PDA

View Full Version : Flight Sims



Pages : [1] 2 3

Freude am Fahren
March 22nd, 2014, 10:30 AM
Once again, I thought we had a thread already, but I guess not. I've been reading up on Prepar3d (I know there was a thread at our last stop), and it looks really promising. So I just bought it, it's downloading at home as I sit here at work.

With Flight being a complete flop, it looks like this is the star right now. Surely not the same following as FSX, but with it being almost completely compatible, many developers are releasing simultaneously for both. And even FSX dedicated items work in many cases. So why not take advantage of P3D's advantages in performance?

I've also been wanting to get back into DCS: Warthog. The biggest reason I got away from that was not the complexity, but the dexterity, you could say. With my joystick, one screen, it was dificult to find all the buttons, and keep track of keyboard hotkeys, not to metnion see where you want to look while mainting good flight control. I hope all of that will improve, as I've finally ordered TrackIR. And I also pre-ordered the new Seitek X55. I think that will make it much more enjoyable. Also still need to figure out how I want to set up my desk for triple monitors.

As for War Thunder, I think I need to read into it a bit more. It can be fun and the ease of joining into a multiplayer session certainly is appealing, but I haven't figured out the way you progress in this game, so I'm woefully undermachined in most battles.

KillerB
March 22nd, 2014, 12:18 PM
Well, Prepa3d *IS* FSX with updates - Lockheed Martin bought all the IP from Microsoft.

I don't have it but then that's because I don't have my desktop PC set up out here in CA and probably won't anytime soon. Plus, I'd rather spend my time and money flying for real. :)

Rikadyn
March 22nd, 2014, 06:02 PM
Warthunder, you are pretty underpowered to begin with, especially if you play certain countries early on, because as it is now your plan is an old used model when you get it, and you have to upgrade it to get it performing properly. Kinda a balance mechanic to keep the player from rushing too quickly through the game.

Tom Servo
March 23rd, 2014, 07:18 AM
I'm really digging on Prepare3d 2.0, it's nice to see the technology in the game finally catching up to like early 2000s levels (seriously, I remember buying 3D graphics cards back in the late 90s and we have to wait until 2014 to get ~FSX to support them?) What I really need more than anything else to mess around with that more is a significantly less shitty computer desk. Got no room for anything, I can't even have the joystick, throttle, and keyboard on the desk at the same time.

Freude am Fahren
March 23rd, 2014, 07:44 AM
I only tried p3d briefly last night, but I got bunch of crashes, and freezes. It was saying my computer was out of memory, but it wasn't even close. I'm guessing it's bc it's 32-bit and can only utilize 4gb? But i wasn't even on max settings or near a city. I'm going to have to look into that. Surely the game doesn't constantly try to use more memory than it's programmed to use?

Tom Servo
March 23rd, 2014, 05:42 PM
That's surprising, I have had no problems at all with crashes or freezes.

Freude am Fahren
March 24th, 2014, 07:46 AM
I tuned the settings a bit and haven't had any problems. Mem usage hovers around 2gb. I need to keep messing with some setting, as I know p3d now utilizes the GPU much more than FSX and even v1.x.

By the way, while trying to install a scenery add-on for FSX (ORBX PNW demo), my registry apparently points to the wrong place (an old FSX install) and thus I can't install it. I tried FSX Registy fix but that didn't seem to work.

[edit] Went through my registry and manually changed every reference to the old location to the new one, ugh. But it worked.

lostnight
March 26th, 2014, 02:15 PM
I went to the Prepar3d site, and it confused me, looks like it is marketed more as actually flight simulator lessons for pilots rather than a flight sim for gamers who want something realistic but don't plan on getting an actual license.

Freude am Fahren
March 27th, 2014, 06:41 AM
It is a bit odd. Best I can figure, it's all just legalese in order to get around some kind of rights agreement they have in order to continue the platform. I got an academic license. It says in small letters in the corner "Academic License." Other than that, it's the same as the other main version.

Tom Servo
March 28th, 2014, 06:28 AM
Yeah, short version:

Microsoft decided to abandon the Flight Simulator franchise and instead start the Microsoft Flight project. It was a free-to-play simulator that was dumbed down a bit (though still not terrible), and then everything but the first part of the world and a couple of planes were pay add-ons. It didn't take off at all - too simmy for your average gamer, not simmy enough for people into sims, and after 6 months or so, Microsoft abandoned it.

Around that same time, Lockheed bought up the code and almost all of the actual Flight Simulator team and brought them in house. Part of the agreement with Microsoft was that Lockheed would not try to compete in the entertainment market against Microsoft Flight, so they market it as an educational tool and only the professional, $300 or so license was available. After Flight was abandoned, Lockheed came out with the "Academic License". However, I think Lockheed hasn't bothered to spend the time and money to get Microsoft to change the original agreement, so if you look in the EULA for Flight Simulator, it actually says you cannot use it for entertainment purposes.

Extremely silly, but at this point everyone pretty much knows that Lockheed are winking everytime they mention something like that. It is FSX updated to work with modern, dual-core processors and use DirectX 11.

Freude am Fahren
March 28th, 2014, 07:38 AM
Yeah, I found it a bit odd, that they didn't rework the agreement when Flight was abandoned and release V2 as a normal sim. I guess it's just easier this way, though for the end user, it could be a mess legally (not that anyone would ever be pursued).

Freude am Fahren
April 17th, 2014, 04:00 PM
X-55 arrived today. First impression: It's (They're?) massive. Further impressions to come.

Tom Servo
April 21st, 2014, 07:40 AM
My X-45 is super old and kinda gross, curious to see how the X-55 is.

Just installed Prepar3d v2.2 but no chance to play it yet. Went for a flight with my wife, my sister, and my sister's friend (he was the pilot) in a Piper Arrow II up the east side of the Sierra Nevada range on Saturday, landing at Bishop, then heading back down here.

I got to sit in the copilot seat on the trip back from Bishop and was pretty happy that I knew what nearly everything was, except that I don't think I'd ever seen an exhaust temp gauge before, which the pilot explained helped to figure out what the optimal fuel mixture was while in flight - when it's off, the exhaust temps drop. I also understood just about everything I heard over the radio, though I definitely had a much harder time immediately recognizing the plane's call sign when said over the radio than the pilot did, I would have missed messages for us far too often.

Definitely fun to go on that long of a flight doing the real thing and to hear all the radio traffic going on. I feel reasonably confident too that, if something had happened, I probably could have managed to get the plane back to the right airport and land it without ruining too many people's days.

Random
April 21st, 2014, 09:31 AM
DId you get any actual stick (yoke?) time?

Tom Servo
April 21st, 2014, 10:45 AM
Naah, not this time out. The guy who was flying the plane definitely takes all the rules and procedures about flying extremely seriously, so I didn't even bother asking. I have done a bit in another plane once though, I found it much easier to do than on a sim, since you can actually feel everything.

Freude am Fahren
April 21st, 2014, 05:49 PM
First impressions of the X-55:

Makes Sims (especially DCS) much more fun and user friendly having all of those buttons and axes. Hardly going to the keyboard anymore.

Very sturdy feeling almost all around.
I like having the "toggles" just be two separate buttons rather than real toggle switches. Give a lot more options for buttons.

Software is a bit annoying. I can never get the profiler to recognize both the throttle and stick for axis adjustments. But I can still program both. Humph. Also I can't figure out how to unload a profile. I loaded an msfs profile that replaced the buttons with macros and basically had to go through and put them all back to normal. I don't know why you'd use that instead of just assigning in the sim anyway, other than in one of the other two 'modes' for extra buttons.

I can't get any game to recognize the little slider on the throttle near your thumb position. The profiler sees it, but games don't and the game controllers dialogue doesn't see, to either. Same thing for the mouse nipple so far. That would be perfect for slew in DCS.

It comes with the strongest spring installed and I immediately swapped it for the lightest. Feels really good. Just a bit lighter than my old sidewinder was. I might try the next one up. Kinda wished the throttles could get even lighter than they are on the lightest setting but that might get better with some break in.

Keep in mind this is my first HOTAS or even high quality throttle, but I love it.

I also need to rethink my desk space. I can't go full nose-down without angling or moving it off the desk.

Drachen596
April 22nd, 2014, 05:30 PM
Did he give you a big thing about flying lean of peak vs rich of peak Tom?

I dont know if there is a flight school near you but the one here does intro flights for 100 bucks which are an hour or so flight which gets you some stick time plus some ground preflight stuff.

Tom Servo
April 23rd, 2014, 05:15 AM
He did not, actually, and of course I only remember some of it anyway.

There are a ton of flight schools around here, and I've done the intro flight thing, which was great. But it's clearly an expensive hobby and, right now, I've got enough of those!

KillerB
April 24th, 2014, 04:26 PM
Honestly the hardest thing for me has always been the radio. My hearing isn't the greatest and the sound quality of the radio usually isn't good.

Freude am Fahren
April 24th, 2014, 05:01 PM
Yeah, I always felt that way too. Especially since it seems everyone on the comms seems to want to say the least possible in the quickest way possible. The shorthand combined with the speed at which many pilots and controllers speak is tough to get used to.

Freude am Fahren
April 28th, 2014, 02:16 PM
I still haven't found a good resource on how to use the HUD software. First of all, when I start up, it (usually) has two icons in the tray, right clicking does nothing, and there is no difference in their icon or name. It seems like you need to open two instances of HUD, one for the throttle, one for the stick. I can't figure out how to get one instance to recognize both at once. This seems to only be for calibration/axes, as the program can see button presses in the programming tab from both.

I would normally forego the software, but it seems without it, you can't use the mouse nipple or slider buttons. Even with them programmed, they don't work well. The mouse clearly needs to be calibrated, but I can't figure out how. I'm going to email Saitek about this.

I also can't get a DCS profile to work. It will load, but doesn't actually seem to work in the game. I wonder if I'm going something wrong too maybe? It'd be nice if there was some kinda of info on how to use it.

Aside from the (unsurprisingly) bad software, the hardware is awesome, and programming the buttons/axes through the sim/game works just fine, but you lose a bit of functionality. For example, if the game doesn't allow you to assign an axis for something (like speedbrake in A10-C), you can program an axis to hit button macros for a given percentage through the profiler. At least, you're supposed to be able to. And of course that slider and mouse are useless without it.

Reynard
April 29th, 2014, 05:15 PM
fwiw Russ I've been using a modded X52 for many years now and I gave up on the Saitek software not long after getting it. It was nothing but frustrating and a time waster in my experience. Luckily since I pretty much just virtually fly stuff from the 60's or older, I generally have more then enough switches, toggles, sliders etc. without the need for any mode switching and macros.

Tom Servo
January 8th, 2018, 02:28 PM
Crossposting from VR thread.

X-Plane 11 has native VR support now:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vpKlKyoO0lc

Freude am Fahren
November 19th, 2018, 03:31 PM
Just got X-Plane 11. FSX was getting a bit tired (and messy with the add-ons), and I just wanted to try something new.

