Skipper
2767
Shit, sorry. That is correct. It’s for instrumentation. You may be out of luck?
Squirrel’s take on it:
Oh, wow, the Longitude looks super nice as a starter jet, way slicker than the CJ4. Guess I’m going to have to get the upgrade now.
Editer
2769
If you have the old system up and running, you can transfer the data folder (with the Community and Official folders) to the new system first, and then just select that folder for your data install. Then it won’t download anything new.
Yeah, the pitot heater only heats the pitot tube. When you are flying in potential icing conditions there are a few different things to worry about. The most obvious one is structural icing – this is modelled in MSFS although it’s a bit aggressive. (The visual model is VERY aggressive, from what I’ve heard knowledgeable folks say the physical model is aggressive, too, but not as much.)
The other thing that can cause a symptom like @IkeVandergraaf described, if it’s in a carbureted plane, would be carb icing. This is when the cooling effect due to the pressure drop in the carburetor causes moisture in the air to condense and freeze inside the carb. Over time this will block air flow to the engine and starve it of power.
The solution to this is the carb heat. Turning on carb heat will route some warm air through the carb to melt any of the ice that’s been forming in there. (In real life this can cause your engine to stutter and run roughly for a few moments as the ice breaks off and is physically ingested.)
I am fairly certain, though not 100% positive, that MSFS models carb icing. So if you find this happening to you again, @IkeVandergraaf, and you’re in a carb’d plane, try finding the carb heat and turning it on for a few minutes to see if that helps.
If not (or if you’re in an injected plane) you’re probably fighting structural icing, and if you’re not in a plane with deicing kit you have only one option: get out of the icing zone. This can be done by either descending or, at times, ascending. But in a small plane that’s already in icing conditions going down is generally the safer bet.:D
(As a side note, even planes that have deicing gear installed are sometimes not certified for FIKI (“flying into known icing”) operations – in them it’s meant as a lifesaver to get you out of trouble you may find yourself in, not to allow you to fly through a snowstorm.)
Do be aware that the Longitude is one of the “premium” planes, and as such is encrypted and not (currently) able to be modded to the extent that the basic planes are. At Working Title we have had our eyes on the Longitude and would like to bring some of our magic to it should we get a feasible way to do it.
We have enhanced our G3000 mod to work in the Longitude. (The real airframe would use the 5000, but the one in sim shares the 3000 and just orients the TSC vertically instead of horizontally like it is in, say, the TBM.) So you can at least get that. But the flight model and system tweaks we’ve brought to the CJ4 won’t be there for you.
Yet.
Skipper
2772
A quick flight out of KSFO (San Francisco) after reloading on the new PC and cranking all the details up to max. There is an amazing level of detail I was missing.
Flying over this hill with the iconic sign I was struck by being able to see mountain bike paths winding down the hillside:
Another quick screenshot, how would you like to have been a student at a high school with flyovers so detail in this game you can read your school and team name. Amazing.
Better screenshots when I get everything else hooked up.
Skipper
2773
Okay yeah, more screenshots, sorry. I’m just blown away sitting this close to this resolution.
Seattle this time.
Flying the Long EZ towards the city:
A quick bank towards the Space Needle:
Excellent night lighting and weather:
Pedro
2774
Very nice Skipper, looks fantastic. I worked just out of shot to the right of your first screenshot in SSF for several years. I still haven’t flown around there in MSFS! Too much to do…
Love that shot of Century Link Field too. I wasn’t aware they had lighting inside the stadium like that.
I love the high school stadiums as well, they add some colour and personality. Like, all St George, Utah’s teams are called the Dixie Flyers/Trailblazers etc which I found amusing. It turns out the founders thought it might be a good place to grow cotton(it wasn’t), make it the Dixie of the west, and the name stuck.
Skipper
2775
That’s a scenery pack adding some details. I don’t remember the cost but it adds some details to the Seattle area including better night lighting of the buildings and around the fields, etc. I think it also added touch ups to the Space Needle. The San Francisco shots were just the standard streamed graphics.
I also flew around Manhattan and over to the Statue of Liberty during live weather last night to see differences in lighting there. Stock building night lights all look a bit too similar. The Statue looked fantastic though, as it was modified this last North America update.
I can’t wait for this to finally come to Xbox so that I can join you guys on your world journeys. I did look into buying a new PC so that I can play this with a playable frame rate, but I just can’t afford it right now.
IT’S LUMEN FIELD, MICROSOFT.
COMPLETELY UNPLAYABLE.
Timex
2778
I feel like the biggest stumbling block for getting this on the XSX is going to be figuring out how to make a workable control scheme without a keyboard and mouse.
Nah, it works great with the controller on PC. I played it enough to know that. Only problem for me was not getting a playable frame rate.
Skipper
2780
It plays fine with a controller to be honest. It’s not an amazing joystick, but it works.
Timex
2781
Ya, but you have a mouse and keyboard as well on the PC.
You can do a lot of basic flying stuff with just the controller, but from what I saw in my limited exposure on the PC, you have to go to the keyboard for a ton of stuff, or use the mouse to actually operate stuff inside the cockpit.
There’s just too much stuff to control to map to the gamepad.
Like, how would you do stuff like interact with the nav system, or do ILS settings, etc.
Skipper
2782
Good point. I have no idea how they would implement those. More on the dropdown menu maybe?
Skipper
2783
Did they already change the field name? Also, we have a ton of work stuff with CenturyLink and it is nuts having to change multiple email allowances and lists just for the change to their email domain. Bleh.
They actually do have all that already on the PC. I never touched the mouse or keyboard. You can do everything with the gamepad. You have to zoom into the dashboard and once it’s in that mode, it changes what the gamepad does in that particular view, so you can interact with the nav system and such.
I haven’t played with the gamepad extensively (I have one, but only use it for drone mode in combination with a dedicated control page on one of my Stream Decks) but I have a friend who recently went out of the country for a few weeks and was relegated to playing on a gamepad, and he had similar comments – it was surprisingly easy and effective. And this is a professional pilot who has the standard yoke/throttle/pedal/trackIR setup at home. The control wasn’t as precise, and he couldn’t nail landing challenges the way he usually would, but it worked well enough to enjoy the flight experience
What I do know, from speaking to the folks there, is that they are super dedicated to making it playable on the XBox because they see that as a huge untapped market. I have a feeling that folks will be really surprised by just how playable it is when it comes out on that platform. But we’ll see what happens.
