2847

Yeah, the “tablet” interface is written in VueJS, so it wouldn’t be a massive challenge to make it portable.

2848

I have to say I’m a little disappointed with the direction they seem to want to take it. It sounds like the economy will be pretty flat, a la Truck Simulator. I’d prefer it to have more of a sense of progression (Neofly seems to handle this well).

2849

I think I’m going to give neofly another go. I had bought six months of onair, and while I like the mission structure, you wind up getting stuck flying the same plane over and ver again, and because it’s about transporting passengers and cargo, you just go for the plane that can handle the greatest payload.

2850

That seems to be the Achilles heel of many of these. @Ginger_Yellow 's comparison to Truck Simulator is apt though. It’s hard to come up with a bigger meta direction when the general use of aircraft is either passengers or cargo.

I do like NeoFly’s use of VIPs as missions though. Maybe having some time sensitive things would also press for fast aircraft, or the need to deliver something to a seaport, etc. Or, once they add-in helicopters, here’s hoping there will be some uses of that for different missions.

2851

The model I’d envision isn’t trucking simulator, it’s more like Forza or Gran Turismo. There are “classes” of aircraft and you’d have to graduate from one to the next. You’d work for an international charter company that would dynamically generate missions around the world depending on the class of aircraft you qualify for. As you gain “XP”, you could take a checkride in a different aircraft and qualify to fly that one. Initially, you would only be rated for VFR - so the missions you would get would only be in parts of the world where it was daytime and VFR weather. Eventually, you could fly IFR missions. And so forth.

A lot of the current offerings seem to revolve around running your own airline, or buying FBOs, but the economic sim isn’t deep enough, and anyway, it’s a flight simulator. The emphasis is on flying, not managing AI pilots.

Anyway, of the current bunch, I think Neofly is closest, but I haven’t put a lot of time into it. I will give it another shot this weekend.

2852

That’s Neofly, basically, save for the VFR and IFR parts.

2853

But what if it didn’t tether you to a specific place based on an the location of an imaginary aircraft? What if it assigned you missions based on where it was day right now, and the weather was good? Or there were real world emergencies (get these supplies to Florida during a hurricane!)?

SOMEONE HIRE ME TO DESIGN AIRCRAFT CHARTER COMPANY SIMS!

2854

I thought Neofly did have real world emergencies? I have to admit I haven’t done any of that more quirky stuff yet, just airstrip to airstrip ferrying missions

I think the Deadstick people could use a hand…

2855

Maybe they should have an over-arching goal of being able to buy a space shuttle to leave planet Earth. That would be a nice monetary goal?

2856

Has anyone made or is making extended tutorials? I’m sure I’m not the only one who would love more instruction and exercises on how to do everything as for real as possible. Watching endless youtube videos is educational but I’d rather be flying than watching.

Even just prompts rather than assists that do things for you would be great. For example rather than auto mixture, a “flight instructor” that mentions you are running too rich/lean.

2857

image

2858

Why not both? I’ve usually got YT running on a second monitor while I fly.

2859

YES! Is that available with good detail from somewhere?

2860

I bought a set of IFR lessons from Aerosoft. I’ve found them helpful. I believe they have others.

2861

It does, but only on a local scale. It uses some Bing API to get info on carcrashed and fires and such and can generate based on that. He also has a few humanitarian missions set up, but those are fairly limited. I haven’t done much with them, though, to be fair.

It really depends what you’re looking for – the world of flight simming (and aviation in general) is so vast no one set of tutorials can cover it all. Since you mention mixture it sounds like you’re looking for some basic instruction… if you’re not averse to paying, I have heard a lot of good things about FSFlyingSchool over the years, and it’s now available for MSFS. If you look at some of the demo videos on their site, you can see it really is like having a virtual instructor in the cockpit with you.

There’s also a really great website, flightsimbooks.com, which has archives of vintage flight sim books. (Didn’t see that one coming, did you?) The ones about, say, destinations in FS4 don’t have much value these days other than nostalgia, but a few of them are really good introductions to the basic aviation topics which don’t change much – lift and drag were lift and drag 30 years ago just as they are today.

I’d recommend, depending on your particular interest, Leaning to Fly with Flight Simulator , Flying on Instruments with Flight Simulator, and/or Realistic Commercial Flying with Flight Simulator. (That last is probably slightly more out of date feeling, but still useful and fun.)

Of course, the FAA’s bible, the Pilot’s Handbook of Aeronautical Knowledge, is also available free online, if you want to suck from the firehose of information and read the same thing student pilots do.

2862

Thanks for the suggestions. I’ve actually been reading and watching videos on this stuff so much that google seems to think I’m in the market for a Beechcraft.

2863

Naw man, msfs2020 is still wet behind the ears. Give it a year or two. See the lettering on the nose? Mria, dream. You and me both brother.

2864

I want to try and land that on @Editer 's baby airstrip LOL.

2865

Only when they add in il-2’s damage and crash simulation lol

2866

Hooray, my Honeycomb throttle quandrant shipped so I can finally play this.