Love it, except ATC is useless compared to FSX, and I enjoy pretending to be an airline pilot, so that's a let down. Supposedly 11.3 improves ATC.

Gonna need to up the PC game for higher detail, but even at the level I'm running it looks as good or better than FSX.

Now time to look into add-ons to improve it even more.

Also finally put to use those rudder pedals I got from Reynard.

dodint
November 20th, 2018, 09:14 AM
Does this version have Mars? I haven't used X-Plane in over 10 years.

Tom Servo
November 20th, 2018, 01:44 PM
I wonder if the VR has improved any, I haven't really messed with it since it came out.

I also felt like it wasn't that hard to look much better than FSX, did they ever get hardware acceleration patched onto that?

Tom Servo
September 30th, 2019, 12:23 PM
Looks like there was a big media event for the upcoming MS Flight Simulator yesterday, with the main schtick being that reporters would fly around the area by MS headquarters in the sim and then get into an actual Cessna and do the same (except for take off and landing, that was handled by an instructor in the plane with them). The visuals look pretty bonkers, and I like that it sounds like what I'd been hoping for, that tech like Google Earth would be used, is happening. Satellite imagery over real world terrain data.

It's surprisingly hard to find the set of images that MS clearly gave out (more than one article had identical pictures).

https://cnet2.cbsistatic.com/img/lxrFRtdzMd4fR7Xc6Iwo_Be32Xs=/1092x0/2019/06/09/fe18086b-e7f6-495d-8d38-022a53c5b33d/flight-simulator-e3-screenshot-sunset-logo.jpg

https://news-cdn.softpedia.com/images/news2/microsoft-flight-simulator-2020-uses-bing-maps-dataset-new-trailer-released-527627-2.jpg

https://compass-ssl.xbox.com/assets/7e/32/7e32e6c9-73a0-4488-ba4e-476006ab8ce8.jpg?n=0000004_Gallery-0_1350x759_02.jpg

Excited about this, though I haven't seen any mention of VR yet.

https://www.polygon.com/2019/9/30/20885197/microsoft-flight-simulator-bing-maps-hands-on-demo

Rare White Ape
September 30th, 2019, 01:36 PM
Yep this one is definitely on my list.

It’ll be cross-play with Xbox One as well, so even console plebs can enjoy it.

Rare White Ape
October 1st, 2019, 01:47 AM
Here’s a fairly long-winded but interesting video on the media event. Mostly footage of real-world flying so feel free to skip to the b-roll footage of the game. Salient points:

Accessible ease-of-use for flight sim n00bs

Real world map and building data pulled from Microsoft’s own mapping service, combined with laser-scanned terrain and handmade landmarks, as well as procedural terrain generation from 2D terrain imagery (I guess it will be hierarchical based on how popular certain areas will be)

Full weather system that affects the physics and gameplay, with seasonal changes to come as development progresses (somewhat of a GAAS model I’m guessing)

VR not implemented right now but will come in a future update

And for the cashed-up sadists there was mention of support for full motion and FFB flight yokes as they come to market


https://youtu.be/UYXV5S8Mpx0

Freude am Fahren
October 4th, 2019, 12:20 PM
Yeah, I can't wait. I've been enjoying XP11, which felt like a huge jump from FSX, even with a lot of mods. I've been doing a lot of my own scenery improvements, and flying VFR in locations I know, but this is beyond anything right now.

I have a feeling this will dictate my PC upgrade I talked about in that thread. Especially once VR is available. This in 4k or VR :eek:

Of course, most of the focus has been the visuals so far, but impressions on the flight models were good from the event. The last parts (IFR, ATC, systems, etc) is still to be seen. The main thing I do in XP11 is pretend I'm a commercial airline pilot :lol:

Rare White Ape
October 4th, 2019, 02:43 PM
In terms of PC hardware, it will be a cross-play title on Xbox one, so even a mid-range system should handle it beautifully. So far every XB1 game I’ve played on my PC (esp Gears 5 and FH4) has run like a dream because they’re so well optimised.

Freude am Fahren
October 4th, 2019, 06:25 PM
I'm getting the feeling the X-Box version will be 'dumbed down,' though maybe that's not a great phrase for it.

As far as I know, this is being developed for the PC and ported to X-Box, not the other way around? Maybe I'm just being hopeful?

Rare White Ape
October 13th, 2019, 04:18 AM
Guys...

https://www.flightsimulator.com/insider-program-sign-up/

Sign up now!

Freude am Fahren
October 13th, 2019, 06:48 AM
Yup, signed up last week :)

Hope I get the tech alpha program.

Might be a bit out of date on hardware for it, but maybe that's good, they'll see how it performs on older machines :D

Freude am Fahren
October 23rd, 2019, 06:53 PM
Just tried to resubmit my hardware spec for the alpha program, but it's too late:( I checked yesterday and you still could, but my new GPU didn't arrive until today.

Maybe they'll pick me as a low spec test case :lol:

Rare White Ape
October 24th, 2019, 04:46 AM
Looks like I missed out.

Next phase then…

Tom Servo
October 24th, 2019, 06:16 AM
Huh, I signed up on the insider program but never heard anything about submitting tech specs. Meh.

Freude am Fahren
October 24th, 2019, 02:24 PM
There's a tab on the insider website for tech alpha sign up. After filling out some form boxes, they ask for a tech tool to run and generate a report on your tech specs that you upload to them.

Tom Servo
October 24th, 2019, 02:50 PM
There's an insider website?!?

I get this feeling like my initial sign-up didn't take in the way that I should have expected. That or I skimmed the welcome email.

Freude am Fahren
October 24th, 2019, 03:47 PM
https://www.flightsimulator.com/insider-home/

New Vid today.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i8TGT87Fxyw

Freude am Fahren
November 14th, 2019, 01:25 PM
:eek:


https://youtu.be/BCBgO6St9ug

Rare White Ape
November 14th, 2019, 01:40 PM
Lookin H4WT

Tom Servo
November 14th, 2019, 06:54 PM
Goddamn

Rare White Ape
November 26th, 2019, 03:36 AM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bw-opH4f8Qg

Freude am Fahren
November 26th, 2019, 10:12 AM
I watch a lot of (real) aviation videos on YouTube, and it seems like every top comments on recent ones is about how realistic FS2020 looks :lol:

Freude am Fahren
December 19th, 2019, 02:46 PM
Not much in the last couple updates, but feedback is rolling in from the first Tech Alpha group (I still haven't been picked :( )

Anyway, I thought this screenshot would be of interest here.

https://msgpwebsites.azureedge.net/fsi/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/Silverstone_50.png

Rare White Ape
December 19th, 2019, 09:23 PM
Drooool

Freude am Fahren
January 1st, 2020, 06:56 PM
Despite the next update scheduled for the 9th, they decided to get in the spirit of the season and launch a seasons teaser (/confirmation?)


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PQFmpakz9Yo&feature=emb_logo

Looks like a far leap from just winter textures. It appears to be dynamic based on the first shot of it falling in NY, and it affects buldings, autogen, and the ground. :up:

I'd love to see how it affects airport operations, if it does.

KillerB
January 1st, 2020, 08:58 PM
It looks great. I'll be interested to see if it has a truly realistic flight model. I remember playing pretty much every version of MFS from FS4 to FSX, and it seemed like the basic underlying physics engine just got improved over time and never truly rewritten. I never was able to put a plane in FS into a true aerodynamic spin.

Having my pilot's license and flown single engine Cessnas, Pipers, and Grummans, I put a Cessna 150 into a spin as part of my flight training (not required by this point, but I wanted to learn how to recognize and prevent or recover from a spin quickly as they cause a significant number of loss-of-control accidents) probably 20-30 times. It's pretty easy to do in a Cessna, but it just won't go in FSX or any earlier version I've experienced.

Freude am Fahren
January 2nd, 2020, 09:52 AM
They are taking a new approach to the flight model. I think it'll probably be closer to X-Plane 11 than FSX would be my guess.

drew
January 2nd, 2020, 12:08 PM
I've not done a flight sim in probably 15 years (IL2). I just want to hop into a plane and fly and watch the scenery. Hopefully they have a "dumb dumb" mode for just that, so I'm not having to fuck around with prop pitch and air/fuel mixtures, etc, etc.

I just want to see all the pretty

Rare White Ape
January 2nd, 2020, 12:35 PM
I’m pretty sure they will. One of their recent development videos mentioned making it easy to play on an Xbox controller, while also giving the option for hardcore flight nerds to make it as sadistic as they want.

drew
January 5th, 2020, 01:21 AM
Interesting...

Rare White Ape
January 24th, 2020, 02:30 PM
New rounds of Alpha invitations are taking place.

https://www.neowin.net/news/microsoft-flight-simulators-alpha-invitation-process-underway-and-more

Don't forget to log in and complete the survey - hopefully some of us will be invited soon!

Freude am Fahren
January 24th, 2020, 08:23 PM
Yup. Still not picked. :mad:

Freude am Fahren
February 16th, 2020, 07:36 AM
Cancel the last :D

https://i.giphy.com/media/V2AkNZZi9ygbm/source.gif

(I don't think that violates NDA?)

drew
February 16th, 2020, 07:40 AM
The question I have: will you be able to do mach 2 20' above the Sears Tower?

Rare White Ape
February 16th, 2020, 11:17 AM
:up: :up: :up:

Rare White Ape
February 22nd, 2020, 05:40 PM
All of the airports.

ALL. OF. THE. AIR. PORTS.


https://youtu.be/10P21oFOxAU

Pretty clever, if a bit labour intensive. And of course they’re using Bing Maps…

SkylineObsession
March 1st, 2020, 12:24 PM
I'm actually quite blown away by this game, and like drew i really hope that a n00b like me can play it easily enough.

Instantly recognised Queenstown's airport in the vid above, as have been plane spotting there before, and last year we stayed in a hotel there that's right across the road from the runway. I'm not an elite PCer, so it'd be the OneX for me, hopefully it still looks epic on that come release time.

drew
March 3rd, 2020, 03:22 PM
I do miss the IL-2 "guns hot" races.... you definitely didn't want to be in the lead.

Freude am Fahren
March 5th, 2020, 05:22 PM
So development is being kinda scaled back due to "health concerns". I assume that means beer virus.

Anyway, they did put out some crazy screenshots...

https://msgpwebsites.azureedge.net/fsi/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/Whitecaps-2048x808.png

Rare White Ape
March 5th, 2020, 10:16 PM
Wow, that looks insane. I went and checked that page too, have a look at the reflections on the underbelly here!

https://msgpwebsites.azureedge.net/fsi/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/Approach-scaled.jpeg

Freude am Fahren
April 20th, 2020, 10:54 AM
So, ED (Makers of DCS) have made ALL of their content free for the next month! And if you decide to purchase, nearly everything is 50% off.

Rare White Ape
April 20th, 2020, 06:25 PM
I saw that.

