Author: Author
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Written by Author
Study-Level Business-Class: Hot Start Challenger 650 Redefines Immersion
As a real pilot, I come into every sim add-on with a mix of professional skepticism and excitement: will it just feel like an expensive toy, or will it actually allow me to apply my understanding of bleed air, pneumatics, electrical systems, and FMS logic in a meaningful way? The Hot Start Challenger 650 package…
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Bringing the Airbus Cockpit Home: Comparing WINGFLEX and WINWING MCDUs
I’ve spent my adult life moving between a real-world cockpit and a home one, and I’ll be honest: once you’ve tuned an FMC in the left seat at 03:00 for a real oceanic crossing, you notice things in a simulator that most virtual pilots simply shrug off. The WINGFLEX A320 MCDU and the WINWING A3XX…
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Tweaking Guide: Performance Boost Tricks for X-Plane 12
This article will be updated regularly as new tricks to improve X-Plane 12 performance are discovered, so stay tuned. Recent new tricks were added on Monday, October 27, 2025, and are marked with the ⚠️ icon. Tweaking graphics and power settings in Windows 11 (and 10) plays a major role. Setting your power plan to “High Performance” ensures…
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Model Matching Masterclass: Choosing the Best Air Traffic Solution
As a real-world airline pilot, I often joke that flying a jet at Mach 0.78 across the North Atlantic can sometimes be less complex than configuring flight simulation software. We live in an era where simulators are so immersive that the difference between “believable” and “make-believe” often comes down to what aircraft you see taxiing…
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Budget-Friendly Flying: How the Thrustmaster T.Flight Full Kit Performs
Flying is in my blood. I’ve spent thousands of hours in the cockpit of real aircraft—Cessnas, Beechcraft, and eventually jets. I’ve smelled the Avgas on my hands, felt the rumble of turbines on rotation, and trusted my life to a set of instruments and a yoke in turbulent skies. That’s my reality. But when the…
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X-Plane 12.3 Beta: New Features, Current Progress, and Upcoming 12.4
X-Plane 12.3 is a weather-and-cockpit-focused update built to refine the sim’s visual weather systems (including near-aircraft volumetric cloud behavior and radar), cockpit rendering, and a raft of aircraft and system fixes. Laminar has been releasing 12.3 as a public beta so the broader community can exercise many hardware/software combinations and report issues before a final…
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Optimization Guide: Performance Boost Tricks for MSFS
This article will be updated regularly as new tricks to improve MSFS 2024 (and 2020) performance are discovered, so stay tuned. Recent new tricks were added on Thursday, October 16, 2025, and are marked with the ⚠️ icon. Applying various tricks and tweaks to Windows 11 (and 10), as well as to Microsoft Flight Simulator…
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Inside the Developer Stream: Roadmap, Features, and Future of MSFS
Microsoft Flight Simulator’s Developer Stream has become a cornerstone of the simulator’s community-facing communications. For long-time simmers and newcomers alike it’s the place where the team behind the sim — Microsoft and Asobo Studio — step outside the studio walls and talk directly to the players: showing roadmaps, explaining technical choices, answering community questions, and…
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Boeing at Your Desk: Hands-On with TCA Yoke & Throttle Quadrant
This is written in the voice of a real-world pilot evaluating the Thrustmaster TCA Yoke Pack Boeing Edition Flight Stick & Quadrant Bundle for home sim use. Expect references to procedures, cockpit workflows, and how the hardware maps to real-world tasks. I’ll judge it on three axes pilots care about: control feel & feedback, ergonomics…
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Testing Sim Update 4 Beta: Bug Fixes, Visual Improvements, and Road to Launch
Sim Updates in Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024, aka MSFS 2024, are the mechanism Asobo uses to deliver engine-level fixes, performance work, and simulator-wide features (separate from Marketplace aircraft/scenery updates). Sim Update 4, aka SU4, is being positioned as another stability, visuals and quality-of-life update — an important one because it targets persistent issues and adds…
