight Simulator!  Even with all of the things listed above, on what were quite literally the best systems available at the time (five plus years after FSX was released!), the most sophisticated add-ons combined with high settings could easily drag you under 20FPS.  With the exception of DCS, which has run beautifully for 6 or 7 years now, it's really only in the last year that circa 60FPS has become viable in a good Flight Simulator, since X-Plane 11 moved its rendering engine from OpenGL to Vulkan.  Lockheed Martin's Prepar3D v5 has also just added Direct X 12 support, but it's still pretty slow even on strong hardware.

 

Fortunately the new Microsoft Flight Simulator, whilst very taxing has enough settings to make it enjoyable on a good variety of hardware.  As Linus mentioned in the WAN show, you can crush a 2080Ti with it, but I've been able to achieve 50-ish FPS on my 9900k/GTX1080 system at 4K by using slightly lower than high settings and 70% resolution scaling.  Everything looks a little bit soft, but it's still an astonishingly beautiful game and I think RTX 3000 has the potential to really bring it to life.  You could also use Mircosoft Game Pass to try it for a month for just £1, so if it doesn't work for your config you won't have wasted much money.

 

3 hours ago, Intergalacticbits said:

Great story dude. You must be loving your life right now.

Cheers man, very kind.  Even when I have to leave the house pre-5am, I really do always have a grin on my face.  There's something to be said for seeing the sun rise into a clear blue sky, even when I woke up to a dismal storm in Scotland.  With that said, I'm a bit apprehensive at the moment as there's a non-negligible chance I'll be made redundant next month owing to COVID.  Fingers crossed

 

1 hour ago, Pickles - Lord of the Jar said:

My cousin is also work on his pilot license. It is pretty awesome to see how much of an influence this has had on your career! Fly safe!

Thanks dude.  Best of luck to your cousin!

[LinusTech]

On 8/22/2020 at 9:25 AM, MooseCheese said:

Hello all

Spoiler

 

As I do on many free Saturday mornings, I’ve just been enjoying the WAN show vod with a cup of coffee.  I’m not often one to comment, but so many of Linus’ remarks about Microsoft’s new Flight Simulator resonated with me so deeply I felt I had to (over)-share!

The reason I started watching LTT (well, NCIX tech tips #19) about 11 years ago was because even 3 years after release, Flight Simulator X was itself a complete performance hog.  Then 13-year-old me wanted to learn how to overclock as I’d heard this would help quite a bit and crucially didn’t cost anything.  

The part of the WAN show discussion which specifically made me want to write this, was about the educational value of flight simulators and how they might facilitate entry into a career in aviation.  When I first flew on an aeroplane aged 5, I immediately decided I wanted to be a pilot, but I’m pretty sure it was my dad’s decision to buy me a copy of Flight Simulator 98 (old, even at the time) when we got home which cemented my obsession with flying.

Growing up, flight sims were all I wanted to do with my free time.  I found the rabbit hole of things to learn to be almost bottomless, from fundamentals like principles of flight, all the way to hunting for questionable English translations of operating procedures for the airliners of the Soviet Union.

Once I got to be a teenager though, the reality of the expense of getting a pilot’s licence started to seem very daunting.  I was able to do a fair bit of flying and gliding for free with the Air Cadets, but even a Private Pilot Licence seemed a long way away.  Amazingly flight sim ended up being of great help with this too, as after appearing as a guest on the then popular FSBreak podcast, I netted a job offer from a co-host.  I should explain here that for flight simulators, third party content plays a far more prominent role than it does for just about any other game.  It’s extremely common for users to spend hundreds of pounds on additional aircraft, scenery and utilities modifying everything down to how the game keeps time.

In my case, I was writing scripts for a company called Angle of Attack, who provided video training for some of the more complex aircraft DLCs of the day.  This had me poring through real world 737 documentation to turn it into something watchable and hopefully enjoyable for the average user.  Crucially for me, it earned me enough money to start taking flying lessons.

Since money was the limiting factor on how much I could fly, I was usually pretty determined to find ways of making more, and having learned to build PCs from watching LTT proved to be a way.  I’d met many people through the flight sim community who wanted something optimised for the game, and it was easy to considerably undercut established builders who made PCs marketed to simmers and still turn a profit.  I thought it might tickle anyone from LMG reading this to know, you essentially paid for one of my most memorable training flights – my first solo cross-country flight from Blackbushe, Surrey to Goodwood, West Sussex back in 2014.

