Introduction to the Tour
ForewordThere are so many ways to take advantage of the capabilities of a flight simulator like X-Plane that everybody has his or her own 'philosophy' about it : leisurely flying with some general aviation aircraft above one's own favourite region or a beautiful landscape, carefully planning and carrying out a commercial flight from a busy international airport to another one, enjoying an adrenaline-rich jet fighter mission (perhaps including a flight deck and some arrestor cables), mastering those rotorcrafts, tuning the piston engines of an old WW II bomber while dead reckoning, flying together with others over the network… whatever floats your boat.
Here's still another (it's one of mine, as you rightfully guessed) :
1. X-Plane comes with gigabytes and gigabytes of terrain data for the whole Earth to be flown over, and thousands of airports to go to. It would be such a pity not to try to make the most of it !
2. Also, X-Plane comes with lots of planes, and the community that has grown around X-Plane has produced many other great aircrafts and add-ons of all kinds : again, not to put them to use would be a shame...
3. Piloting a wide variety of birds in lots of places would better fit into a common framework or some long-term, wider purpose.
Obviously, a world tour comes to mind.
Such a world tour is by no means incompatible with the 'philosophies' as stated above : spectacular landscapes abound, careful flight planning and following procedures add to the challenge, the right choice of the right aircraft with the right conditions provides the right level of adrenaline, giving up some modern navigation technologies makes it even better and cruising with one or more partners takes it to the nth power. It's all yours !
Thus, this world tour has only one purpose : to suggest you to go from point A to point B, then to point C, etc..., until you're back to point A – you decide before each leg what to make of it. Take your time : there are 704 of them..., yes : seven hundred and four... and 100,000 NM to fly..., yes : one hundred thousand nautical miles. Admittedly, there was another purpose : to design one of the most ambitious tour ever for X-Plane !