I want to try it all. I really, really want to.

But I’m into racing sims and have enough equipment and time and knowledge to do those games justice.

If I’m going to play DCS I want to do it properly. A mouse/kb or a friggin Xbox controller will not be enough to sate me.

So I will respectfully leave it alone and not try it, lest it end up costing me more thousands of dollars :lol:

Freude am Fahren
April 20th, 2020, 07:21 PM
Good call :lol:

It is intense, kinda like iRacing dedication to enjoy it.

Rare White Ape
April 21st, 2020, 12:42 AM
Yep. Just learning to fly one aircraft would be as tough as getting a rating in real life. I'd be doing it from scratch given that I have no flying background.

Thankfully with racing sims I've been brought up with motorsport my whole life so I know what's what.

Tom Servo
April 22nd, 2020, 10:53 AM
Minimum, recommended, and "ideal" specs have been put out by Microsoft.

Minimum:

CPU: Ryzen 3 1200 / Intel i5-4460
GPU: Radeon RX 570 / Nvidia GTX 770
VRAM: 2GB
RAM: 8GB
HDD: 150GB
Bandwidth: 5 Mbps


Recommended:

CPU: Ryzen 5 1500X / Intel i5-8400
GPU: Radeon RX 590 / Nvidia GTX 970
VRAM: 4GB
RAM: 16GB
HDD: 150GB
Bandwidth: 20 Mbps


Ideal:

CPU: Ryzen 7 Pro 2700X / Intel i7-9800X
GPU: Radeon VII / Nvidia RTX 2080
VRAM: 8GB
RAM: 32GB
HDD: 150GB (SSD Recommended)
Bandwidth: 50 Mbps

Rare White Ape
July 13th, 2020, 06:43 PM
FS 2020 comes out August 18 on PC.

There are three tiers:
Tier 1 (standard edition) is the cheapo version which is also available on Game Pass for PC.
Tier 2 and 3 (deluxe edition and premium deluxe edition) cost extra. They will contain more hand-built airports than the standard edition and more aircraft.

https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2020-07-13-microsoft-flight-simulator-launches-august-2020-on-pc

Freude am Fahren
July 14th, 2020, 04:40 PM
When I think how I've spent more than the difference between the Standard and Top Tier on a SINGLE aircraft for X-Plane, I'd say it's an Excellent Value.

Tom Servo
July 14th, 2020, 09:41 PM
Already ordered the fancy-pants version. I got a raise, figured I might as well treat myself.

Rare White Ape
July 15th, 2020, 12:00 AM
Nice :up:

Rare White Ape
July 30th, 2020, 02:11 AM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JXC4zGUHob8

Tom Servo
July 30th, 2020, 11:14 AM
I think I peed a little.

drew
August 1st, 2020, 11:26 AM
Holy shit.

Freude am Fahren
August 1st, 2020, 12:24 PM
Finally we can explore Pyongyang!


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RxFgpedl7cw

XHawkeye
August 1st, 2020, 02:46 PM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=haYruUbkkr4

Rare White Ape
August 6th, 2020, 03:46 AM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RiikrL67Iek

Freude am Fahren
August 6th, 2020, 07:13 AM
Definitely did that at COTA the other day. Thought about exploring Europe today, including the 'Ring. NDA prohibits sharing anything about it, but only a week and a half from launch.

Kinda funny how the AI think all those grandstands are buildings.

Kchrpm
August 6th, 2020, 01:50 PM
I look forward to videos of race track visits.

Jason
August 7th, 2020, 04:37 AM
This needs to hurry up and come to Xbox One X.

Rare White Ape
August 7th, 2020, 12:22 PM
https://youtu.be/Y6MnYX6OJvM

Rare White Ape
August 15th, 2020, 01:07 AM
Probably not up my alley but a cool feature regardless.

It’s great that MS is opening the game up to allow 3rd-party input for mods, apps, etc.


https://youtu.be/rysWgPVfwSM

Rare White Ape
August 15th, 2020, 01:09 AM
Plus a rather rousing trailer :)


https://youtu.be/NZLC5ekNJUY

Tom Servo
August 15th, 2020, 04:20 AM
Heh, I always thought I played 1.0 back on my Apple ][, but turns out it was 2.0.

Rare White Ape
August 16th, 2020, 01:20 AM
Guess what topic keeps appearing in my YouTube suggestions right now?


https://youtu.be/W7lwA8CUChw

Tom Servo
August 17th, 2020, 08:19 AM
Downloading now, woo!

Tom Servo
August 17th, 2020, 11:02 AM
Just did a tour of the LA area in the Icon A5. Was able to find my house after navigating to it by spotting the golf courses, spot my work and my wife's work. You can actually navigate areas you know by landmarks you know.

Holy shit. This is amazing.

Tom Servo
August 17th, 2020, 11:54 AM
I actually found my grandmother's house on the coast of Norway, and the bar where they would let me in underage because I only spoke English and it was too hard to try to tell me I need to show ID.

Rare White Ape
August 17th, 2020, 02:08 PM
Ok so I pre-installed the game a few days ago.

Now there is a 91GB update and it’s going into a separate folder from where the original install went.

What the fuck was the point of pre-installing :?

Rare White Ape
August 17th, 2020, 02:18 PM
So I'ma just sit here cross-armed and furrow-browed staring at the screen and listening to that really short menu music loop for four hours while the remaining 89GB downloads

:mad::mad::mad:

Tom Servo
August 17th, 2020, 02:23 PM
Heh, yeah, the pre-install was just a stub launcher, I knew there was no way a few hundred megs was the whole thing.

Turned out that if I set my Windows region to Kiribati and then did the $1 for the first month Game Pass trial, I was able to install and get it started this morning.

You'd think by now Microsoft would know to do things like pre-download.

Rare White Ape
August 17th, 2020, 02:31 PM
You know, I was expecting the usual waiting time for some *random* part of the globe to reach August 18 before I could play it. Looks like Microsoft was generous enough to allow you to play it if your own time zone reached Aug 18.

That means I could've started this downloady business 8 hours and 30 minutes ago :(

Rare White Ape
August 17th, 2020, 02:36 PM
So, Tom, while I am waiting, would you be so kind as to do a quick fly-over of this location (https://goo.gl/maps/AvfseXYWdwM57tCq6) and post a screen shot?

Closest runways are Southport Airport or Coolangatta Airport.

KTHXBYE

Tom Servo
August 17th, 2020, 02:54 PM
Aww shit, I have a meeting in five minutes. I'll give it a shot after my meeting if you're still downloading.

Rare White Ape
August 17th, 2020, 03:34 PM
1 hour later I’ve completed 14GB.

Yeah I’ll still be downloading.

Thanks Swervo :)

Tom Servo
August 17th, 2020, 04:19 PM
https://i.imgur.com/Kg2R0FP.jpg

Rare White Ape
August 17th, 2020, 05:11 PM
Holy shit.

So yeah, my house is modeled. Thanks for confirming this.

I see the Southport High School.

Bill and Colleen's house (which you can see in this photo (https://scontent.fbne3-1.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/117387139_10158329195650792_2836398625070997850_o. jpg?_nc_cat=101&_nc_sid=8bfeb9&_nc_ohc=nvlCuQf64DsAX8pwKFf&_nc_ht=scontent.fbne3-1.fna&oh=442daee2d7d9f92178813bb76e6bae72&oe=5F6200C9)) is there, although the roof looks a bit rough.

Next door is a house which looks like it's bent halfway along. They own a rusty old Chevy Impala with bloody big fins on the back. They hide it behind the bins in the carport. I heard the owner start it up the other day :)

The Robertson's solar panels (above the airspeed readout) are visible, but they had the asbestos roof replaced a few months ago due to hail damage from a storm in 2018. From that balcony you get a really good view of the buildings in Surfers.

Mother of God.

Hurry up and download!

Freude am Fahren
August 17th, 2020, 05:23 PM
So I found out about the Region thing around 7 p.m. local, so I tried it, but I guess MS caught on and it gives you a "insert game disc" dialogue :lol:

Didn't try the game pass thing. I can wait a few more hours. I do wish they would let me download the main package though before midnight. Even though I have a nice 650mb/s connection, I bet MS's servers won't go that fast.

Tom Servo
August 17th, 2020, 06:52 PM
So I found out about the Region thing around 7 p.m. local, so I tried it, but I guess MS caught on and it gives you a "insert game disc" dialogue :lol:

Didn't try the game pass thing. I can wait a few more hours. I do wish they would let me download the main package though before midnight. Even though I have a nice 650mb/s connection, I bet MS's servers won't go that fast.

Should have read the whole message, you knew about the Game Pass thing.

Tom Servo
August 17th, 2020, 09:10 PM
So far it runs well, everything seems good, but for some reason I can't brake. It's got it set to a specific button on my flight stick, I've verified the button works, but I just cannot brake on landing. I have to set the parking brake instead.

Rare White Ape
August 17th, 2020, 10:32 PM
I’ve finally downloaded it but it crashes every time it’s loading after I hit the fly button.

Rare White Ape
August 17th, 2020, 11:03 PM
Got the game to launch:

Turned off VPN
Freed up extra space on my SSD. To do so I had to:
- Start Epic Games Store
- Update Epic Games Store
- Epic Games Store logged me out during update
- Log back in to Epic Games Store
- Wait for authorisation code via email (I am still waiting)
- Give up on Epic Games Store and start Steam
- Find a game to delete
Re-booted PC
Launched Flight Simulator... again.

Here is the result of all that angst:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ifLqjKHcs2c

Rare White Ape
August 18th, 2020, 12:13 AM
Ok got it working. GeForce drivers. Should’ve started there.

Anyhoo, I’ve got a 2070 running mid-high setting preset at native 4K and I’m getting an easy 60fps :shocker:

I’ll play with those settings later, but in a few weeks I’m ordering a Rift S so I might keep it at that setup to keep the frame rate high.

Also you just whack on autopilot, pick a runway to land on and enjoy the scenery :)

Rare White Ape
August 18th, 2020, 01:37 AM
Random fact:

Mach 1 is 666kts.

The Cessna Citation tops out at 584 in a steep dive.

Freude am Fahren
August 18th, 2020, 06:15 AM
:lol:

I got my first taste this morning. Good to see it's much less buggy than even the last Beta release. That said there's still some work to do. ATC only actually has sound about 1/2 the time.

Performance is great. The funny thing is, Austin from X-Plane was so excited about releasing the Vulkan version this year, which improved graphic performance, then here comes MSFS that makes XPlane look like a potato and still runs like 50-100% better.

And I only got a few minutes with it this morning before work just now, but they just let me know they have to postpone until after Lunch! Quick bike ride then more MSFS!

Rare White Ape
August 18th, 2020, 06:54 AM
Little joy flight around Phillip Island :)


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aq6VKGe-xyQ

And the three people who pay close attention to my Facebook will know that I went for a ride out to a country pub for lunch yesterday.