After working on my private licence at the local flying club, I was accepted onto an airline’s cadet programme to earn my commercial licence.  I’ve been flying the Airbus A320 family since late 2017 and earned my Airline Transport Pilot’s Licence at the beginning of this year (for North Americans reading this, you can fly performance class A (equivalent to part 121) aircraft in Europe on a CPL).

The short version of this then, and what I’m really trying to say is that whilst flight simulators can simply be fun in the same way as any other PC game, they can also be a fair bit more than that.  As is so often the case, I think you absolutely nailed it with your hot-take on the WAN show.

As a closing note, I’d just like to say thank you.  I remember in your vlog on your thoughts about retiring, you mentioned that you sometimes question how meaningful your work is.  For what it’s worth, in my case I think it was instrumental in getting to where I’ve always wanted to be in life.

 

 

 

What a great story

Edited August 24, 2020 by TVwazhere

[TempestCatto]

7 minutes ago, LinusTech said:

What a great story

Linus...snip your posts! I can't believe what I'm seeing, the man himself not displaying proper etiquette on his own damn forum! FOR SHAME.

[LinusTech]

2 hours ago, TempestCatto said:

Linus...snip your posts! I can't believe what I'm seeing, the man himself not displaying proper etiquette on his own damn forum! FOR SHAME.

What are you gonna do about it? lol.

[WereCatf]

3 minutes ago, LinusTech said:

What are you gonna do about it? lol.

[Moonzy]

5 hours ago, LinusTech said:

-snip-

this_{yes im petty}

[Drama Lama]

Interesting story 

 

I‘m not that into flight stuff sims 

 

in War thunder ( it has a simulator mode ) I wasn‘t even able to take off

Edited August 24, 2020 by Drama Lama

[AlwaysFSX]

[Tech_Dreamer]

You should really look into this new plane called LS420. It's a marvel in latest high tech flight technology.

 

[TempestCatto]

6 hours ago, LinusTech said:

What are you gonna do about it? lol.

Well since Im not a Karen, not much. I could be a cheeky bugger and report your post to the mods. But would they ever touch a post made by the big cheese wheel himself? Doubtful. Though if I was a mod, Id snip the post and then slap in a sponsor spot for LTTstore.com because hydration is important, and looking good while doing it is even more important. 
 

[TVwazhere]

8 hours ago, LinusTech said:

What a great story

8 hours ago, TempestCatto said:

Linus...snip your posts! I can't believe what I'm seeing, the man himself not displaying proper etiquette on his own damn forum! FOR SHAME.

6 hours ago, LinusTech said:

What are you gonna do about it? lol.

Moderator has entered the chat:

Moderator has left the chat

[TempestCatto]

39 minutes ago, TVwazhere said:

-snip-

He did it - the mad lad. 

 

 

EDIT: For the record, I didn't actually report the post or call upon a mod. That's just how amazing the mod team is here. Please don't hate, or have any disdane twoard me, Linus ;_;

[TVwazhere]

Just now, TempestCatto said:

He did it - the mad lad. 

But at what cost?

[Guest]

13 minutes ago, TVwazhere said:

But at what cost?

[TempestCatto]

20 minutes ago, TVwazhere said:

But at what cost?

[Master Disaster]

51 minutes ago, TVwazhere said:

Moderator has entered the chat:

 

Moderator has left the chat

Interesting aside, what happens if you try to give Linus warning points?

[Red :)]

1 hour ago, Master Disaster said:

Interesting aside, what happens if you try to give Linus warning points?

He'll drop you.

[eece_ret]

On 8/22/2020 at 6:25 AM, MooseCheese said:

since late 2017 and

Thats awesome.  I built my borther a FS... 9..8?  Computer back in the late 90's.  Pentium 166, #9 Graphics (no 3dfx support  ) .  It was always amazing to me watching he and his roomates, all students at Embry Riddle Aeronautical in Az, do cross country flights... Many hours at a time.... All of them to this day say that was an excellent trainer/practice.  Things like ATC, navigation and more things I know little about (he flies, I nerd...  Its a good trade off)

For those talking about FS2020.  Whatever, its amazing on my GeForce 1080.  Im sure I could dial some things in to make it look better but run like crap.  However teh Automatic settings it provided.... Looks AMAZING, and runs fine.