Decided to reinstall X-Plane.

What I mentioned a few days ago, I realized it’s not the simming that bothers me, it’s the maintenance. When there are so many addons, it’s hard to keep track of every single thing.

“Time for a flight, just let me check on an update on the tree textures and the airport textures, download orthos for the area, make sure HDMesh overlays are installed over the meshes, check which airport packages are installed and up-to-date, update Zibo’s 737 mod, make sure my Navigraph charts are up to date, make sure my nav data is up to date, check if my plugins are up to date, check if my weather addon is updated, okay now I’m ready to open up X-Plane!”

I swear, it must take me at least half an hour if not more just to start the sim.

Today, I’m reaching for a new goal. I’m going to reinstall it, but with as little addons as possible. It’s not going to look as “nice” as it would normally, but gosh it’ll be so much easier to manage.

Apart from that, I’m doing some more train simulator. I mentioned in my last post that it’s really bothering me running into broken scenarios. Today in the newer Train Sim World, I ran into yet another broken scenario losing over an hour of gameplay because I couldn’t get the dispatcher to switch the track, causing me to end my scenario. So I’ve decided a new course of action. Just play Quick Drive scenarios for now.

With Quick Drive, it’s a bit more simplified. While I don’t get the unpredictability or the realism that a true scenario could bring, yet I can chose the options to my liking. If the only scenarios I have are to stop at 30 stations in dark rainy conditions under a tight time table…that kinda sucks and it doesn’t seem like fun. Making matters worse is saving at the wrong time or doing something unexpected can completely ruin that scenario and cause me to waste an hour or more retrying it.

Yet if I chose point A to point B with some AI traffic, and use a realistic loco in that particular route. It’s a lot more relaxing. I can save without having to worry about breaking some event trigger, and just enjoy the ride without having to hit every single stop whether or not I want to.

Right now I picked a route from Plymouth, UK to London. It’s about a 3 hour trip, and I plan on doing small 15-30 minute legs in between my other games. It’s quite relaxing.