Well, I just did a flight that mostly recreated the route that I took. Took me an hour to loop around. Fuck this is cool!

Jason
August 18th, 2020, 08:56 AM
Sigh all this is making me want to get a PC

Tom Servo
August 18th, 2020, 09:35 AM
I switched my region back to the US and started up flight sim this morning, which prompted me for more updates. It looked like it was all "acquiring licenses" for stuff, which I assumed was a "you're getting the non-game-pass version", and warned me not to turn off my computer or close flight simulator while it did its thing.

So, of course it crashed partway through. Started it again and it seemed like it recovered but I only had the base set of aircraft, none of the additional ones that come with the fancy-pants version, and figured I'd managed to screw something up.

Turns out that if you pin the launcher to the task bar, it's the game-pass specific one. Killed that, went into the store and found the fancy-pants edition page, launched from there, and now I have all the planes. So now I can crash a 787 into the ground, woot!

Did a little bit of flying around last night. Took a Cessna 172 from the airport by my parents' house (Montgomery Field in San Diego) up to Santa Monica airport in the dark. Seeing the live traffic of the airliners coming into LAX as I flew north was pretty fucking cool.

Too bad work's ramping up, I should have taken a vacation day today.

Blerpa
August 18th, 2020, 11:01 AM
I'm trying it on my rig (Ryzen 5 3600, 16GB DDR4 3600, RX 580 Nitro+ 8gb, LG 21:9 34" 2560x1080p 75Hz freesync): I didn't touch the detail presets (game put it all about High by itself), only turned off V-sync in game and put framerate unlimited.
Game keeps a stable 30fps IN EXTERNAL VIEW. Well, it's ok, I didn't think I'd be scoring much more.
It looks mightly fine even on an old card like mine and it is actually not that difficult once you turn on the automatic suggestions to help you out.
Flying from Bologna to Catania (LOL) as we speak.

I'm not a flight simulators buff but I wanted to give it a try, definitely. Gamepass version, obviously.

Freude am Fahren
August 18th, 2020, 01:08 PM
Did a proper cross country in the TBM. Boulder to Seattle. Boulder's taxiways were a bit, er bumpy is kind. Anyway, everything went well up to cruise. AP works better* than before release, happily. Once in cruise, I let the AI take over ATC, and I went for a bike ride. When I came back is was just about time to descend. That all went fine. Then ATC cleared me to the approach, and when I tried to activate it, the GPS kept wanting it to start from the previous waypoint instead of where I was. So I went to HDG mode and Tried to go direct to no avail. So I kinda vectored myself to the transition, figuring it would then pick up the next waypoint. Nope. Finally I was ready to give up on the AP, and just fly it visually with the map when. CRASH.

:(

Oh well, it'll get better with time.

For pretending I'm a corporate or airline pilot, I'll probably still be going back to X-Plane a lot.

For GA, it's fun though.

Now time to go fly a real plane.

Rare White Ape
August 18th, 2020, 04:11 PM
I’m attempting to fly over Mt Everest from Lukla just at the moment in real time the sun is just rising in the east and oh my fucking god.

Now, I can see Everest just yo my right as I fly east but I’m not sure my little Beechcraft (which only just made it off the runway) can go that high, but it’s fun trying!

Tom Servo
August 18th, 2020, 05:01 PM
Heading north along I-15 just as it's entering southern Utah and climbing up towards St. George.

https://scontent-lax3-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/118212782_3843713725645456_8491257380016785550_o.j pg?_nc_cat=109&_nc_sid=8024bb&_nc_ohc=2Zc-woyK-YkAX_rEff9&_nc_ht=scontent-lax3-1.xx&oh=e696b9429d12a08c680bf935fcb2c412&oe=5F6277D7

Freude am Fahren
August 18th, 2020, 05:03 PM
https://youtu.be/EJVCz2-Bbnw

Well, that didn't go as planned (not my plane). Couldn't fly because of the weather obviously.

I'm going to try to recreate the weather conditions and fly in the C152 :lol:

Wind was 28 gusting 58, with lightning everywhere.

This is the 150 I was going to fly. Notice the tie downs.

http://gtxforums.net/attachment.php?attachmentid=3590&d=1597799159

Tom Servo
August 18th, 2020, 06:46 PM
The sun catching the interior of the plane as the clouds picked up a nice shade of pink during the sunset on the way to Cable airport by my sister's house.

https://i.imgur.com/uTf6mQ9.jpg

Rare White Ape
August 18th, 2020, 07:01 PM
I’d post more screenshots myself but I’m playing in HDR and screenies come out all shitty in RGB and it’s a PITA to switch back and forth because it requires a game restart to display correctly.

I’ve also reduced my internal resolution scale down to 70% as I was getting choppy frames in dense areas. Still looks wonderful at 4K.

Tom Servo
August 18th, 2020, 07:29 PM
It really does show what leveraging modern graphics cards can do. With my same rig on P3D I struggled to get a decent framerate at 1080 that looked like absolute ass compared to this. Now this is running pretty smoothly at 4k looking incredible.

Not trying to disparage the P3D team or anything, but it's clear that you can only squeeze so much out of an old engine, a lot like the way we pretty much got every single little bit we could out of the Grand Prix Legends engine back in those days but it still looked horrid compared to racing games coming out after it.

Rare White Ape
August 19th, 2020, 01:36 AM
I just did a non-stop flight in the Airbus - Coolangatta to Sydney :)

I've done that route a few times and it only takes an hour in real life.

Take off, get to cruising alt, set autopilot, pour a drink and enjoy the sunset.

Then when you land, figure out what the heck they mean when they tell you to taxi to gate 131 taxi B03 B C cross runway 45L... in the dark.

Rare White Ape
August 19th, 2020, 03:34 AM
I stopped playing to have dinner a few hours ago and now the game is crashing on me when trying to load a flight and I can't get back in.

Fuck's sake.

Freude am Fahren
August 19th, 2020, 06:31 AM
Yeah, it's definitely buggy as hell.

In a perfect world, we'd just have X-Plane's planes and interface ported over to MSFS's graphics/autogen engine, with some kind of hybrid flight model :lol:

Also, they're missing a pretty popular small airport near me.

F45, North County Muni is very popular for students. It's not like it's just low quality autogen, it doesn't exist. Pretty surprising to be honest. They have a bunch of much smaller, private airports in the surrounding area, including Gwynn, which is just the private strip for Pratt & Whitney/Sikorsky, Right next to it.

CudaMan
August 19th, 2020, 09:29 AM
The level of detail in the world looks pretty amazing. This might be fun to mess around with sometime. Is there any way to spend well under $100 on controls that don't suck? I know little about flight (my sister took me up in her Luscombe once!) but I imagine I'd need a joystick, throttle, and rudder pedals at the very least. I imagine I could use my racing pedals for rudders even though the feel wouldn't be the same left and right (I'd guess to use the clutch and throttle).

Do MS flight simulators ever go on sale after a while?

Triple screen support?

Freude am Fahren
August 19th, 2020, 09:50 AM
You can find some cheapo joysticks with a small built in throttle/slider for well under $100. I had a Microsoft branded one that I got in probably 1997 that I used for years. I think I actually still have it :lol: They often have twist for rudder. If you want actual rudders, there will probably be a jump in price over $100 for the whole setup.

Don't know about sales, but it's on game pass.

Triple screen isn't officially supported I think, but people have been using it anyway. Maybe need to use like Nvidia Surround or similar to create a single virtual monitor, like you used to have to do for everything.

Jason
August 19th, 2020, 10:00 AM
I hate that I'm contemplating buying a PC for this.

Blerpa
August 19th, 2020, 11:22 AM
Don't buy it now: wait for the new AMD Ryzen 4000 CPUs to come out and new Nvidia 3000 GPU series to be available as well.

Tom Servo
August 19th, 2020, 12:03 PM
The level of detail in the world looks pretty amazing. This might be fun to mess around with sometime. Is there any way to spend well under $100 on controls that don't suck? I know little about flight (my sister took me up in her Luscombe once!) but I imagine I'd need a joystick, throttle, and rudder pedals at the very least. I imagine I could use my racing pedals for rudders even though the feel wouldn't be the same left and right (I'd guess to use the clutch and throttle).

Do MS flight simulators ever go on sale after a while?

Triple screen support?

It actually controls really well with a game controller, that was part of their schtick for it. A flight stick is better of course, but if you're like me and a lot of it is just sight-seeing/relaxing, the controller works really nicely. I've seen people saying they have made it work with XBox, PS4, and Switch Pro controllers, I've only tried the XBox.

For my flight stick, I have a Saitek X-52 which you twist to use the rudder. It works well for me, but it's well over $100 (around $150). I've thought about trying to use my Fanatec Clubsport pedals for the rudder but haven't actually done that yet. There's also an option to have it automatically handle the rudder for you in the interim.

Like others mentioned, it's on gamepass which is $1 for the first month and $5 every month thereafter. That gets you about 12 months of it for the price of the base game if you don't want to commit, but it does keep you stuck to the base game without the extra planes/modeled airports that you get with the higher end ones. Still, $1 for a month to see if you like it seems reasonable.

It's been 14 years since Microsoft put out a flight simulator, so not sure what their sale schedule looks like. I know other MS games go on sale somewhat regularly, but I wouldn't expect it for a number of months for this one.

Also, as Freude said, triple screen doesn't appear to be officially supported but there are plenty of examples on /r/flightsim of people flying with triple monitors.

Freude am Fahren
August 19th, 2020, 12:24 PM
I think I tried using my Fanatec for rudders as well once before, and I don't think it worked because you need it to be one axis with a center, not two axes.

But that was probably X-Plane or FSX, so it may be possible still.

Rare White Ape
August 19th, 2020, 01:09 PM
It is definitely possible to use racing pedals as rudders. And you can use the brake as… a brake! But depending on your setup it might mean you have to have a wheel base plugged in as well just to pass through the commands.

I use an Xbox game pad. If you’re into that my biggest tip is to reduce stick axis sensitivity down to -70 or -80% because it’s twitchy as hell.

The game pad gives me everything I need for the immediate flight controls - if you’ve ever played GTA or Ace Combat then you’ll pick it up pretty easily. But you will still need the mouse and keyboard for the more technical stuff.

Tom Servo
August 19th, 2020, 03:34 PM
Heh, I tried setting the brake pedal to work as the brake, because for some reason the button it's supposed to be on my flight stick doesn't seem to actually do much of anything (the game controller settings app in Windows shows the button working fine, so it doesn't seem to be a hardware thing).

I started up the sim at Santa Monica, took off the parking brake, throttled up a bit to get to about 20 knots and then hit the brake pedal. It worked, the plane bucked forward a bit and stopped quickly! Woot! Flew to another airport, landed, then cruised along at about 30 knots unable to slow down, mashing on the brake pedal until I crashed off the end of the runway.

I'm clearly doing something very wrong with the brakes, but hell if I know what.

