GA ownership, with real consequences
GARealistic is a companion app that turns general aviation flying in MSFS into an aircraft ownership and pilot training simulation. It tracks the costs a real GA owner carries — fuel, oil, tires, brakes, engine time, insurance, storage — and it tracks the damage a real owner causes: hard landings crack struts, brake abuse wears pads thin, and busting a V-speed limit costs you an aileron, not just a warning tone.
Park the aircraft, quit the sim, come back next week: it is where you left it, with the same fuel, the same switches and the same radios.
FIVE WAYS TO USE IT
- Own & fly — register your aircraft (or a fleet of them), fly wet or dry rentals, and watch 30+ components wear down from your actual flying, not a timer. Component MTBF, failure injection, and repair costs are all driven by how you handle the airplane.
- Share ownership — found or join a per-airport aero club and split the cost of a shared aircraft instead of owning or renting alone. Choose a dues-only Club or an equity Syndicate, vote on how it's run, and check the aircraft out and fly it with the same wear and billing rules as your own.
- Run a company — found a cargo or charter operation, hire AI pilots who fly your schedule while you're offline, and grow into a multi-hub airline. Trade raw materials and manufactured goods in a shared commodity market, build facilities at any airport, haul freight by hand or by AI, and buy or sell aircraft on a live weekly Aircraft Market.
- Train toward a certificate — get graded in real time against ACS standards for Private, Instrument, Commercial, and ATP: approaches, holds, steep turns, slow flight, stalls, and more, with a post-flight debrief and a shareable report card.
- Stay current and legal — endorsement checks at engine start, personal minimums gates, IFR currency tracking, and Part 61 certification progress, so the app tells you when you're not supposed to be flying before the FAA does.
OWNERSHIP & COSTS
- Full cost tracking: fuel, oil, tires, brakes, storage, insurance, away-from-base charges
- 30+ component wear system driven by real flying behavior, not elapsed time
- V-speed-aware wear — busted limits cost real airframe components
- Sustained abuse (overtemp, over-torque, high G, hard landings) raises your sudden-failure odds, even on a low-hour engine
- Preflight walkaround: fuel water, oil, tires and brakes feed straight into the failure system
- MSFS failure injection: brakes, vacuum pump, alternator, pitot, partial panel
- Landing quality scoring (sink rate, G-force, bank, crab angle)
- Maintenance only where there is a mechanic who can do the work; preferred mechanic call-outs, airframe-hours MTBF, turbine wear tracking
- Wet/dry rental billing, multi-base fleet management
- Personal account with credit cards: limits, monthly interest, minimum payments and late fees
- Four Difficulty Presets (Easy/Normal/Hard/Brutal) scale costs and job availability to match how forgiving you want the economy to be
AIRCRAFT STATE PERSISTENCE
- Position, fuel, oil, switches and controls come back when you reload an aircraft
- Works with third-party add-ons: built-in sets for the COWS DA42, A2A Comanche and Aerostar, Black Square Baron, Bonanza, Commander, Caravan and Duke, SWS Kodiak and Airvan, GotFriends gliders, the Taylorcraft and more
- Radios, transponder code and autopilot targets restore too
- A Persistence tab lets you list or disable controls, paste a developer's variable list, scan an aircraft's installed package, learn a switch by flipping it, and run a self-test that shows what the sim actually honours
- Can be turned off in Settings
PLANNING & DATA
- Flight Planning: type-to-suggest fixes, airways, VORs or direct routing, runway and SID/STAR/approach advice, cruise-altitude advice and a terrain-based minimum safe altitude
- Winds aloft with the source shown (Active Sky, NWS, Open-Meteo), and weather for a time other than now
- Fuel planning with contingency and taxi fuel, alternates with their own fuel, map and frequencies, and ICAO equipment codes
- Trip Planner with refuel optimization, trip notes and fixed stops; SimBrief integration for briefing comparisons
- Bush trips: save off-airport landing spots, see them in Destinations and planning, and share them with the community
- Destinations tab: runways, approaches, fuel pricing, and FBO data for every airport
- Live weather strip (VFR/MVFR/IMC) and MSFS 2024 weather radar integration
- Logbook with day/night/IFR hours and airborne-vs-Hobbs tracking
- Multi-currency financial summaries (USD, EUR, GBP, CAD, AUD, CHF, NZD)
- Google Earth KML export, local streaming/OBS overlay with live instruments
COMPANY & WORLD ECONOMY
- Found a GA airline: independent fleet, finances, and staff from your personal flying
- Route generation from real population/catchment data; AI pilot hiring with offline earnings
- Weekly scheduling and timetable with legal duty-hour limits and conflict detection
- A full production economy: raw materials → manufactured goods → components, priced by each airport's own industry and isolation
- Build facilities (sawmills, depots, hangars, maintenance shops) and service businesses at any airport
- Freight Runs — physical, multi-hop haulage you plan for profit and fly yourself or dispatch to AI
- Live Aircraft Market — browse new and used aircraft for sale near you, financed the same way as a normal purchase
- Co-ownership with equity splits, company officers, multi-hub expansion
AERO CLUBS & SYNDICATES
- Found a dues-only Club or an equity Syndicate — chosen once, split the cost of a shared aircraft with other pilots
- Vote on proposals: dues changes, special assessments, expelling a member, buying a shared aircraft
- Separate General and Reserve funds, with repairs paid from reserve first
- Check out a shared aircraft with a real endorsement gate, fly it, and check it back in — wear, fuel, and billing all handled automatically
- A squawk log can ground an aircraft until a defect is resolved; a booking calendar avoids checkout conflicts
- Full financial transparency — hourly rate breakdown, reserve fund forecast, and member debt tracking, all visible before you join
- Browse and apply to clubs on the community web platform, and see them on the Live Map
TRAINING & GRADING
- In-flight ACS evaluation across Private, Instrument, Commercial, and ATP standards
- Eight job types (Charter, Cargo, Ferry, Training, Medevac, Sightseeing, Backcountry, Supplies) with a five-tier reputation system
- SayIntentions.AI integration — ATC comms and frequency-management scoring feed straight into checkride readiness
- Post-flight debrief, flight replay with time scrubbing, and shareable PNG report cards
- Digital go/no-go checklists that auto-check against aircraft state
OPTIONAL INTEGRATIONS
- FSEconomy — import an FSEconomy-financed aircraft and fly it with GARealistic's full wear simulation, while its billing stays entirely on FSEconomy's own side
- VATSIM — detects a flight flown while connected to the network and whether real ATC was working the field, logged to your notes and a dedicated achievement band
- Active Sky FS — live turbulence and active SIGMET/AIRMET data on the Dashboard weather panel, logged to your notes and a dedicated achievement band
COMMUNITY PLATFORM (OPTIONAL)
- Live map of active GARealistic pilots in real time
- Shared, votable checklists and POH specs per aircraft type
- Crowdsourced fuel pricing and airport amenity data
ALSO INCLUDED
- Working EFB app for MSFS 2024's in-sim tablet
- Deep integration with A2A Comanche and Black Square aircraft wear data
- Silent background updates with an in-app Update & Restart prompt
- Compatible with MSFS 2024 and MSFS 2020
