Flying Around the World in VR

I’ve written a few posts about my year’s-long journey flying around the world in MSFS in VR. I’m in my third year and on my last stretch as I work my way up from South America to Central America to Mexico and finally home. Based on how long it has taken me to get this far, I would guess I have another six to nine months to go before I finish this first trip around the world.

On the ramp at SCIP

I usually only fly on the weekends. I do every leg in a Fenix Airbus: A319, A320, and A321. If the leg is longer than two hours, I’ll use the Fenix’s 2X or 4X speed feature. I never talk to ATC. I sometimes fly in live weather, but I also cheat and fly in clear skies in the daytime to see the topography. Once I get to a new destination, I’ll take off the next day in the Vision Jet and fly around to get a closer look at the land and points of interest.

For this post, I wanted to discuss a recent trip I took from Easter Island to Santiago, Chile. After working my way around Australia, with stops in Perth, Melbourne, and Sydney, I headed off to visit New Zealand, a place I hope to visit in person someday.

Getting across the Pacific from New Zealand required some interesting fuel stops: Tonga, Tahiti, a small island in French Polynesia, Easter Island, and then on the Santiago, Chile. I had been looking forward to my stop on Easter Island. I’ve read about the island and seen a few documentaries. I wanted to see the Moai statues. As I was landing, I noticed a few points of interest pop up, showing the locations of some statues. I parked the Airbus and took off in the Vision jet for a closer look. Unfortunately, while the game was smart enough to pinpoint where all the statues were located, the actual statues were not there. I even took off in a one-man Jetson and landed near one location just to be sure.

If someone ever puts out a mod showing the statues, I’ll return in a heartbeat. I’ve flown over the Colosseum in Rome and zipped by the pyramids in Egypt. I would love to explore more historical sites up close. Still, I’ve had a chance to fly around Easter Island and Tahiti, two places I am unlikely ever to visit in real life.

On the arrival into SCEL

Here is a photo gallery from my trip from Easter Island to Santiago, Chile.

Starting at SCIP (Easter Island)
An overview of the airport
A higher overview. The points of interest icons show hotels and statue locations
The POI icon in the upper left is a statue location
This is an overview of the route to Santiago Chile
Easter Islan in the center, is in the middle of the Pacific
On the ramp at SCIP
Getting ready to fly
Almost there
Time to get the flight ready
No jetway. passengers load by stairs
Departing to the west
Easter Island in the background
Approaching the coast of South America
On the arrival to Santiago
Shooting the ILS
Coming in to park next to the A380
Time to let the passengers off
This is the Jetson
A 4:55 flight time

For those interested, here are some technical details. I started this journey in March 2022, a few months after retiring from American Airlines. I have over 5,000 hours in the Airbus, so I’m comfortable flying single-pilot and without checklists. I switched to MSFS 2024 a few months ago. There were several hiccups initially, especially in VR, but I haven’t had a single CTD since the last update. I have an i9 processor, 64G of RAM, and an Nvidia RTX 3090 GPU. I have tweaked the graphics settings for the best quality and performance, but to do this, I had to set most of the graphic settings to high. I only have a few settings on Ultra. My headset is an HP G2 Reverb, and I use the Thrustmaster Airbus captain’s pack.