Yeah, yesterday was the first time I’ve encountered it. Certainly the game had major downloading issues at launch though.
OnAir is notable because it’s real time and it enforces pilot and aircraft locations. If you need your plane in Denver and it’s in Seattle, you have to fly it there and it takes a real-time number of hours. (Even if you use time acceleration in the sim, it forces you to wait until the aircraft would have landed before you can take off again.) If your pilot is in Spokane and you need them in Missoula, you can either fly them there (as passenger or pilot) or send them via public transit, which takes real time.
You can hire AI pilots and set up complicated delivery routes for them to fly (which will make you the bulk of your money if you’re not on the Thunder (no AI pilot) server.)
OnAir is fun, but:
- If you’re using AI pilots, that ends up being the bulk of what you’re doing
- If you’re not using AI pilots, you really have to fly a lot in order to be profitable
- The UI is coming along, and looks really nice, but is functionally still pretty clunky. Once you get used to it, it’s ok, but it takes a bit to get used to, and even so has quite a few more mouse clicks than should be necessary.
- The cold start/proper lighting sequence gimmick gets old pretty quick. There’s something to be said for FSE’s ability to get you in the air very quickly.
I sub’d for 6 months, but put my airline (worth over a $million) on pause about a month ago and haven’t fired it up since. (Of course I’ve also been moving in with my gf IRL, so that’s taken a bunch of my time.)
I’m pretty intrigued by NeoFly. It was too rough when I gave it a go a couple of months ago, but it sounds like it’s really improved now.
It comes with a Icon A5.
The Cessna L-19 Bird Dog add-on package is really nice, and includes a floatplane variant: http://www.blackboxsimulation.com/index.php/products/fs2020/cessna-l19/
I got the thing running! yay! and it runs surprisingly well on my rig.
Sadly, because of how I arranged my stuff, I can not use my simpit without VR. The flyin’ seat has its back to the screen. So I am obliged to fly using an XBOX controller for controls! Still, it beats a keyboard and I don’t need to do things like aerial refuelling, gunnery or carrier landings, so I’ll be fine for now. It’s only a month, right? :D
So how do I add y’all as friends, so we can see one another fly? My username, gamertag, callsign is of course “schurem”. Add me.
I have definitely noticed the former. It doesn’t seem possible to find a job between 2 cities that uses a plane that is on my simulator, and that I am qualified to fly, and that has the appropriate payload capacity without a bunch of screens, and some napkin math.
Thelatter is less tedious if you allow the AI to auto complete checklists. You can also workaround having to manually taxi to the runway by shutting off your engines before tracking the flight ’ and then turning them back on again.
On the plus side, the level up sound is the “ding” from the original ever quest, which, after all these years, still triggers a neurotransmitter response in the part of my brain that registers deliciousness.
Any getting started pointers?
Is there an easy way to move your add-ons folder? And how much of a performance/loading time hit would it cause to move it from an SSD to an HDD?
My brothers over at www.mudspike.com have this yearly tradition of a christmas flight. We take a sim, any sim and make our way from our homes to a certain destination, such as Christmas Island. This year, the destination is Cape Town (FACT). This year is the first time I’m joining in, as it’s been like 30 years since I last touched a civvie sim.
Anyway, I just set off. First leg is Malden glider field - Luxemburg Int’l. I was amazed to find Malden in the list, I can get there by bicycle.
The weather in sim is fine, almost clear with a couple scattered cloud. I turned live weather on. Looking outside it’s grey overcast. That ain’t right. Is there more to getting proper live weather than just turning it on in sim?
Setting off, leaving home.
Entering the Ardennes region. Not nearly as spectacular from the air than driving into it. However, I will grant it that the changing of the landscape is noticeable and very interesting in this sim, really looking forward to fly all the way to Cape Town.
Bloody family had me pause the thing for an hour or so, so it’s going to be a dusk landing, if not entirely in the dark. I find it hard to believe this “live weather” thing is running nominal.
This sim is stunning . Generated scenery that is at least as good as DCS maps. Wow.
And here I am, first leg finished, parked with the other smol bois at Luxemburg Airport.
Nice one! Cape Town eh? Have you left yourself enough time to get there? :)
Gorgeous sim is gorgeous. I have fallen deeply, madly in love with this thing.
