Matt_W
1985
In OnAir, when you’re creating work orders, be sure to actually click the little checkmark to load the cargo at each stop. Today my flights mostly consist of hiring freelancers to go clean up bits of cargo I left all over the western U.S. Also note – and this is important – cargo on your aircraft will not show when you have the “Only show cargo at this location” checkmark checked. If you’re starting a new work order and you already have cargo on your aircraft, you have to click the checkmarks for the already loaded cargo on your first leg, otherwise the work order will dump it before flying.
I also collected 3 of the 8 pieces of my Level 5 mission in Europe and flew them all to the central hub. Unfortunately when I planned the flight, I typed EDDG instead of EDDN for the hub’s location. Now all my stuff is sitting in Greven when it should be 200 miles away in Nuremberg. Freelancer to the rescue there too.
I have a nice little Stratus airline (Chiroptera Aloft - CHIR) going. I’ve got 4 full-time employees including my player pilot and a small FBO (Aloft & Awake) set up at Vancouver airport (CVYR) with a tie-down, crew lodging, and small jet and 100LL fuel tanks that I can use to fill up for wholesale prices. The FBO also gives me nice jobs to and from Vancouver with the FBO query interface, which is surprisingly handy. And I was just able to purchase a cheap, well-used, but well-maintained TBM 930 and have been putting that to good use. My operation is worth about $250k and I have $30k in the bank with 3 lucrative work orders currently in progress.
Spock
1986
@Matt_W Sim Plates does look great. I see there’s an iPad version, which might be what I would spring for, as I already set my iPad up next to my PC with skyvector open plus any relevant approach plates or airport diagrams on other tabs of my browser. I wish it were half the price, but I’m still tempted.
And wow, grats on your Stratus airline! You’re well ahead of me, partly because I’ve divided my attention between Stratus and Thunder (where I’m in Japan). I’ve got one full-time employee on Stratus; she’s flying short jobs in Hawaii. Spock himself is in the Caribbean, but he’s rethinking his decision to fly his missions there with a Bonanza, for the reasons we’ve already discussed. I’ve got maybe $40K in cash, and that’s about my company value too. I don’t own planes or an FBO, but both are on my shopping list. How much did you pay for your TBM?
Spock
1987
Also, there’s an SR22 for rent at Spock’s airport. Should I opt for that over the Bonanza? Oop: never mind, I don’t have the SR22; I own only the standard edition.
Matt_W
1988
I paid $183k. It’s got almost 27,000 hours on it, but the frame and engine are in great condition. I’ve spent about $125k net in rental fees for various aircraft (including deposits) over the last week or so, so owning is probably worth it.
Matt_W
1990
Tried to get a moon silhouette
vyshka
1991
I just opened up the windows volume mixer and cut the sound for msfs while it was installing
vyshka
1992
I wish that $50 would allow you to get both the desktop and tablet version. I will probably grab the android one though.
Spock
1994
Another great photo! I don’t have anything nearly as dramatic, but I did have a couple entertaining flights in Japan today. On Thunder, I’m working my way up the coast from Hiroshima to Okayama and eventually back to Osaka, which is the hub for my level 2 missions. This part of Japan sure seems hilly. I’ve been to the country once, but I was touring the Tokyo-Kyoto-Nara area, not down here. All the hills make for challenging approaches, so today I “cheated” and set the weather to sunny, even though Japan was cloudy today. Departure out of Hiroshima, into the rising sun:
Here was my flight path. I was heading for the tiny airstrip at Kasaoka (RJKS). This airstrip is not in Skyvector. I’m curious – would it be in Sim Plates Ultra?
Parked after landing at Kasaoka. I didn’t have far to taxi, as my sloppy landing took me all the way to the end of the runway anyway!
Approaching Okayama on my next job. I see a lot of these neat rectangular fields in Japan. Farms? Not sure.
I decided to park with the big boys at Okayama.
Matt_W
1995
It’s not. In general they only have plates for airfields with towers and navigation aids.
I love all of those screenshots, btw. And that flight path looks fun. I kind of want to get down low and do some canyon flying.
Matt_W
1996
More lightning. Just missed getting the actual bolt.
Spock
1997
Awesome shot! I had lightning during partly sunny conditions yesterday. Yet another new bug, though a fairly entertaining one.
Matt_W
1998
Naples at dawn
Island of Capri and the Sorrento coastline
Sicilian sunrise
Skipper
1999
I"ve been to Naples maybe a half dozen to 10 times in my life (lived in Italy for a while,) but never got the sense of scale, elevation and spread of these screenshots. Matt, these take me way back, they are awesome.
Editer
2000
On the charts question, if you have an iPad, you can download and use FltPlan Go for free. Covers North and Central America, the Caribbean, Panama, and parts of Venezuela and Columbia. It’s a real pilot app, but instructions on connecting it to FS are here.
I’ve also thought about just spending the $99 to subscribe to Foreflight. Not cheap, but “as real as it gets,” and amortized per month it’s not that bad. Maybe when the sim is a bit more solid…
Pedro
2001
I’ve been messing around for the last couple of days.
I tried out NeoFly; it’s decent. He’s done a great job in a short space of time, but I don’t know if I find the progression/upgrades compelling. I’ve only taken two cargo missions so far; there are other missions like - land within 2nm of an accident (which might be on top of a hill) to deliver a medic, drop food supplies to a landing zone, carry passengers - which are dependent on you working your way up the qualifications (see second screenshot below).
Generally impressed with the ease of use, flight tracking, voice work when starting mission etc. You have to wait for cargo to be loaded and are given voice instructions etc. But the progression mechanic could maybe be a bit more granular for me. Your mileage will vary.
Apart from that, I’ve been looking into modding in my own bush trips. Some kind soul has mostly figured it out and posted a new bush trip and the files necessary to create a sample/new trip so I have been working through that.
Bush trips are tough as you have to find an interesting landscape and points of interest every 5 minutes along the way, never mind the technical aspects (which are actually ok, if time consuming; it’s a fairly manual process to put the legs together by editing XML files).
Beautiful screenshots above, folks! And I am enjoying the back and forth on the minutae of actually flying even though it’s a bit beyond me to contribute at the moment :)
Thrag
2002
Is there something in game that gives VOR frequencies for locations? After reading some instruction I want to give that a go. Do I need one of the fancy map services you guys are discussing?
Also despite the new bugs in the patch finally having sensitivity controls is a godsend.
Skipper
2003
Yeah buddy …
Seems like they are close to release. Now it’s up to MSFS for updating for VR.
jpinard
2004
I’m still waiting to play this until I have a video card that can run it well :(
Kind of want to save my time for it when it will look really nice.
All the video card shortages and bots buying everything up are so frustrating. Maybe AMD will release their cards soon and they’ll be just as good as the NVidia ones, and that will fix supply issues?
Your screenshots are just so amazing everyone.
