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

Interesting. I did not know that.

My appologies I jumped the gun here. It appears to not work in MSFS but it did work in previous versions of the sim. I tried using the autopilot preset keys in the Pitts and they didn’t work which is a damn shame because it was nice for long flights.,

Ok it works but you have to enable it in the systems.cfg in the respective folder.

For instance, to enable auto pilot in the Pitts Special, go to

C:\Users*you*\AppData\Local\Packages\Microsoft.FlightSimulator_8wekyb3d8bbwe\LocalCache\Packages\Official\OneStore\asobo-aircraft-pitts\SimObjects\Airplanes\Asobo_Pitts

and open the systems.cfg file and scroll down to

[AUTOPILOT]
autopilot_available = 0 <change this to 1

You now have autopilot in the Pitts Special.

These are the default autopilot hotkeys.

Autopilot On - ALT + Z
Autopilot Off - SHIFT + ALT + Z
Autopilot Airspeed Hold - ALT + R
Decrease Autopilot Reference Altitude - CTRL + PGDOWN
Increase Autopilot Reference Altitude - CTRL + PGUP
Toggle Autopilot Approach Hold - CTRL + A
Toggle Autopilot Attitude Hold - CTRL + T
Toggle Autopilot Localizer Hold - CTRL + O
Toggle Autopilot Mach Hold - CTRL + M
Toggle Autopilot Master - Z
Autopilot N1 Hold - CTRL + S
Decrease Autopilot N1 Reference - CTRL + END
Increase Autopilot N1 Reference - CTRL + HOME
Autopilot NAV1 Hold - CTRL + N
Decrease Autopilot Reference Airspeed - SHIFT + CTRL + DEL
Increase Autopilot Reference Airspeed - SHIFT + CTRL + INSERT
Decrease Autopilot Reference Vs - CTRL + END
Increase Autopilot Reference Vs - CTRL + HOME
Toggle Autopilot Wind Leveller - CTRL + V

Mainly places I know, as I’ve been amazed at how well represented the terrain is compared to the real world. So, I’ve flown a lot in southeastern and central Pennsylvania, Seattle/Tacoma, and then a few of the big cities like NYC and Tokyo.

I want to thank the folks here (@Ginger_Yellow ) mentioning NeoFly. Holy hell this small little app expanded. This thing is pretty damned nice!

Now give me tips! Should I get a loan to move up from the Cessna 150 to the Cessna Skyhawk with g1000 immediately?

Any tips on how the, “finding gold,” works?

You can start with the G1000 Skyhawk right off the bat if you like.

For money making, you’ll probably want to take out a loan and get something with a bit of range and/or cargo capacity. Loans weren’t available when I started so I had to grind it out for my first upgrade, which wasn’t super fun. But the bush missions are more fun, so I’d recommend keeping the starting plane and alternating the money making missions with the fun ones. You can also hire pilots to fly in the background, either while you’re flying another plane, or just AFK.

I might have to try Neofly again since y’ll are raving about it so much. I haven’t used it since version 1.3.4 and it had quite a few issues at the time.

Neofly pro-tip: all the save data is kept in an SQLite database, by default in C:\Program Data\NeoFly\common.db, IIRC. If you’re familiar with SQL you can use an SQLite client like DB Browser to tweak things to your personal satisfaction. (I mostly use it to replace my starting plane when I want to play with something different, but it can be fun to poke around with in general.)

I created a small tool to do some useful things with it, though most of what it does has been superseded by features since added to the game itself, or through a much more ambitious autohotkey-based tool. I definitely suggest checking that out – it can automatically prime the database with the jobs, prices, and airplanes at all the airports within a given radius of you, then let you search that to find where a given plane can be bought, or where the best place to go with a load of trade goods is.

I also like building up from a scrappy start, so I usually don’t bother with a loan at first, and just build from whatever my starting plane is, but what I like most about NeoFly is how unrestricted it is; everyone can find their own kind of fun. Honestly, my most recent save I’ve started in sandbox mode, I have 3 or 4 different bases in various parts of the world and buy or sell planes as the itch strikes me. I call it my “ADD Millionaire” career. :D

Do get insurance, though.

It still has an atrocious UI, if that was a stumbling block for you, although at least now it has a dark mode, and you can tune the colors to make it a bit less eye-searing. A number of features that were lacking have been added, too, like the ability to filter jobs at any given field to find only those with ILS / hard suface / lights. It also now actually puts models into the sim at crash sites, which helps both with finding them and with overall immersion. I’d say definitely check it out if you haven’t in a while.

Yeah, I just started playing around with this, because the Longitude in Neofly still has the tiny fuel capacity that it used to have in-sim. It’s also handy for figuring out where the planes are in the marketplace. Haven’t done any “cheating” though.

I mean, compared to FSE…

It gets updated with truly remarkable frequency.

Hahaha. Fair point. :)

BTW, you should be able to edit existing aircraft in the database, or add new ones, without manipulating the DB directly. Check out the settings page:

One thing I do wish it had was the automatic plane import that AH2 has; it’ll even import over SimConnect if you’re adding an encrypted plane and it can’t find the cfg. The accuracy in that mode isn’t great, but at least it adds the bulk of the data and then lets you tweak it.

I tried doing it there but it wasn’t letting me for some reason

Curious. It’s worked reliably for me (at least, once I figured out the interface for it) but I’d fully believe it’s broken in some ways. At least there’s a somewhat convenient alternative. :)

(The one thing I always do when modifying a stock plane, which might trip some folks up, is I’ll load a plane in the dropdown then mistakenly click the middle “add” button after making changes, which instead of updating the one record, creates a duplicate one with different values. The database schema is insufficiently designed to protect against that causing a lot of confusion if you’re unlucky.)

It’s a pretty poorly designed DB in general, IMO, but I’m a data engineer so I tend to look at that sort of thing a bit harshly. 😆 It gets the job done, mostly.

I don’t know if it was broken. It might lock out changes when you’re in a mission for instance.

“Not great, not terrible.”

In seriousness though it’s way better than FSE and, at least in my opinion, OnAir. I feel like the latter will get me lost in about 30 seconds when I try to find something. It’s almost too busy.

This UI isn’t bad. I just don’t know what everything is yet. As an example, I’m about to fly my own purchased cargo to sell elsewhere and I think I’ve lined everything up right. I’ll know in about 30 minutes.

I do not understand how to, “take,” a loan out.

Well I’ve installed it at least. I’m going to have to read the docs because the UI still isn’t very intuitive. I think the biggest issue I had with it when it was in beta was generating nonsensical missions, like unrealistic payloads for light aircraft and impossible departures, that kind of thing.

I love the idea of it though, so definitely going to try it again now. Hopefully the developers of Skypark will remember to write some code at some point…

I updated my PMDG DC-6 and noticed there was no improvement in the FPS department. I hope the devs can figure out why SU5 robbed the DC-6 of the FPS boost other planes experienced such as the glass cockpit heavies.

I read that they did find the DC-6 FPS problem and are working on another update to fix it.