Depends. The challenge does not prescribe any particular machine or even sim. People have done it using a sailboat simulator or kerbal space program. There’s not even a hard deadline. I am tempted to keep doing it in this little robin number because of its bubble canopy. I find things like the Citation or the TBM claustrophobic, with too little view of what’s outside.
That’s why I would love to have a military jet of some kind, or a trainer. I have zero interest in those ipad cockpits (garmin G3000) that a lot of the default machines have.
Did you all get another big patch yesterday? Before that I had 2 critical system crashes the took my computer down. After updating that patch I went to play and none of my planes are available and I have to redownload all my planes and airports again. This is killing my Internet cap. Still don’t understand why it was only showing 2 planes in my hangar and no others available.
The ATC in MSFS is better than the default ATC in previous sims but it’s still not great. This version at least understands SIDS/STARS, but the handling can still be pretty wacky, and as you’ve noticed it doesn’t understand MSAs. There are a number of add-on ATC programs that provide more accurate handling, but I think the only one that’s been updated for MSFS yet is Pilot2ATC. I have it but haven’t used it with MSFS yet.
APR mode will also work with an RNAV approach, if you have a system equipped to handle those. However, not all such approaches have a vertical guidance component (and even if they do, not all GPSes are certified to use them.)
Absent ILS or RNAV (or a localizer-only approach, though there aren’t many of those) you’re on your own for guidance. VASI/PAPI systems where available can provide some vertical guidance, it’s worth knowing how those function. VOR/NDB approaches give you some lateral guidance but don’t give you a localizer beam to ride.
Are you running with the sim content installed on a different drive? This is a known bug on updates in that configuration, you need to go into the content manager and download everything else manually. It’s a pain.
I have it all on the same dedicated game drive, though the cache is on my main Windows installation drive.
If you like flying into “unusual” locations, you should check out the scenery available from Bush League Legends. They have a bunch of back-country strips in Idaho and elsewhere and can provide hours of “ohmigod how am I supposed to land there?!” fun. You’re not going to be flying a TBM into them, though. :D
Like this.
Yeah, I’m not sure quite what the triggers for it are, but I know it can happen in some cases if you don’t have everything in the “default” location. You should at least be able to grab everything again from the content manager, though, no?
Nice, I’ll definitely check those out, thanks!
What happened above was that I was flying an 800 mile route in FSEconomy and needed somewhere to get gas along the way. There was a starred airport on the map at about 500 miles so I thought, that’ll do. I was kinda thinking it might be the national airport (Peru) so I was very surprised. 😆
Yes, doing that now. But it’s redownloading 80 Gig of data.
Haha, that’s awesome. Do you use any flight planning software? It can be really helpful for avoiding those unpleasant surprises. I hardly ever fly without Little Navmap running to check on things like that.
Yeah, it sucks. I got bit by that on Update 5. I was mostly just flagging it as a known issue so you didn’t need to wonder if there was something wrong with your particular install.
Also, hi everyone. I’ve not posted here in ages but I was dropping by, saw the MSFS thread, and had to jump in. I have fallen completely into this thing. I really like it.
How much do I like it?
If you caught Jorg and Seb shouting out the Working Title mod group by name on the past few Dev Q&A sessions, that’s me. Well, me and a few other guys, but I was one of the founders. I’ve probably spent more time tweaking and modding this thing than flying in it and we’re in direct communication with Jorg and folks at Asobo to work on expanding their involvement with the community.
That’s how much I like it.
(I also fly a lot.)
No, I was looking at the VFR map en route and the valley looked like it could be reasonably sized on that, so I thought it might be ok. There are so many unusual locations in the Andes that I thought it was feasible that a city might be nestled in there (from the map, obviously it was a different state of affairs when I turned up ;) ).
My primary interest in MSFS so far has been the geography/sightseeing, so I’m a little far behind when it comes to flying properly, therefore I don’t use any flight plans etc. Hopefully that will come at some point but it’s pretty much all vfr for me so far. With AP on longer trips or repeat trips.
And a lot of us here are using FSEconomy to provide some structure around the game.
Also, welcome! We’re familiar with the working title stuff here, that’s the Garmin mod etc, right?