Freude am Fahren
August 19th, 2020, 04:14 PM
Hmm, gotta figure out how to take screenshots when playing in HDR. :(

Yobbo NZ
August 19th, 2020, 07:48 PM
I'm wondering how old the maps are outside of major centres.
I took off from Mangalore airport (country Victoria) which is about 10mins from my place. Flew to Nagambie, where I live and found our house. It hasn't had a shed out the back for around 4 years. Nagambie "airport" was a skydiving centre which moved around 5 years ago as well.
Still pretty cool though.

Tom Servo
August 19th, 2020, 09:21 PM
Even in some of the big centers the satellite imagery is 5+ years old, the bike path I've been using for a few years now is a big dirt pit/construction zone.

I'm curious to see what the area around my company's office in Tel Aviv looks like. On Google Maps, it's intentionally blurred for security reasons, I wonder if it's the same in FS.

Yobbo NZ
August 19th, 2020, 09:34 PM
I was half expecting the army base not far from me would have been a no fly area as in real life. But no, flew over as if it was a normal thing.

Rare White Ape
August 20th, 2020, 04:57 AM
Hmm, gotta figure out how to take screenshots when playing in HDR. :(

You can't. The colour spaces are completely different. And Nvidia shadowplay can't handle it either.

On PS4 you can take screenshots in RGB quite easily if you are playing in HDR (it does a little screen flicker while it captures) but videos come out with super saturated colour.

On Windows, both screenshots and videos are washed out and appear overexposed.

So you're left with the choice of either playing in HDR and forgetting about capturing your adventures, or just not playing in HDR.

Freude am Fahren
August 20th, 2020, 05:58 AM
Sadness.

Tom Servo
August 20th, 2020, 09:08 AM
Figured out the brake situation is mostly due to FS being unable to detect when button six is being hit on my joystick. Works everywhere else, but FS just completely ignores it. Found a different button with nothing assigned to it and moved the brakes there, now I can actually stop when landing!

Recreated a flight I took with the wife a couple of years back going from Barcelona to Nice. Took off a little bit before sunrise with a nice dark red glow in the sky to the east, with the sun just coming up as I got to Nice. Was pretty spectacular, and was really impressed that you could see the reflection of the sunrise on the spinner of the propeller just outside.

Tom Servo
August 20th, 2020, 09:54 AM
This is a fun thread by a machine learning/AI researcher I follow who really enjoys posting what happens when algorithms hit weird edge cases. Her other stuff is pretty entertaining too.

https://twitter.com/JanelleCShane/status/1296138538027814913

Rare White Ape
August 20th, 2020, 02:43 PM
Heheh, some areas lucked-out pretty badly :lol:

Rare White Ape
August 20th, 2020, 02:54 PM
About that Melbournian citadel…

https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2020-08-20-internet-sleuths-solve-mystery-of-flight-simulators-200-storey-melborne-house

XHawkeye
August 20th, 2020, 02:58 PM
About that Melbournian citadel…

https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2020-08-20-internet-sleuths-solve-mystery-of-flight-simulators-200-storey-melborne-house

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Ef1mN41U8AAL2U9.jpg

https://twitter.com/liamosaur/status/1296305264870662144

Tom Servo
August 20th, 2020, 03:35 PM
On the plus side, it actually does deal well with the data given to it!

Freude am Fahren
August 20th, 2020, 05:41 PM
Just realized my setting had somehow been set to like midrange, with the scenery options pretty low. No idea how, as it was setup early on at Ultra. Anyway, it's even better than I had been playing it :lol:

Did notice a pretty big dip in frames down to 30-40fps with some real stuttering during loading of scenery. But once it loads it's steady. That' actually at Ultra "plus" as I put it. A couple option on Ultra are still not fully maxed. I just was experimenting though. I think it's Shadow res and some kind of filtering or super sampling.

Tom Servo
August 20th, 2020, 08:06 PM
Other than choppiness the first time I drop into the sim after a fresh start, it's been really solid for me. That said, I'm at the "high" preset, I haven't messed with it at all.

Rare White Ape
August 21st, 2020, 05:08 AM
I keep getting crashing in some scenarios, which seems to be repeatable:

Two nights ago it crashed multiple times while loading a flight from LAX.

Tonight it crashed again when trying to load Cascavel airport. I only tried it once because I CBF'd going through the pain of loading the game again and again.

Both of those airfields are part of the roster of handmade premium airfields. Coincidence maybe...?

Tomorrow I will try a random different premium airfield, and I will also try flying to one of those troublesome spots.

Tom Servo
August 21st, 2020, 07:39 AM
So far I've only had two crashes, once while "acquiring licenses", and once while flying over Hollywood. I actually haven't done much with LAX as it always feels weird flying a little Cessna in and out of there as opposed to KSMO.

Tom Servo
August 21st, 2020, 03:34 PM
While a lot of the ground objects don't look so hot when you get too close, some of the ones that I'm assuming they modeled by hand actually look pretty good.

https://i.imgur.com/Vhg2VmU.jpg

(Sorry for the lighting, but it was almost sunset).

Rare White Ape
August 21st, 2020, 04:21 PM
I tried a different method of trying to load LAX. You can set a manual cache of data that doesn't delete in the rolling cache - for example a regularly visited area like your hometown.

I tested it with my area and it seems to load slightly faster but I can't confirm without getting out the stopwatch.

I then made a cache that includes the area around LAX, about 400MB worth. It loaded to the runway just fine!

But I'm not here to play the game for ages so I hit pause from the tarmac... and that's when it crashed!

Later when I have more time I will try the method I mentioned above; pick a nearby region and fly to LAX.

Rare White Ape
August 23rd, 2020, 05:43 AM
I had a real neat flight earlier this evening - I set up a flight from Heathrow to Goodwood via Dunsfold. While there I taxied a lap of the Top Gear Test Track in my Cessna (the markings for the Crossover and Hammerhead are on the taxiways!) then took off and checked it out from the air.

There's something I want you all to do at Dunsfold: you know in the background there's always this 747 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_747_G-BDXJ) parked on a taxiway looking all spectacular at the rear of the shot? Well it's not there in FS2020. It has been replaced with something else...

Go check it out.

Tom Servo
August 23rd, 2020, 09:22 AM
Hah, nice. Would make a lovely museum.

Freude am Fahren
August 23rd, 2020, 12:58 PM
I'm not sure I see what you're talking about.

Maybe I'm too distracted by the Wind Turbine a the end of 25 lol

edit: I see it now, from overhead :lol:

Rare White Ape
August 25th, 2020, 05:01 AM
I set up a flight from Brussels to Heathrow. I flew for 40 minutes.

On final approach, 4nm from landing, the game crashed.

I'm getting pretty god damn sick of this.

Jason
August 25th, 2020, 05:37 AM
I'm disappointed in the lack of new pictures here. I have to live through you all until it comes to Xbox :(

Tom Servo
August 25th, 2020, 10:43 AM
Man, I wonder what's causing all your crashes. I've barely had any, though I did have a thing where I loaded up a flight and it just couldn't do better than 3fps. Had to eventually kill it and start again.

Jason - I was worried I was posting too many goofy pictures. I think everyone else has a fancy-pants HDR setup so they can't do screenshots, so I'll try to find some interesting things to screengrab.

Freude am Fahren
August 25th, 2020, 11:15 AM
Honestly, my HDR monitor isn't that great (for HDR anyway, for everything else it's superb), so I could just play in non-HDR mode. I may do that just for the porn.

Tom Servo
August 25th, 2020, 02:39 PM
Using an AI to generate an Atlas Obscura entry about the AI generated Melbourne Monolith.

https://twitter.com/JanelleCShane/status/1298272566511939584/photo/1

Freude am Fahren
August 25th, 2020, 06:55 PM
http://gtxforums.net/attachment.php?attachmentid=3595&d=1598410481
3595

Rare White Ape
August 25th, 2020, 06:55 PM
Ha! That AI looks to have referenced the current tunnel conspiracy too. It’s a Qanon nut job conspiracy that reckons the current COVID lockdowns in Melbourne a just a cover to extract and rescue child sex slaves from secret tunnels underground.

Tom Servo
August 25th, 2020, 08:05 PM
Oh shit, you guys have the secret tunnels too? That's why they were setting up field hospitals in Central Park in NY City, because that's where the exits to the tunnels were!

Rare White Ape
August 26th, 2020, 01:08 AM
Yeah. Sigh.

Anyway, it’s a discussion for another less relaxing thread.

Here’s a video I just watched where a professional 787 jockey flies a similar thing in FS2020.

While watching I realised he’s been doing the same thing that our favourite F1 drivers have had to do this year: sit around at home and play simulations of their workplace!


https://youtu.be/YOFOb_FJwyI

Rare White Ape
August 26th, 2020, 03:31 AM
Just had a really neat flight from Innsbruck to Borgo Panigale.

My word isn’t Innsbruck in a pretty little valley. Glorious.

All the way over the hills it was clear, but very turbulent. I increased speed and flew high to escape it, then rolled the throttles back to glide it into Italy.

Landed at Panigale. Checked out the Ducati factory. Nice.

Next flight I took a Cessna from East Hampton and wanted to do a flight over Long Island before checking out NYC. It’s longer than I thought. Made it into the airspace around JFK and…

Game crash.

Blerpa
August 26th, 2020, 06:17 AM
Just had a really neat flight from Innsbruck to Borgo Panigale.

My word isn’t Innsbruck in a pretty little valley. Glorious.

All the way over the hills it was clear, but very turbulent. I increased speed and flew high to escape it, then rolled the throttles back to glide it into Italy.

Landed at Panigale. Checked out the Ducati factory. Nice.

If you came in from East you probably could have passed over my place ;)

Tom Servo
August 26th, 2020, 03:36 PM
Tried flying into hurricane Laura. Was unable to navigate to the eye, but got some fun pictures out of it.

Just reaching the storm after taking off from Bush airport in Houston
https://i.imgur.com/BxkSCzy.jpg

Starting to see something vaguely upsetting
https://i.imgur.com/eFE7H6F.jpg

In the storm, castles of clouds all around
https://i.imgur.com/R28csVX.jpg

Was fun trying to find gaps in the clouds to fly through
https://i.imgur.com/e9fBYKl.jpg

Some sun after I accidentally found my way out of the storm and figured out how to turn the interior floodlights on
https://i.imgur.com/X2TxyNK.jpg

It seemed pretty quiet, turns out I was too high. I spotted an airport on the nav screen and thought I'd try to land at it, and once I descended into the lower clouds got slammed with rain and knocked all over the place. Did eventually land, but I'm not sure I wouldn't have broken an actual plane, came down really hard with basically no visibility until about 50 feet off the ground.

One thing I'm hoping they sort out was the clouds would update about once a second, and often were changing shape so much that as you got close that it would be pretty jarring as they moved. I'm assuming at some point they can interpolate between each update and make it a smooth transition. As it is, it's kinda like the clouds are very purposefully walking towards you/stomping around.

