6 Ways Infinite Flight Can Help with Flight Training
Flight simulators play an essential role in pilot training. Whether you’re training for your private pilot license, instrument rating, or aircraft type rating, you might be surprised by how many ways Infinite Flight can help. Our iPad flight simulator is a low-barrier-to-entry solution that helps keep your head in the game when you’re away from the cockpit.
I don’t necessarily use it for IFR planning as while you go have the Garmin G1000, you don’t have the aircraft I use (PA-28-181). However, I do tend to use the app for VFR briefing on XC routes I do. I agree this is a good chair flying tool.
You also would have to know the engine startup procedure too and that means you would also have to know where the APU is so it would be better if the buttons are tappable but other than that, I do feel like with flight sims such as IF, it would help you with real-life flying especially with flight planning and all that stuff
Indeed there are many aspects Infinite Flight won’t help with. However, to respectfully counter this, I’ve had many pilots tell me that tapping buttons on a screen doesn’t really build the muscle memory you need in the aircraft anyway. It’s more about flows and knowing where things are.
Infinite Flight was definitely helpful prior to training in learning vocabulary, weather, systems, communication, etc. During training, I chair flew with it and had a similar experience to Lisa—practicing diversions and procedures all while connected to ForeFlight. The only thing that was different then the actual flying was the flying.
Now, with my pilot license, I often find myself picking up my iPad to fly on solo in 5x mode to prepare myself for cross countries. Just last weekend, I flew down to Half Moon Bay for breakfast. It was my “second time there” after a simulated flight the night before. The one thing the app is missing is the breakfast!
I actually learned to do an actual engine startup through x-plane mobile and flight 787 which is another video game as they were the ones that let you do engine startup but flight 787 requires you to actually do it but x-plane mobile is optional and I learned to manually startup the engine of a cirrus SF50. Of course, DCS is also the other simulator where you have to do a full engine startup: some aircraft do let you do auto startup but not all including the P-51 where you’ll have to to do an engine startup fully and manually I think but the f18 can be an autostart. Sorry for getting off-topic but I just wanna share my experience on engine startups because the sims I did are actually clickable buttons. Anyway, imho, I also agree with this statement because it doesn’t really relate to actually flying an aircraft like the most important ones are flight planning, navigation and ATC - Pilot communication so I feel like those are the ones that’ll really help with the actual flying
If you could actually interact with the avionics in particular that would dramatically help a lot of these. I don’t think Infinite Flight would be a better game if every button was interactive, on a small touch screen that just isn’t a practical so I agree with that general direction. But interacting with the avionics is one thing that I think could be improved dramatically with more “real” interactions. I think avionics in general is one thing that could be improved and flushed out a lot in a way that could make this a much better training aid.
In all these points I am more or less exclusively talking about the G1000 since that is the only sophisticated avionics I have experience with irl and it is also very common in infinite flight.
Little things like not being able to set minimums for an instrument approach (actually that’s pretty major), the CDI still being green and saying ILS when you selected an RNAV approach, or not being able to set a course to other than direct for GPS points may seem minor and in many ways are, but the first one means you have to sacrifice your altitude bug to set minimums or have no visual indicator of what minimums are, the second could throw off someone and miss that they are improperly setup if that is what they are used to, and the third makes it essentially impossible to hold at a GPS fix the way we do in the real airplane.
In fact holding in general seems to have minimal support from the game to be able to do it realistically without making it extra difficult. Published holds aren’t on IAPs, the CDI in GPS mode won’t really let you do what you need to do, and as far as I can tell there is no way to use the timer in the airplane.
There are many of these small things and I fully understand that the vast majority of users aren’t real world pilots who have a preferred configuration for their nav sources below the CDI, or know how to fly a realistic hold but those are the little details that make it go from game to real training aid in my opinion. Instrument seems like the easiest of the major ratings/licenses to train for in a sim because it has far less emphasis on actual aircraft handling which is the worst element of any home sim, but if you are loading the approach into the avionics a completely different way at home, or using the altitude bug to set minimums that will become habits and you won’t use the aircraft’s avionics to their fullest.
This is hardly to say anything you said in the article in invalid per say, but there is a lot of ground between infinite flight and a real training aid I would trust to be a primary practice tool.
No. I am not considering any more pilot certificates at the moment… at the moment. I do wish to either do helicopter training and/or seaplane (floatplane) training. Floatplane training in particular would open up the waters and would be quite fun. Exploring the areas where land aircraft cannot. The same goes for the helos. They can access areas that the fixed wing cannot.
What’s stopping me?
Time, money, maintenance, life, all of the above. 😅
Where am I at in my aviation journey?
I’m in a comfortable spot where I’m enjoying what it is I do. I enjoy the schedule, the pilots and passengers to which I’m assigned as well as an extremely versatile aircraft. I have the pleasuring of traveling where ever my passengers wish to go and the freedom to go wherever. Unbound by an airline route structure that commercial airlines live by.
