[john70t]

Here is my latest addiction or hobby for those interested.
(Disclaimer: Last year was the first I got back into it and only have limited experience. YMMV caveate emptor and all that. Some of you are real pilots in real life and will laugh at me showing off my shiny new tricycle and you'd be quite justified. But for others it might be something you might want to get into.)

It's great for the cold boring homebody Michigan winters around here at least, and I'm busy re-learning some of the geography lessons missed in my youth. It's a way of 'traveling the world' without having to go far. It's harder to learn these days and so I need a moving map with a lot of time to absorb it all. Go ahead and research stimulating brain development with adult play activities which are found to be beneficial for the health just in case ya need to get all scientific for any justification or self-rationalization.
I definitely got the flying bug young, even though I have acrophobia like dad. He mentioned getting an ultralight a few times and there was a grass airport within walking distance of our lakeside house where he split with mom and went his own way. For his 70th birthday which his uncle flew, we went up on a B-17 ride in the Yankee Lady at Willow Run airport, where B-24s were once produced at the rate of one per hour.
In early days I played some boring early such as FS2004 and ProPilot but it wasn't until last year and this game when it started to feel truly immersive and interesting and 'real'. The computer tech of today is simply amazing. Today's flight simulators sitting on any commoner's desk today is far more powerful than the best our USAF elite had back in the 1980's.

Some of you do online gaming. Maybe I should have started with that but didn't. My criteria was to fully own my own game, which is my own software, and my own property, after my own extensive purchases, and paid for with my own money. To be able to play offline and have backups in case any particular company or the entire internet went out of business and I lose the game, uh, because those things happen.