We do have a livery for PMDG that is for the 800 variant but you cannot fly it untill you have CC rank. It is optional to fly on VATSIM but most of our events tend to be on IVAO. If you read the PILOTS mannual, you'll be able to see how to build flight hours, and the ranking structure.
ON long flights you can use accelerated i think but i'm not entirely sure.
In FS2004, the flight plan is generated by going to flight planner and inserting dep. and arr. ICAOS.
Then Selct IFR and direct GPS, If you are flying online on VATSIM/IVAO, you may need to follow a route so drag the Magenta line over certain waypoints in you flight plan.
Hope that helped and more importantly made a bit of sense

;)