1664

I’m guessing they hit active pause when they get close to the animals, then fly their drone to the right spot, setup the camera angle, then unpause and record the plane flying by.

1665

They really need to get the flight recording back into the game.

1666

Agreed on the flight recording. I get the feeling they thought that recording the video was a decent substitute, but it’s far different than being able to replay and change views/angles/etc. to see exactly why you pranged the plane…

Got the Honeycomb Yoke today and set it up. Wow, we’ve come a long way since last time I tried a yoke, the CH in the 90’s. I realized of the three real planes I’ve flown (SubLogic’s very own Cessna 310, T-34, and F-15D), only one had a yoke. I’m definitely more comfortable with a joystick for aircraft control due to all the experience, but I could get used to this.

But man, I love the switches on this thing. It’s so cool to flip on the battery and beacon and then actually turn the magneto switch to Start! And then flip on the various lights and other systems.

Makes me really anxious for the Throttle to complete the set, though it’s working well with my Thrustmaster T.16000m’s throttle and pedals for now. Only thing is that throttle is really geared for use on the left side (as in fighters), and the yokes hat/buttons assume you’re going to be managing the yoke with your left hand and manipulating the throttle with your right. I LOVE having the trim right on the yoke – much more natural to use in flight.

All of the switches on the yoke were preconfigured perfectly in MSFS. Just had to swap a few throttle assignments for things I’d previously had assigned to the stick’s base.

The movement and smoothness really feels like a real plane. Highly recommend this thing.

Guess I’ll selll that CH Yoke I’ve had sitting in my garage.

Best impulse buy this year!

1667

Nice.

I wish I had the space to throw together a cockpit like some people do with all the displays and switches. I saw someplace even sells a $2000 Garmin1000 sim device.

I’ll stick with my t16000.m set for now, but I will be thinking about the honeycomb products this next year.

1668

I forgot the very first real plane I ever took the controls on, a Mooney 231. Also had a yoke. So in real life I’m 50/50. But when it comes to sim hours, I’m 99/1. :)

It really seems harder to get precision with yokes. I’m not sure why they were invented when joysticks work so well.

1669

Congrats on your yoke! I’m VERY envious. I agree about the trim wheel on the yoke; this feature has made me a much better sim pilot. As for the precision of a yoke vs joystick, I actually have a harder time with a joystick, because they hurt my hands after a while and generally feel too twitchy. With a yoke, I’m much better at making gentle turns and minimal movements. Rudder pedals help too, of course. And yes, trim!

1670

Using the knob on the side of the twcs throttle that comes with the t16000.m for trim seems really sensitive to me. Maybe I just need a lot more practice.

What graphics settings are people using? I’d been using high, but just tried ultra and the performance was ok. I’m not sure it looked any better.

I flew phog - phny in hawaii. Saw some odd things at phog where there were jets, and jetways, but the building wasn’t there.

1671

I’m still bopping around doing VFR stuff in small planes. Very enjoyable, but I guess I need to learn the sim-y stuff at some point. My biggest issue at the moment is losing altitude in order to land; is there a safe way to do this reasonably quickly?

I guess with the VFR stuff it’s usually the case where I’m having to locate the airport first, and then it’s tough to get down from altitude; it’s not like I’m beginning my approach from miles away. I guess I need to bail out of there once I’ve located the runway and then re-approach from several miles away?

For FSE and the like, is it necessary to know all the stuff like leaving from a gate, speaking to the tower, basically how to use all the knobs and switches, or can you get away with not knowing that?

1672

You can start your plane powered up on the runway. There’s no penalty in FSE.

And I think I’m throwing the towel in on OnAir for now. The UI is really pretty, but is also really clunky and non-functional. (As opposed to FSE, where it’s reasonably functional, but ugly.) Nothing links to anything else. (Try searching for an aircraft, then clicking through to the airport, then trying to find out which other aircraft are at that airport. You can’t do it without going back to the high-level search.) MFS aircraft are sparse, so starting out in Stratus is a real pain because you can’t find rentals. The manual is a pdf rather than a wiki so is constantly out of date. Apparently rentals are forever; owners can’t retrieve them, and many are taken up by free-trial players who will never return. I’ll wait until they iron out the kinks.

1673

For the most part it allows you to be the pilot you are and want to be. You can turn on all the help in MSFS you want and need and just fly small things for fun (in FSE.) You can start your flight on the runway and take of/fly any way you want. Literally you can crash land within a mile or three of the destination, pull up the FSE simconnect and end the flight and it’ll mark as a success. (Just turn on the parking brake, which is the key to do that.) That really opens you up to trying things differently. Intense weather? Why not. Crazy airports you’ve never been to in the dark? Let’s do it.

Since you set your start and destination airport at the main menu, the GPS map (V key by default) will show you the path to fly, even if you don’t want to touch a glass screen or autopilot at all. Get to the end of the gps map and can’t see it? Fly down and attempt a landing anyway.

Because it is so hands off, if you’re going to dip your toes into the meta sim on top of MSFS, FSE is really easy to do it with.

1674

Thanks for the answers guys ^^

1675

I’ve successfully ended flights for FSE in trees a mile from the airport, upside down on the runway, etc. I’m also lazy and typically don’t taxi, I have the assists on for copilot checklists and ATC, essentially I’m playing a game here. I do some serious flights too, but the joy is, to me, the travel, seeing the views as the scroll by, etc.

One thing I do though is slowly get better and better at VFR and IFR flying, using occasional IFR flight plans, flying by VOR, learning the autopilot and glass cockpit stuff. Every airport is a little bit of a learning experience.

That’s what I meant by pick your own flying style. Don’t do things if you don’t feel like they aren’t fun to you or too much to learn for the time being.

