Interest gone...any one else experienced this?

[crippy]

I think some of it comes from working full time, but I have probably logged less than 3 hours in the past 10 months.

I seem to have completely lost interest in aviation and siming as a whole. I have no real desire to fire up the Sim, or go though the hassle of setting everything up. Even learning new aircraft or procedure is just bleh.

A couple months ago I flew the Comanche to KMEM on vatsim and back. Was nice however I noticed the spark was really no longer there.

I've found more recently I've been into deeply realistic or just deep games in general that I can just sit down fire up the PC and play with keyboard and mouse. My prime current example being Elite Dangerous. Cities skylines being another.

Has anyone else experienced anything similar?

I have a few paid memberships that will be coming due in the summer and I am considering not renewing and moving on.

Sorry for any bad grammar or typos I am using mobile.

[Hook]

Occasionally I'll get to a point where I don't feel like flying. I renew my interest by doing some different kind of flying. Basically, I find a project.

The most recent has been flying 1930s airmail routes without GPS, radio navigation aids or even a radio. I plan my trips on a real world chart, get the altimeter settings at various points along the way (available by phone or telegraph), get an estimate of the winds aloft to plan my ground speed, calculate approximate times between way points, and take off no matter what the weather. In the west you follow railroad tracks, and in the east you follow roads. The J3 Cub isn't a good mail plane but is perfectly equipped for this kind of flying: just avoid use of the map.

A recent project was finding an Atlantic crossing for an airplane with a 450 mile range. Then I flew back along a different route. Fun in the middle of winter with real world weather and only refueling if the airfield had a fuel pump, something I had to cheat on only twice. While the plane had radio navigation instruments, there weren't many radio nav aids in Greenland.

Another was an around the world tour in a DC-3. I've also recreated several flights from books. Another user planned a flight around the US in the J3 Cub, documented in the Cub section of the forum.

A very pleasant recent flight had me taking off from my home airport with no destination in mind, going where whim dictated and eventually flying until I was almost out of fuel. In this case, taking off from Bonham towards Dallas, deciding I wanted to check out the scenery in downtown Fort Worth, then the Comanche Creek nuclear facility, then to Possum Kingdom Lake, which didn't have fuel and the next flight was to find the nearest fuel pump. These were places I hadn't flown before, all navigation by real world chart with no GPS, just a compass. I only got lost once. Basically a $100 Hamburger run.

When I get tired of normal flying, I fly in Alaska. Try the Merrill Pass in the J3 Cub, especially with a low ceiling. Fly out to Dutch Harbor and back in any aircraft of your choosing. Real world weather makes this interesting and I once made the trip in the Cub with 40+ knot winds.

Basically, do something different. If you always fly with ATC, avoid it or fly somewhere that it doesn't exist. If you always use radio nav aids, try dead reckoning or using roads and rivers for navigation, or fly where there are few radio stations. Bob Buck in the book "North Star over my Shoulder" describes flying a B-17 on static research missions, anywhere in the world he wanted to go. Instead of avoiding storms, he sought them out and flew in them.

Hopefully someone else has some interesting flying ideas you could try. I'd be interested in hearing them.

Hook

[Ron Attwood]

Well said Hook. For my part, formation aerobatics have playing a large part in keeping my interest in flight simming. It's difficult (harder than it looks) takes looooaads of practice and is intensely gratifying when you get it right! I'd really like to be able to fly A2A's P-51 online but P3D's multiplayer is not up to the job as far as formation flying is concerned, so it has to be DCS.
Having said that, the airport to airport to airport with mates online and in Teamspeak is still a pleasant way to spend an evening.
I guess the upshot is FLY ONLINE with mates and have a laugh. It's only a game after all.

Cue 'It's not a game, it's a simulator' crowd.

EDIT: Oh, and get yourself a VR headset. You'll discover what simming is all about!

[CodyValkyrie]

I go through phases. This month it’s DCS, next month it’ll be Shogun 2, and maybe four months from now I’ll be using P3D like it’s going out of style. I always come back though.