Still looked cool as hell, though.

Kchrpm
August 26th, 2020, 07:30 PM
I didn't know it attempted real time weather based on actual conditions :up:

Rare White Ape
August 26th, 2020, 11:19 PM
Man that looks epic.

Rare White Ape
August 26th, 2020, 11:21 PM
I didn't know it attempted real time weather based on actual conditions :up:

It does :)

It'll log into a weather report service and simulate the conditions in-game. If you set it to live weather you can connect to all the other players and see them zooming around the sky in your game.

But you can also fiddle with it yourself and make it whatever you want. I had thick driving snow at Uluru last weekend :D

Freude am Fahren
August 27th, 2020, 08:47 AM
https://i.redd.it/0ehun9awbjj51.jpg

Rare White Ape
August 27th, 2020, 02:47 PM
Hahaha :lol:

drew
August 27th, 2020, 04:14 PM
I have this queued in Steam....

Yobbo NZ
August 27th, 2020, 06:11 PM
What sort of FPS are you guys getting?
My new system is around 40fps average on ultra.
It's not really that noticeable that it's as low as that.

Freude am Fahren
August 27th, 2020, 06:21 PM
45 around cities, up to 60 in rural areas. varies depending on cockpits, and external views as well. But yeah, high FPS isn't really that important. As long as it's above 30, consistent without stutters, it's plenty playable.

2080Ti, i9 9900k, 32GB RAM. Ultra everything.

I know there are optimizations and certain settings that can help quite a bit without hurting quality as well.

Check this out:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CKVhyOZaUcU

Tom Servo
August 27th, 2020, 08:46 PM
Around 35-42 fps pretty much everywhere, the cities affect things less than I expected. It's at 4k but I have render scaling at 80.

Settings are basically all "High", GTX 1080, i7-7700k, 16GB RAM.

Yobbo NZ
August 27th, 2020, 11:05 PM
I adjusted to his settings in the video, pulled a little bit more fps
Only on a Ryzen 5 3600, Sapphire Pulse 5700XT and 16gb, so not too bad really.

Tom Servo
August 28th, 2020, 08:23 AM
Considering I generally still struggle to get good framerates on FSX or P3D these days at high resolution, it's shocking how well this runs.

drew
August 28th, 2020, 11:54 AM
I've had a 1080ti for over 2 years. I will be getting a 3090, because I DON'T GIVE A FUCK.

Maybe I'll buy this then.

Tom Servo
August 28th, 2020, 02:41 PM
There's supposedly a patch either out or coming out shortly that claims to fix two crashbugs, hopefully that'll help RWA.

Tom Servo
August 28th, 2020, 02:48 PM
I'm finding this very helpful - the user manual for the Garmin G1000.

https://static.garmincdn.com/pumac/190-00498-07_0A_Web.pdf

Rare White Ape
August 28th, 2020, 06:50 PM
There's supposedly a patch either out or coming out shortly that claims to fix two crashbugs, hopefully that'll help RWA.

Thank you, I hope it does. It's a bit of a chore to spend 10+ minutes loading and setting up a flight only to be booted to desktop as soon as you're on the tarmac, so I've been avoiding it of late.

Tom Servo
August 28th, 2020, 09:21 PM
Volcano on Java.

https://i.imgur.com/7ope4Aj.jpg

Rare White Ape
August 28th, 2020, 11:30 PM
So I found the Malibu Wing House. Slew mode took my 747 to that unique place.

Reasonable effort by the AI to reconstruct those buildings :lol:

https://i.imgur.com/KTq31l2.jpg

Rare White Ape
August 29th, 2020, 01:35 AM
This is a great review!


https://youtu.be/DsGyqezRaWM

PS, Drew, you should get this game now. Don’t wait for your new GPU. I want to see what Fud-style gameplay represents in a non-GTA sightseeing sandbox.

Tom Servo
August 29th, 2020, 06:47 AM
Figured out (sorta) what was going on with the pinky trigger (button six) on my flightstick.

I found a forum for Elite: Dangerous where people were complaining of the same issue, that that button just did not work in the game but seemed fine in the Control Panel controller preferences window. Someone had posted that if you unchecked "Enable Clutch Mode" (what does that do? Who knows?) and then *keep the preferences window open while the game runs*, it then works. Sure as shit, that did work. Keep the preferences window open, everything works swimmingly. Close it and it stops working entirely, no need to restart FS2020.

Then found another complaint thread on the same thing where someone walked through how to fix the profile for the stick in the X52 profiler. However, despite installing the latest (two year old) drivers from Logitech's site, I had no profiler anywhere in start menu. I checked the Logitech folder, nothing in there. I had no Saitek folder. No X52 folder or app. However, if I just *search* for "X52", suddenly there it is, apparently installed and waiting for me to work. Still have no idea how to find it outside of search, it's nowhere to be found in my list of installed programs.

It appears to have been developed back in the early to mid 80s and makes absolutely no sense, but the poster just said to remove the "shift" sections of the profile and sure enough, now it just works without having to go find the preferences window and keep it open.

It apparently is configured out of the box to have that act as something like a shift/caps lock key, which I assume causes all the other buttons to suddenly do other things? I dunno, hard to track down a manual now. Happy to see that it defaults to a non-intuitive state and relies on even less intuitive software to fix that state, but happy to have it working again.

Rare White Ape
August 29th, 2020, 01:32 PM
On the subject of crashes:

Last night I had an hours-long session in the game with absolutely no CTDs. I hadn’t seen any updates for FS come through, but I did update a security patch and restarted Windows sometime earlier in the afternoon before playing.

The only other change was that I adjusted the recommended Nvidia video card settings that were mentioned in JayzTwoCents’ video (Game Mode was already on in Windows). Interestingly, I thought they were already configured this way, because the same YouTuber has already done a video in the past explaining the exact same topic and I set up by PC like that months ago. The settings might have been turned off in a video card update so I’ll keep an eye on them in the future.

So… happy flying for me, finally.

Tom Servo
August 29th, 2020, 03:39 PM
Nice! I hope that luck stays.

For some reason I don't see much in the way of updates when I check the Windows store update history. Makes me wonder what other weird way that this works - as it is, it's unlike any other Microsoft store install I have in that I can actually see the folders.

Rare White Ape
August 29th, 2020, 06:01 PM
I flew an A320 from Auckland to Wellington. There are two mountains on the Aotearoa landscape that stand out: Taranaki and Ruapehu, and the flight path just happens to go bang between the two of them.

It’s fascinating because the two mountains can be seen just on the southern horizon from Auckland, and just on the northern horizon from Wello, and you can use it as a gauge for your trip across the island.

But also, how fucken small is New Zealand! Crazy. I’ve ridden a motorcycle further than that trip in one day.

Rare White Ape
August 29th, 2020, 11:46 PM
Another crash.

Something I'd forgotten: I've had my TV set to 1080/120Hz mode last night.

Switch it back to 4K - no change in visual settings, and it crashed. Prior to that the framerate was choppy in a downtown area until it eventually froze.

The error dialog says "The instruction at 0x00007FFFE4C616E9 referenced memory at 0x000000000000. The memory could not be written."

Googling 0x00007fffe4c616e9 brings up zero results.

Tom Servo
August 30th, 2020, 01:32 PM
That's a weird memory reference. Almost sounds like a nil pointer.

Rare White Ape
August 30th, 2020, 11:39 PM
OK after further mucking around, here's something fucking weird for you:

I've observed this in ACC before. If I switch my desktop resolution to 1080/120Hz I get a much higher and more stable framerate. And Flight Sim appears to be displaying at 4K when I launch it in this mode. It's smooth as butter with most gameplay running at a smidge over 60fps.

So, to drill deeper, my CPU is an i5-9600K OC to 4.5GHz, the GPU is an RTX 2070 FE with mild OC as well, and 16GB of 3000MHz DDR4 RAM.

Everything updated to latest drivers, etc.

I play FS with high preset setting but a few small things bumped up slightly to ultra (reflections, ocean waves, etc) and haven't gone any way into optimising it yet so I'll leave it as-is. I set resolution to 3840x2160 with a 50% resolution scale (I've been lowering it in an effort to gain stability before these latest developments) so it's effectively running at 1080p internal res with 4K upscale and a 60fps frame cap.

1) If I play the game set as above at native 4K/60 desktop, it looks nice but often chugs along with poor frame pacing at 30-60fps and constantly crashes.

2) If I change desktop res to 1080/120 but keep the game res at 4K with 50% res scale it appears to still upscale to 4K, looks very sharp, and runs with a framerate over 60fps 95% of the time, with no lower than 50fps seen when I swing the camera around wildly or when loading scenery tiles. It hasn't crashed once even in the few long play sessions I've had.

3) If I play at native res but set the game resolution to 1080p (still with 50% res scale - effectively 540p) it chugs along just like before and looks muddy as hell with low resolution graphics.

I could test more scenarios or take videos and screenshots but fuck it, if it works in this configuration and looks crisp, then I'll not complain too much.

Rare White Ape
August 31st, 2020, 12:01 AM
In other news, I took a flight around Oahu and it reminded me of how much fun Test Drive Unlimited 2 was.

And you know what?

The island is probably more detailed in FS2020 and the developers would've hardly lifted a finger to include it in their game :lol:

JSGeneral
August 31st, 2020, 09:14 AM
https://youtu.be/AMTevR_tahY

This is great!

Yobbo NZ
August 31st, 2020, 05:35 PM
Seems to be my turn to get crashes now.
Couldn't even load into the world twice and 3rd attempt, it didn't make it past the loading screen.
I'm wondering if it's something to do with the gamepass version.

Rare White Ape
August 31st, 2020, 10:53 PM
Someone's been playing Flight Sim.

https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/hurricane_hunters.png

Rare White Ape
September 1st, 2020, 04:54 AM
Scotland… whaaaaaat?

So pretty.

I flew from North Connell up through Glencoe and into the glacial valleys, then meandered my way over the mountains and all the way into Glasgow.

What an incredible landscape. I fell in love with it in Skyfall, and Forza Horizon 4 kinda reinforced that. Now this has firmly solidified it.

My bucket list is getting impossibly long thanks to this game.

XHawkeye
September 1st, 2020, 10:21 AM
Anyone did the Mach Loop yet?

Tom Servo
September 1st, 2020, 01:06 PM
I did not know about that before, I'll have to check that out!

Is there a way to punch in a latitude and longitude on the Garmin GPS to navigate to it? I now know how to punch in an airport code or what have you, but I was hoping you could just pick arbitrary spots as well.