1676

Huh. I would have taken you for the kind of guy who’d taxi it to the parking spot, line it up just right, shut it down and then call it a day.

I hope that by the time my box is ready for this (3080 and G2 get delivered) there’s some 3rd party machines available that lack glass cockpits. GPS navigation is like cheating. If there’s no fokkers to shoot or reds to bomb, let me at least have the challenge of having to collimate information from four or five arcane gauges. What’s the civvie equivalent of TACAN? VOR? I want to do that. In a DC-3. In dirty weather. Hauling rubber dog shit out of Hong Kong.

It’s great, and very encouraging to see you guys finding such joy in the gamification FSE brings. Some people may bitch that this should have been an integral part of the game, but they have forgotten the face of their fathers. 3rd party add-ons are part and parcel of the flight simulator experience, this is the way.

1677

VOR provides a directional beacon to a fixed station. Many also have DME, which provides distance as well. It’s pretty easy to set up a flight plan using only VOR stations. I think I might actually try that: set myself up with a steam gauge aircraft with zero vis and try to do a full IFR flight from takeoff to landing.

Is there a steam gauge aircraft with old school autopilot and radios in the standard edition? C152?

1678

Interesting article here about training for panel failures in glass cockpits. I don’t think the failure system in FS2020 is robust enough (yet) to support this kind of thing, but it would be interesting to have to deal with

1679

One of the things the current flight simulator distinctly lacks imo is technically interesting aircraft. It’s a great and beautiful world they built, but all you have to fly in it is vanilla glass cockpits and little bush planes. Now bush planes are awesome fun and clearly worth the price of admission on their own.

But compare the DCS stable: vanilla western glass cockpits like the hornet, viper and hog. Odd russian iron from the 60s in the MiG-21 and Mi-8. Classic western fighter jets like the F-14, F-5 and the F-86, all with beautiful analogue instrumentation and systems and then there’s the utter strangeness of a honest-to-God Swedish attack jet from the 70s, including a nav/attack computer that inputs with ten round buttons in the pit, and outputs numbers and lines on the HUD.

Of course DCS is ten years old if not more. Many of the above mentioned machines are relatively expensive 3rd party addons. I can’t wait to see how the MSFS2020 ecosystem looks in a year or five.

1680

The A320 is a bit more interesting. Feels a bit like operating the space shuttle with its near analogue MFDs and button-and-switch controlled operation.

I say this as someone who spent hours meticulously following checklists from the actual SSOM to fly the shuttle in SSMS.

1681

@Matt_W has some fair points about OnAir: the search functions aren’t (yet) as streamlined as they could be, but worst case it’s usually a couple extra clicks. And yes, there are fewer MSFS aircraft right now, although I’ve had no trouble finding rentals myself.

FWIW, though, rentals from other players are definitely not “forever”. By default, if you rent your aircraft to another player, it’s only for a couple days, and the UI forces you to pick some sort of return date. So if someone has rented an aircraft for a couple months, it’s their own fault. Maybe the UI feature that forces you to set a return date is new?

To me, OnAir is more interesting than FSE. It’s more of a complete “game.” I like having a visual plot of every flight I’ve ever done, including dots that record various in-flight events. (I wish MSFS had this!) I like that OnAir rewards me for good procedures (not stalling, beacon, flaps, landing/taxi lights, planning an alternate destination in case of trouble, landing in bad weather, etc). I like the idea of gaining XP, filling out a skill tree, and passing checkrides before I can use fancier aircraft. I like leaderboards that focus not on cash on hand, but rather reputation, return on assets, company value, outsourcing expenses, etc. I like having three worlds with three different rulesets, including AI pilots etc. I like that it’s relatively easy to get your own FBO running; in FSE, an FBO is a money pit.

To me, the biggest downside of OnAir is that it’s a subscription service. I’m still debating whether I want to pony up. If it were free, like FSE, it’d be a no-brainer for me. Also, for some people, OnAir is probably just “too much.” To play optimally, you have to be willing to start every flight cold and dark, and taxi at least at the start (though not at the end) of your flight. You don’t have to start cold and dark, but you suffer reputational penalties if you don’t. Also, I imagine some people won’t like having to pass a checkride before piloting anything faster than a single-engine piston land aircraft. I like that RPG element, but I know some players would hate it. I haven’t done a checkride yet; I don’t know how hard they are.

I’ll never give up FSE as long as it’s free. But FSE leans too far in the other direction for me. If I play it a lot, I start caring less about the flying and more about getting it over with fast so I can collect the pay.

1682

VOR for sure and as Matt mentioned, DME if they have it. One issue is … we have no charts! You can pull up airports, kinda, but true VOR style means you’d chart where you leave and where you go and track the radials you’re getting from nearby VORs. I know that’s been a 3rd party add-on for many flight simulators so give it time. Even something like simming a tablet with that stuff on it would help.

There will also be many old school large haulers coming, of that I’m also sure. No glass in those cockpits.

@schurem it appears Carenado released the Mooney M20R Ovation. It’s a good halfway for steam versus glass panel. It has a smaller and older Garmin but the older model here could be flown completely traditionally.

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1683

SkyVector is great for this. You can plot a route on IFR Low or High altitude tracks, like this one from Kuala Lumpur to Bangkok-Don Muang:

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Then click the NavLog button and it gives you a chart like this you can print out:

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Includes VOR frequencies and headings. And if you use the right flight level and speed (use cruising speed and altitude, e.g. FL260 and 330 kts for the TBM 930), will give pretty accurate ETEs for dead reckoning. (It pulls wind speed from real-time conditions.) You can actually use SkyVector to file real flight plans.