[McDonnell-Douglas]

It is human nature to go through periods of interest and non interest. This is applicable in our jobs, hobbies, personal relationships and even retail purchases (that new car feeling).

I would agree with Hook and Ron's sentiments.
Spice your flight simulation hobby up with a project, I personally fly original BOAC & TWA Lockheed Constellation routes using traditional navigation and VOR/NDB. Perhaps mail routes, barnstorming routes, scenic areas. I would recommend investing in scenary and/or weather applications if this is your thing. As Ron suggested perhaps upgrade the immersion with a bit of VR.

Additionally there are other simulators - IL2, DCS etc. I am currently splitting my time between P3D and DCS (F-14). Alternatively pick an aviation subject and write about it.

I frequently fire up the PC for other games too.

I go through phases. This month it’s DCS, next month it’ll be Shogun 2, and maybe four months from now I’ll be using P3D like it’s going out of style. I always come back though.

Cody, I hope you mean Total War: Three Kingdoms. Shogun 2 was so last ...2011

Best Regards,
Colin

[Mickel]

I took up livery painting. Found myself slightly hooked. I'd take off, pan around, find something I don't like, change, import and repeat. Most time I wouldn't even land - just quit the sim. February was a grand total of 7.8 hours... Then I found I got sick of the sight of the livery and not fly it when I was finished! But it's nice to be told when others have completed this flight or that with it.

Mike

[bladerunner900]

Hi crippy. What you describe sounds normal to me.

I like to play a wide variety of games, space games mostly. I used to play Elite Dangerous a lot, but they filled it up with busywork and turned it into just another job. Take on Mars is my current go-to for space sims. You can play solo or online co-op\competitive. Not everyone's cup of tea but quite absorbing I find. The Long Dark is another survival game I can lose hours in.

Steve.

[pilot37]

The big issue is accessibility. Taking 10 months out leaves you with quite a task bringing everything up to date and re-tweaking settings to get smooth play, digging out the head tracker and HOTAS and pedals. It can easily turn into a several days project.

What really brings me back is giving my flights some purpose and continuity. I run my own Excel spreadsheet "business" game which I can easily re-jig to suit my changing preferences.

What switches me off for 10 months at a time is a lack of A2A GA aircraft. I would pay through the nose for some multi-engine GA or for COTS to have full maintenance. And accelerated engine wear options for those of us who don't fly as much.

I find non-A2A aircraft get boring really fast.

[Buffy Foster]

Well there's group flying like with JoinFS, that works nice and if you can talk to the other pilots with Discord or whatever, then it can be fun to explore together and stuff. And be sure to share your paints across so everybody looks right to everybody else.


Formation flying over Puget Sound #3 by Buffy Foster, on Flickr

Elite Dangerous is fun too, though, and that Space Engineers tooks fun. Don't have to overdo it on any one game/sim and get kinda burned out.

An A2A GA twin would be pretty epic though. \o/

[Mustang]

I find this happens with some regularity. I've also clocked up very few flying hours in the last couple of years.

I still spend time almost daily reading forums, watching the occasional flight sim YouTube video, keeping up with flight sim news and reading PC Pilot. But flying itself is an activity that requires that little extra effort to get started with, what with setting up controllers, making a quick flight plan, pre-flight checks (curse A2A for making our sims more realistic, eh? ) and so on. And all that in (preferably) a time window of 2+ uninterrupted hours which doesn't always come along often. Or if it does it's late and I'm tired...

I have lots of other games queued up and usually turn to those, but even then I switch games frequently, at least every couple of weeks. It's quite normal! When you do the same thing for a while it can become dull. I also spent a lot of time in Elite Dangerous recently. I even joined the Distant World 2 expedition across the galaxy, but after reaching the centre I decided to stop. The large amounts of monotonous travel time required each week was taking its toll and leaving little time for actual exploration. And unlike with flight sims, there weren't many new challenges generated by aspects such as varied weather conditions or unusual airports to make the flying time more interesting.