XHawkeye
September 1st, 2020, 06:56 PM
This will get you started: http://www.mjaviation.co.uk/MachLoop.htm

This is where I stood/sat all day 10 years ago and only an Apache flew past https://goo.gl/maps/7Fpyn76XoujnUU9a7

https://alhibma.smugmug.com/photos/959845259_W5fbb-X2.jpg

https://alhibma.smugmug.com/photos/955613177_Rnss5-X2.jpg

Tom Servo
September 1st, 2020, 08:05 PM
I flew through it. I have a feeling it'd be better in a fighter jet, puttering through at 90 kts was quite lovely, but not incredibly exciting :)

Rare White Ape
September 1st, 2020, 11:11 PM
I was going to give it a go this evening, knowing full well it would not be a thrilling ride :lol:

Hopefully sometime soon one of those modding vendors will put out a decent fighter jet.

Rare White Ape
September 2nd, 2020, 04:50 AM
Guys it’s a full moon and I’m flying Osaka to Tokyo in the Daher.

There’s thick low-level cloud cover over Kyoto providing a fluffy blanket and low visibility below 7000ft. Flying through the clouds in the dark as you navigate over the mountains is AWESOME.

Do a night time trip through the clouds in this plane. Wait til the spotlights come on. Gloomy!

Do it!

Tom Servo
September 2nd, 2020, 06:10 PM
Mandatory update in the store. Weirdly, the game tells you that it's checking for updates, then forces you to quit to go get updates.

Rare White Ape
September 4th, 2020, 04:43 AM
My game still crashes...

Anyway, here's an F/A-18 for you all.

https://www.msfsaddons.org/aircraft/aircraft-fa-18-for-microsoft-flight-simulator-2020

It's fundamentally broken but it's a good early attempt at converting content from another simulator into FS2020, and it's heaps of fun so it's worth your time.

Just beware that it's recommended to spawn yourself at a waypoint in mid-air because the landing gear doesn't work from ground level. You either have to start in mid-air or slew upwards to commence flight. The gear will work after that. However, there's a bug which causes the sound effect for the landing gear to continuously loop.

So just don't use the landing gear :lol:

And the handling is pretty poor, TBH.

I guess the main thing is it is really fast and climbs like a mo-fo, so you can zoom around through clouds and stuff and appreciate the scale of the weather effects in a different way.

Rare White Ape
September 7th, 2020, 05:50 AM
I'm participating in a bit of an impromptu bush trip for myself.

I'm flying from my home airfield at Southport up to Fraser Island a few hundred km north from here. On the way I am checking out a few little areas I know, and just now I flew up the Steve Irwin Way near Beerwah :D

A am also flying the Icon A5, and the plan is to only land on sheltered waterways away from the surf beaches! You've got to find a river mouth long and straight enough to land on, as you need a bit of speed to take off again.

Leg 1: take off from Southport (really it's Coombabah but we won't go there), turn east and fly over the Southport Broadwater and across the seaway to the ocean.

Turn north and follow South Stradbroke Island as it stretches up towards Moreton Bay, fly over Couran Cove resort, then look for the southern Moreton Bay Islands in between North Straddy and the mainland.

After crossing MacLeay Island turn north-east and aim for Point Lookout. On the way you'll fly over a mineral sand mining facility and see the ocean again. At Point Lookout follow the coastline back to the west and fly over Amity Point.

Here Moreton Island will be visible to the north. Follow it's western edge and look for Tangalooma Resort. Land in the cove by the pier and cruise up to the beach where the dolphins come in for hand-feeding every night.



Leg 2: Take off from Moreton Bay and fly east over Moreton Island looking for its north-east cape. Spot the lighthouse and then fly back to the west over the beautiful estuary in the sandy foreshore.

Across the bay is Bribie Island and the town of Bellara. Look for the big-ass bridge connecting the island to the mainland. Keep flying west until you see the M1 Bruce Highway leading itself north out of Brisbane.

In the distance you'll see some unique geological structures poking out of the relatively flat landscape - these are the Glasshouse Mountains. A busy road veers to the west off the M1: this is Steve Irwin Way, named after the late conservationist and TV personality.

A few km to the north you fly over the Irwin family's Australia Zoo, before the road turns to the east again to rejoin the M1. Straight ahead is a large reservoir and beyond that some civilisation. This is the Sunshine Coast.

Follow the main road north until you get to the headland. Across the bay is the Maroochy River, which has enough room to fit a little flying boat.

Leg 3 will be the stretch to Fraser Island. Once I'm there I gonna fly all over that beast.

And then... I might keep going. Fuck it! I'll go as far as Airlie Beach and check out Whitsunday Island maybe. I've been there before and it's heartbreakingly beautiful.

Did you know it's against the law to steal sand from Whitehaven Beach? It's the purest silica sand in the world. Sand is produced in a natural process, but geologists have no idea how it became so pure, so the beach is protected, and tourists are only allowed on certain parts of it. The fine grains will also quickly destroy electronic equipment, so it's best to take care of cameras with fine precision lenses if you dare to get them close to the sand.

Rare White Ape
September 11th, 2020, 05:27 PM
Optimised settings within:


https://youtu.be/75t_jRQII4w

Rare White Ape
September 12th, 2020, 11:30 PM
I still get crashes, and I've found that I am simply not able to fly anywhere near Manhattan.

I think I've narrowed it down :lol:

https://i.imgur.com/VHJj7QS.png

For reference I have 16GB of RAM in this machine.

A tip-off I saw somewhere said I might be eating up all my RAM if I have airport traffic set to a high level, as the game spawns dozens of planes. It just so happens that New York City has three very large airports in close proximity.

I did a test flight from somewhere over Long Island, east of JFK. You can see the graph running at a wobbly 11GB until it stabilises, then ramp quickly up to 14 or 15 as JFK comes into view, then poop!

I'll turn down airport traffic for a while. It's cheaper than buying more RAM sticks.

Yobbo NZ
September 13th, 2020, 03:21 AM
How's your page file?
I found my crashes were due to that and reading shit advice on the net.
Set it back to system managed, and it's all good again.

Blerpa
September 13th, 2020, 04:14 AM
Actually game crashes to a lot of people when you enter big towns rendered with the highest detail.
It seems a possible solution is... 32GB of ram. MEH.

Rare White Ape
September 13th, 2020, 12:38 PM
How's your page file?
I found my crashes were due to that and reading shit advice on the net.
Set it back to system managed, and it's all good again.

Apart from the tip about reducing airport traffic (which didn’t fix it BTW) I’ve only followed the steps in the official site troubleshooting guide.

Last night after posting I bumped the page file up to 20,000 MB on C drive.

It hasn’t fixed or broken anything.

Tom Servo
September 15th, 2020, 02:34 PM
Sorta surprised that XBL friends lists don't seem to transfer over to FS2020, if anybody feels like adding me my username should be "Swervo".

Freude am Fahren
September 15th, 2020, 03:19 PM
Really!? That's why non of you are on the challenge leader boards.

Are the usernames the same at least? I'm Freude amFahren I think. I'll have to check when I get home from my current work trip in a week and a half, lol.

Tom Servo
September 15th, 2020, 08:26 PM
They should be. I did look for RWA and couldn't find him, but I can't tell if it's just me mistyping his name.

Tom Servo
September 15th, 2020, 08:33 PM
Sonovabitch, suddenly they're all there. I swear they weren't when I wrote that previously. I'm wondering - I just added someone I wasn't already friends with and suddenly I see everyone, maybe there was some bug with mine where it wasn't loading my friends list until I made a change or something.

I feel kinda bad though. The guy I just added has an actual pilot's license and did a landing challenge, then I scored 5x what he did. I think he's annoyed.

Speaking of, I get the idea that you want to stay as close to the centerline as possible and come down as gently as possible, but I don't get the third measurement. Is it touching down as close to the start of the runway as possible or touching down in the middle of the runway, or stopping in the middle of the runway? I had one landing where I was coming in too hot and just kinda floated over the runway for a while until I finally got it to drop, and scored way higher on that than one where I touched down right after the start of the runway.

Rare White Ape
September 16th, 2020, 04:21 AM
It’s the length, and the game paints a target to slam your wheels down within to get a good score.

So you want to be:
Close to centre line
At a slow rate of descent
Within the target range

To score highly.

Literally three dimensional.

Tom Servo
September 16th, 2020, 01:55 PM
New patch is out. About 800mb install from the store, then another 11-16 gigs once you start the sim depending on which version you got. Hopefully that bit about reducing memory usage might help you, RWA.

Changelog:


General

Performance improvement

Optimized cockpit screen display when screens are not displayed on screen. (there has got to be a better way to phrase that)
New option available to control cockpit screen update frequency
Tweaked CPU thread priorities to control cockpit screen update frequency.
Optimized loading system to reduce overall loading times.
Optimized heavy airport scenes impact on CPU
Reduced the amount of GPU overdraw to improve GPU performance.
Memory optimizations to reduce software memory footprint and improve performance on memory limited computers
Overall performance optimizations

ATC

Incoming ATC Azure speech now has three difference voices
ATC voice gender is now based on avatar of the pilot/copilot.
Fix for the incorrect voice pack being used if the game is not localized in English and if the Windows Offline Text-to-Speech option is used.

UI

Filters and sorting have been improved in the marketplace.
Manual cache layout has been improved and the download estimated time should now be correct.
Improved support for gamepad navigation in many menus.
Case sensitive search is now working properly in control screen.
Search by axis in control screen has been fixed.
Active pause button has been added in the toolbar.
Pause button has been fixed in the Content manager.

Aerodynamics

Improved wind turbulence simulation to reduce horizontal turbulences.
Added simulation of low rpm piston engine vibrations on cockpit.
Added simulation of water particles (rain/clouds) density in aerodynamics => generates vibrations flying through clouds or rain.
Fixed wet surface friction and braking distances.
Fixed live weather wind offset in higher latitude areas (America, Asia...) that was causing the 3kts Wind bug.


Aircraft

Cockpit Visuals and Animations

Cessna 208 B Grand Caravan EX: AP button animations have been fixed.
Cessna 208 B Grand Caravan EX, Beechcraft Bonanza G36, ICON A5: placards have been updated.
Zlin Savage Cub: tail wheel blur effect is now correctly triggered.
Zlin Shock Ultra: arcs on airspeed indicator is correctly set.
Zlin Shock Ultra: turbo mode has been removed from dashboard.
Boeing 787-10 Dreamliner: MCP buttons visual improvements.

General Aviation Systems

Cessna 208 B Grand Caravan EX: propeller sound has been improved when RPM is changing.
Cessna Longitude: AP altitude and speed management improvements.
Cessna Longitude: auto throttle is now inhibited during take off and until 400 feet AGL.
Daher TBM 930: yaw damper is now automatically turned on when the AP is enabled.
Beechcraft King Air 350i: windshield deicing is now working.
ICON A5: <<incorrect heading indicator> notification is now correctly triggered.
Zlin Shock Ultra: flaps now operate mechanically instead of electrically.
Zlin Shock Ultra: trim management improvements
Cessna Citation CJ4: reverse thrust has been removed.
Cub Crafter X Cub: IAS AP mode is now working properly.
Daher TBM 930 and Cessna 208 B Grand Caravan EX: PT6 engines shutdown duration has been increased.

