How I got into paragliding? From Instagram to virtual reality

My interest in paragliding started like any adventure of a 30-something-year-old.

With an Instagram reel.

The video was from a familiar place, the Drei Zinnen in the Dolomites. Earlier that year (2023), I had been there in person, hiking the same trail visible in the video, watching those peaks from below.

It’s also where I proposed to my now wife.

So when I saw someone flying around those peaks, it flipped a switch in me.

I want to do that too.

Dreams can come true

From an early age, my “someday when I’m rich” dream had been to get a private pilot license and fly small planes. You know, when you have all the money to do anything.

Well, that dream always felt distant and unachievable to some extent.

Until that video.

Paragliding had never really registered with me before. Like many people, I had heard the term “paragliding” but had mentally grouped it with skydiving.

Jumping off things. Falling. Short adrenaline hits.

During the same trip to Italy in 2023, standing at the top of Kronplatz in the heart of the Dolomites, I even saw two paragliders flying in the distance.

At the time, I didn’t even think twice about it.

I now know those were paragliders, and that I was standing in the middle of a popular XC triangle.

But it was the paragliding clip from a familiar scene that made me realise what paragliding is, and what is possible with just a piece of cloth and some warm air.

Seeing someone fly past a place that mattered to me personally made my rich-life dream feel less like a fantasy and more like a real possibility.

Late afternoon thermal climb just before the wind switch.

Into the rabbit hole

Once I rewatched the clip a few times, I became a victim of the algorithm. Suddenly, my Instagram and YouTube were full of paragliding.

I was intrigued from the moment I truly registered what paragliding was.

I have a habit of getting really into things really quickly (some might even call it ADHD).

So naturally, I binge-watched videos, watched a bunch of tutorials, and started comparing equipment. I researched how paragliding works in Finland. The schools, the license, the sites.

As Finland is a very flat country, apart from some small mountains in deep northern Lapland, the reality was pretty clear.

To fly in Finland, you need to be towed.

This was around October 2023. Too late in the season to start anything serious. So I knew that if I wanted to learn paragliding, I’d have to wait until the next summer.

Still, I didn’t want to just sit on the idea for six months.

Can I fly at home?

I wasn’t intending to jump straight into paragliding school. My plan was to first do a tandem flight to get a feeling for flying before committing to an expensive course.

Out of curiosity, I searched to see if any paragliding games existed.

To my surprise, I found Glider Sim, a VR paragliding simulator.

Bingo.

That seemed like the perfect way to get a taste of the sport without any of the downsides of money, time, or risk.

The simulator looked good enough to be interesting, and with a virtual reality headset, it seemed to offer a pretty decent and lifelike experience compared to any mouse-and-keyboard game (if I had even found any).

I got my VR headset, and then I flew.

A lot.

All winter.

The simulator lets you thermal, soar, speedfly, mess up, crash, restart, repeat. They’ve even added full Google Earth support, meaning you can fly anywhere in the world. Talk about the opportunities that opens up. (I’ll make a separate post about the simulator and go into more detail.)

Now, I knew from the start that it wouldn’t compare to real flying, real school, or real physics.

But I can tell you this: it was close enough to convince me.

I’d like to think the dozens of hours in the simulator at least helped me grasp many of the core concepts.

Circling in lift. Managing speed. Understanding the basic idea of energy, height, and movement through air instead of over ground. It stopped being abstract.

By the start of 2024, I wasn’t thinking if I should take the course.

I was thinking: how soon can I start?

Skipping the warm-up

When January came around, I made the decision properly.

I skipped the tandem flight idea entirely and signed up for the local paragliding school. The VR simulator had given me a good enough idea that I wanted to do this for real.

The course would start in May, and I’d be there.

Until then, my research continued, and I kept racking up hours in the simulator. Not because I thought I was training for the real thing, but because it kept the motivation alive.

A lot of my hobbies, excitements, and projects have only lasted until the next cool thing appeared.

This time felt different, and I haven’t been able to get paragliding out of my mind since.

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This was the first article in the series of my paragliding story. Next, I’ll tell you about my first year flying.