Microsoft Flight Simulator (2020) - We're really sorry about Microsoft Flight

I love that last shot so much. The stark dry plains and the hills on the horizon and the bright red plane. And for the first time I noticed how realistic the sky looks in this game. You’ve got that gradient of light blue shifting to darker blue as you get away from the horizon line.

You see it even more flying through sunrise/sunset. It’s worth lining up a flight during either. Especially over some nice scenery.

I haven’t spent a lot of time with either, tbh. The Mooney was good but had some annoying quirks; there was an exterior noise that was getting on my nerves, and whether the gear went down when you pulled the lever seemed random. I’m sure the latter was my own fault, possibly I need to do something else first (like some planes require flaps down first) and I wasn’t doing it consistently.

The Piaggio is great for me in that it’s a steam gauge plane that goes really fast. 160-180 kt cruise speed is common (it’s incorrectly listed as 115 in the game). There’s a nice crunch when you touch down and great visibility. There’s a bunch of stuff in the cockpit - Cowlflap which I was reading as Cow Flap for a while) that I don’t know the use of and there are some idiosyncracies that will annoy more simmy people - I think you can open the canopy mid-flight and not crash, for example). But it’s great. I was flying through the desert blowing air on my face last night so maybe I’m easily pleased though.

It’s so good. Lord knows there are plenty of graphics issues also but when it comes together it is great. I was flying Skipper’s King Air earlier today and the sun hit the glass and showed up a bunch of fingerprints on the window, fantastic stuff.

Edit: @Skipper there’s a thread about the Piaggio over here, if you want to listen to the professionals instead ;)

A reddit user’s montage of favorite places to fly, in gameplay video format:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HI8WQGVpWxs

Seems to be modded,. It has the Sydney Harbour Bridge, for instance.

Yep, mentioned in the comments, several of these areas have a few scenery mods.

Bit of a weird day in FSE. I noticed there was a Bonanza for sale in France so I had to take the opportunity.

Funnily enough it was at the same airfield in the Rhone valley that I had my first Bonanza flight and the same route was available.

When I landed I noticed there was a Piaggio available to rent so I did the return leg in that. The first colour I chose didn’t work, but the default skin did. But it didn’t take the FSE registration number, weirdly

And wait, what’s this? Passengers! I guess the Piaggio model must have them included? Really nice surprise.

I wonder which is the ‘Gamer’ and which is the ‘UNICEF employee’.

Delivered safely and the leg registered in FSE. And there are three Piaggios for sale for between 100 and 200K. I’ll have to hammer FSE tomorrow to finance one :P

Sent you some cash in FSE. DO IT, get a Piaggio!!! Also @IkeVandergraaf any more word on how to get the aircraft transferred to one of us or the group?

Thanks so much! But I already went ahead and bought one last night. There was one available for 114K so I couldn’t resist :)

The downside? It has no AP (VFR only, though there are versions available with AP, dunno how that works), it can only carry 3 passengers so it’s a luxury plane really, in the context of FSE, and finally…it’s in…Ecuador.

I might see about flying it home to Europe, VFR only :O

But it’s so nice to have.

Per ObsidianAnt, the new world update is going to add 5 3D cities, one of which is London (not clear if the others are all UK, but he seemed to infer that). Given that I wasn’t sure there would be any in this update, that’s great news. Also it seems they’ve got a new arrangement for adding them, which may mean they have a better long term pipeline for adding new ones.

From the official post:

Also, new Q&A stream:

I am emailing with the guy. I’ll let you know.

Pedro that might mean it is a plane that can have AP, “installed,” after the fact. Somewhere on FSE is the description of the process for that. I’ve not done it, so I don’t know if it is just installing it from an FBO or it it is that plus notifying the FSE crew on that long thread they have with the Tail number of the airplane.

At any rate, if there are models with AP, that sure sounds like you can add it.

No worries and no rush, Ike. I was just checking up on ya. I don’t know if we have enough for a payoff but certainly can assist in it. I think there is 100K in the group account and I have a little too. If they are willing to transfer the financing, that makes it even easier.

Sounds like it for sure; I guess you still have access to AP controls even though there’s no ‘button’ in the cockpit.

Snowy in Chicago this morning

Also checking out this bush trip, which has some challenging aspects https://flightsim.to/file/4927/la-haute-route-alpine-bushtrip

Phew

Photogrammetry cities confirmed: London, Cambridge, Oxford, Birmingham and Bristol. Shame there’s no Edinburgh, and weird no Manchester, but I suppose these are photogenic, Birmingham aside.

Lol at Birmingham. Yeah, I can see the Northerners being a bit miffed. They could have skipped Birmingham and one of Oxford/Cambridge and pushed north a bit.

Maybe there are some airport or other improvements further north. I think I saw a map with markers on the Outer Hebrides etc but can’t remember where, now.

Yeah, there are some new airports further north, and they showed screenshots of the Forth bridges, so there’s definitely some love being shown up there, just not photogrammetry. I think there’s something like 70 POIs coming.

Mods or official MS?

Official, coming in the next world update.

What mod manager are you all using for this?