I can still remember the days when me and my pc (including screen, joystick, speakers and what not) would hop on the train for a 3 day, long weekend Flight Sim fest at my buddy Kevin's house. Three hours in the train, packed with my 'nerdgear' (I tried, there's no sexier name for it), ready for some serious on-line flightsimmin' and with 'serious', I mean : SE-RI-OUS. As in all-through-the-night-long-haul-kinda-serious. The real deal. At least, you know, virtually...

We would sleep for a few of hours a night -on the couch- just a couple of feet from our roaring pc's, cause you knew that when that dreaded 'beep' sounded it was 'IVAO' and we best be ready to answer... in a non-sleepy voice. The days were long. Planning the flight, staring at my screen for hours at a time with my headset on, landing and whilst the engines were spooling down, thinkering were to head on next.

After each and every landing, I would 'hit replay', usually in slow motion (who doesn't like slow motion), 10, 15 times. We always had a blast, cause flightsimmin' was IT. I am not afraid to say I sometimes left my pc on, while sleeping cause there was something soothing about hearing perfectly good running jet engines in the background.

Those days are over though. One could even say : Long gone. Girlfriends (there's something really confronting about a woman's disapproving and loathing look when she looks at you 'talking to another geek at the other end of the world, 'asking for permission to 'taxi') , flying for realsies and the X-box basically killed the Flight Simulator 'game'. But the true reason for not flying is none of the above. 

It's 'McPhat'.

I don't have time to fondle around with FMC's, flying for hours, enjoying REX generated clouds, or any of ORBX' sceneries while on final. I still fire up FSX, hell, I would even say at least 20 times a day, but only to make screen-shots, check bump & specular effects and  to align textures. Flight Simulator has become all work. No play.

That all changed last Thursday. Like every sane person in the FS community, I was eagerly waiting for PMDG to release their NGX. I wouldn't go as far to say that my index finger and F5 button were best buddies, but I checked. I checked plenty. Robert told me to buy nothing, to wait for him to supply us with the model and paintkit, but on friday, Nicolas and I  pulled our creditcards : four NGX licenses. One for each participating NGX project member, but most importantly : One for me.

The past couple of days I found myself inside FSX. Not to check the DC-9 VC textures, or to make last minute changes to the PMDG 747 HDT fuselage, but to take the NGX for a spin. Landing, replaying, flying circuits (or like you Yanks like to call it : Traffic Patterns), checking out the great modelling from all sides and angles, listening to the CFM's ref up and down. As a long time PMDG customer owning all but the J41, including the FS9 models it was like being 'home' again.

Firing FSX, just for the fun, joy and thrill of it...

The last time I did that, was right before I started McPhat Studios, three and a half years ago....