I have frequent forays into DCS due to the fidelity and extra 'activities' there (combat or otherwise) and enjoy the single player campaigns. Especially the less combat-orientated helicopter ones. But they sometimes need a concerted effort to push through as well. Currently, I'm dabbling with X-Plane; simply messing around and getting to grips with the sim. No flight plans, no realistic approach to flying, just pure experimentation and lots of crashes - which is unusual because I try my hardest to never crash any plane in DCS/FSX these days. It's a fun diversion in its own way and shows me what the sim is capable of.

I like the suggestions above by Hook to find new personal goals. I often intend to do just that, but seldom make the effort to actually build up momentum. I began a round-the-world trip in the Comanche a few years back, getting off to a great start, but that also became dull as the scenery quality dwindled in some parts of the world (even with Orbx's Global + Vector). Last year I flew one flight only, but I did two recently so feel I'm on an upturn with flight simming. Despite looking more to XP as my platform of choice going forwards, I am really keen to get the B377 up again - I adore operating that thing - but the time investment in re-learning it and making the flights means I might not get around to it...

If I hadn't decided to stop buying for FSX in the last year, I would probably be on Air Hauler 2 right now. I thoroughly enjoyed the original and it gave me a reason to make a short flight at least once every couple of weeks (otherwise your virtual company loses its hard-earned reputation). At times it felt like a small chore but I certainly enjoyed the new challenges it brought and the places it took me to

The other area to re-kindle interest is definitely multiplayer or online participation in something. I seldom do, but I feel I should. Everything is better shared (Except, perhaps, chocolate!)

[Paughco]

Hey Crippy: Hang in.

Maybe come and fly with the A2A Misfit Squadron on a Sunday. This time we're going to fly our warbirds in the NE USA. Another thing that I'm planning on is BlueGrass Airlines is planning a 100-yr commemoration of the London to Darwin race. I plan to fly my MJ C-47 on that one.

Another option would be to duplicate the flights flown by E. K. Gann on AM-21, as described in his book "Fate is the Hunter." http://www.dc3airways.net/flights/routes/new_york.htm.

Seeya
ATB

[AviationAtWar]

I have several hobbies and go through periods where I have no interest in something at all, then when I do go back then I'm completely immersed in it.

[Bruce66]

I have found my You Tube channel has renewed my interest and drive.

I worry though as I have seen this pattern before. I used to play music and write songs for fun. Then I took it to performance. Then I went professional. Then I quit - cold! Now I rarely even touch the guitar and when I do, in a drunken spasm of reminiscing, I fall into a deep depression.

I see the same coming with the flight stuff...

There are only so many new experiences and thrills and eventually they run out or the skill level/accessibility is lacking (like ACTUALLY flying a Spitfire!).

When that happens I will have to move on, with sadness and regrets, to a new interest.

There is a word for this which I have forgotten.....

Is it 'stagnation' or 'insipidity'? No those don't feel right....

Found it!

Disenchanted.

[Lewis - A2A]

Yes for sure, so I've found diversifying to be good. First person shooter games, racing sims, RPG's etc. So I'm not just playing on type of game but can easily leave the computer or stay on the computer to do something different other than flying and work which ironically is flying still of course.

Recently got into sim racing quite a bit, ive always like open cockpit. However of late have been super enjoying GT racing and Endurance in the GTE class. Lovely jubbly

thanks,
Lewis

[alan CXA651]

Hi.
I sometimes play silent hunter5 , sometimes PS3 games, but mostly FSX flight sim , i also do mods to aircraft , like new views, to give a co-pilot view ectra , so i can fly them from the co-pilot side , this gives a new slant to flying , also sometimes try some aerobatics , or challenges like flying the A2A B17 from the grand canyon airport dropping down into the grand canyon , and fly to KLAS , 2 hours of concentrated adrenalin rush , or try looping the golden gate bridge in manfred jahn c47 .
Other things to spice up flight sim , try flying in formation with others on joinFS , not as easy as it sounds , the 91st bombardment group recreate the ww2 bombruns of the 91st bombgroup in the A2A B17 with pucker module if you have FSX this can damage the aircraft if hit by flak , we are still waiting for a P3Dv4 A2A B17 .
regards alan.