Flying FSX while FS2020 updates
Unfortunately, it has been several months since the last time I got up in the virtual skies. Busyness and plenty of time on the road has meant that my only aviating has been listening to podcasts on my commute. Tonight I decided to change that and logged into Flight Simulator 2020 for the first time in a long while. I realized just how long it had been when I discovered that Microsoft has sent out a huge mandatory update that needed to be downloaded before I could fly.
Because of the size of the update, I decided to leave FS2020 running in the background while taking a quick hop in FSX. I looked back at my digital logbook and saw that my last cross country had left me at Cairo, Illinois, an airport I am familiar with from my real world flying. I loaded up the Cessna 172 and taxied out on the active runway only to discover that I had forgotten many of my keyboard shortcuts in the past few months.
After a quick Google search for how to take a screen shot I took off for a short half hour flight to Paducah, Kentucky. Paducah is where our real world flying club plane often goes for avionics service and provided a good reminder for how to interact with FSX’s fairly rudimentary ATC. The flight came off without incident and was a good opportunity to begin brushing off the rust.
Hopefully FS2020 will be fully updated by the next time I sit down to fly, but if it isn’t I am glad that I have FSX to fall back on to scratch my digital aviation itch.