General Aviation Avionics

Cessna Longitude: several knobs of the G5000 are now working.
Beechcraft Baron G58, Beechcraft Bonanza G36, Cessna 172 Skyhawk G1000, Diamon DA40 NG: fixed missing ALT knob.
Beechcraft King Air 350i: << menu >> key is now working properly.
Cessna 152 and 152 Aerobat: avionics state have been fixed using Honeycomb device battery switch.
GNS 530: flight plan display alignment has been fixed on the Garmin GNS 530.
G1000: automatically switches from NAV to LOC when needed.
G1000: ETE and ETA fixed wrong values.
G1000/3000/3x: AP setup is no longer reset when enabling AP.
G1000/3000/3x: fixed missing flight plan when the selected departure is coordinates on the world map.
G3x: text size in << approach box >> has been increased.
G3x: approaches can now be selected and loaded.
G3x: fixed bad information in nearest VOR page when unknown VOR is selected.

Airliner Systems

General: AP behavior improvements.
Boeing 747-8 Intercontinental: rear wheels steering has been fixed.
Boeing 747-8 Intercontinental: pressing the battery button now always displays the ON part.
Boeing 747-8 Intercontinental: improved flaps deployment and retraction sequences.
Boeing 787-10 Dreamliner: fixed auto-throttle not giving back control to the pilot when disabled.
Boeing 787-10 Dreamliner: center tanks drain first when decreasing fuel quantity via fuel and payload menu.
Boeing 787-10 Dreamliner: auto-throttle is now automatically disengaged while landing.
Boeing 787-10 Dreamliner: auto-throttle now engages correctly during take off roll when conditions are met.
Boeing 787-10 Dreamliner: alt intervention no longer needs to be pressed again when not needed.
Airbus A320neo: automatic speed management improvements.
Airbus A320neo: alpha floor condition is now correctly triggered.

Airliner Avionics

General: weight is better taken into account for V speed calculations.
Boeing 747-8 Intercontinental

FMC now allows to activate approach without going to route page.
approach VREF speeds are fixed.
empty rectangles no longer displayed on the FMA.
Runways are now displayed in correct order in the FMC.
cruise altitude no longer automatically filled in the FMC.

Boeing 787-10 Dreamliner

LNAV and VNAV correctly displayed as armed in FMA when conditions are met.
altitude target on MCP can no longer be set to negative values.
auto-throttle mode no longer displayed on FMA when auto-throttle is disabled.
fixed wrong flaps value displayed in the FMC take off page.
target heading line on ND is no longer reset while in heading mode.
direct-to flight plans can now be entered in the FMC.

Airbus A320neo

target altitude can now be changed when AP is disabled.
armed modes no longer appear in boxes on the FMA
flaps << FULL >> indication instead of << F >> on ECAM.
FMGS message << INVALID ENTRY >> replaced by << NOT ALLOWED >>
FMGS now only displays arrival procedures corresponding to the selected runway
FMGS now correctly displays ETA for approach points
removed remaining waypoints on ND after selecting different approach procedures
fixed heading bug alignment offset issue
fixed missing runway in the perf page of FMGS when a departure runway is already selected.
fixed constraints flickering on ND
FMGS block fuel indication now correctly initialized.



Miscellaneous

General

Fixed freezes caused by glass cockpits
Travel to feature no longer disengages autopilot when used.

Weather

Fixed 225 degrees/3kts issue with inconsistent wind in game
Fixed issue with weather persistency on flight restart.

Services

Upgraded multiplayer servers.

Marketplace

Rating display on bundles has been improved.
Performance drop after download an item in the marketplace has been removed.
An addon purchased outside of the marketplace no longer has an impact on the "installed" filter in the marketplace as it is considered as "community" content.

Content Manager

Addon purchased outside of the marketplace now also visible in the content manager when online, and offline if downloaded in the community folder.
3rd party content thumbnail display improved.
Pause download during installation is fixed.

Localization

Various typo fixes in multiple languages.

Accessibility

Subtitles are now enabled by default.
Subtitle option has been moved from Sound menu to Accessibility so users can set it during initial install.

Cameras

Remove rotation clamp on "instrument cameras".
Pilot camera position can now be saved or reset.

Bush Trips

Fix leg completion trigger.
Completionist achievement should now unlock when all activities have been completed.

World

Detected buildings that intersect roads are now excluded.
Longer bridges are less prone to having a gap.
UK city houses models should no longer appear in US suburbs.
"In the Wild" achievement can now be unlocked.

Tom Servo
September 16th, 2020, 02:30 PM
Aside, both my friend and I are having the same problem with the Beechcraft Bonanza. It's like it just doesn't generate any power and I can't really get it off the ground. RPMs get up to like 1600 by the time I run out of runway, and if I try to take off, I'll get up like 50 feet and then run out of airspeed and start falling again. Like a chicken trying to fly.

Anybody else having the same issue with that plane? I haven't flown everything in the game, but so far it's the only one that I can't even take off in, so I don't think it's just me.

Freude am Fahren
September 16th, 2020, 03:19 PM
I've flown it and haven't had that issue. RPM's should get up to 2700 at redline I think (from memory). Check your prop setting? (This is pre patch, I'm away on a trip.)

Tom Servo
September 16th, 2020, 06:26 PM
Check your prop setting? (This is pre patch, I'm away on a trip.)

And here's what separates the sight-seers from the actual simmers. How would one....do that?

Rare White Ape
September 16th, 2020, 11:41 PM
Climb out onto the engine cover mid-flight and put your finger on the spinning prop?

:arseclown:

Thanks for the notification of the update. It's downloading for me now, but if course the music is continually looping so I have to mute my whole PC.

Rare White Ape
September 17th, 2020, 12:58 AM
Test flight completed. BIG improvement.

I flew my shitty F-18 mod from Long Island and over JFK and it didn't crash! Big stutters though, as CPU and RAM take a hit when I approach the area, but outside that it's 60fps town.

That task out of the way I flew over Manhattan, over Newark airport, then looped it round to La Guardia and buzzed the tower at 822 KTS. Nice.

Then I set about harassing some other players in my invisible jet (they wouldn't be able to see the aircraft model without the exact same thing installed) by flying past them at high speed then pointing it up at the sky. I got to 14,000ft and I could see all of greater NY and then some without a problem.

By that time my pizza was cooked so I Sully'd it into the Hudson and exited the game.

Tops :up:

Freude am Fahren
September 18th, 2020, 04:39 PM
And here's what separates the sight-seers from the actual simmers. How would one....do that?

The blue lever between throttle and mixture. You can also map keys/axes to it.

Some airplanes had what's called a constant speed prop. In something like the 152 or 172, the prop spins at the same speed as the engine. That's fixed pitch. In more advanced planes like the Bonanza, the prop's pitch can be adjusted to take a bigger "bite" of the air. There's a governor that limits the engine's rpm by increasing the load on it by increasing the pitch of the prop.

Rare White Ape
September 18th, 2020, 05:28 PM
And 'reverse thrust' on these types of engines is simply reversing the pitch of the prop, yes/no?

Rare White Ape
September 18th, 2020, 07:14 PM
Rundown of some future content from third-party developers:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qA1bd7hnEh0&ab_channel=ObsidianAnt

Rare White Ape
September 19th, 2020, 01:32 AM
The latest patch has broken the ability to set stick sensitivity, an essential adjustment for those using game pads like me. But you can dive into the settings files and adjust it manually by looking for the correct file:

https://forums.flightsimulator.com/t/patch-2-controls-sensitivity-settings-not-showing/273486/28


As a turnaround:

I’ve edited directly the file containing the Xbox settings
The file is located in:
AppData\Local\Packages\Microsoft.FlightSimulator_8 wekyb3d8bbwe\SystemAppData\wgs

There’s a folder with a lot of numbers.
In this folder, several subfolders with numbers.
In those, there are files with name containing numbers. One of them is a XML file containing all the settings in text.
Find the file, inside, you’ll find a section for the X, Y, rX, rY axis settings:

https://forums.flightsimulator.com/uploads/default/original/3X/e/5/e51099650c40160b77941475d0b8dde83a5ea556.png

Edit the AxisSensitivity and AxisDeadZone to match your previous preferences

It's a pain in the arse because there's also a bug that resets the controller settings if you connect a controller after the game is launched, meaning you have to fiddle with it if you forget to do it in the correct order. You might want to set a shortcut to the file on your desktop if you need to edit it again.

Freude am Fahren
September 19th, 2020, 07:37 AM
And 'reverse thrust' on these types of engines is simply reversing the pitch of the prop, yes/no?

Yeah. I think it's only a Turboprop thing. I'm not sure if any piston engines have beta/reverse.

Here's my understanding from sims/flying with my dad/youtube. I'll be getting my complicated rating as soon as I'm done with my private pilot license, and I'll learn about it properly.

So at idle, with the prop lever forward, the pitch of the propeller is "fine", let's say at 1000 RPM. As you bring up the throttle, the RPM increases to the redline (let's say 2700 RPM), but it can reach it at less than full power. So then the governor sets in, and the pitch starts to increase to keep the engine/prop from overspeeding. After take-off, or at the end of climb, depending on the plane, I think, you bring thee RPM/Prop lever back to decrease RPM to a cruise climb or cruise setting, somewhere between 2200 and 2500 RPM probably on a lot of engines. This increases the pitch even more, without adjusting power. You'd bring power back too, but the RPM wouldn't change from doing that (unless you brought it back far enough to not be able to stay on the governor) the pitch would then just decrease a bit. You can usually find online speed vs. range tables for RPM/Power settings.

You can kinda think about it like going up in a hill in your car. For a given throttle position, the steepness of the hill is going to determine the car engine's RPM.

Turbo props are pretty much the same, except the prop spins much slower I think. I think they typically redline in the teens. And you manage power using torque, because the prop is made to take such a large "bite" of the air, I think you can over torque the shaft. And going into Beta is basically any position past the idle position, through completely vertical, when the prop makes no thrust, through to reverse. Beta is often used in taxi, because idle would cause too fast a taxi. It's kinda like throwing the clutch in to tool around a parking lot as speeds that would stall the engine of your car.

Here's a pretty good explainer of turboprop reverse thrust. http://www.12charlie.com/Chapter_14/Chap14Page007.htm

Newer planes had mechanical or computer controlled RPM, where there is just a single power lever, and the RPM is completely controlled by pre-set settings or computers. The Cirrus has the mechanical version, and the Diamonds, and some others go even further with full FADEC control to control the mixture as well, all through computers, so there's just the one lever.

Rare White Ape
September 19th, 2020, 02:13 PM
I figured something like that might be happening, without knowing anything about the details, when listening to the sound the engines make while flying the King Air. When you reduce the throttle after takeoff you get odd sounds that appear to be more related to the spinning props than anything.

In the external camera hud you get the dials that represent the engine performance: an outer marker that matches your throttle position, an inner marker that I’m guessing is your prop status or thrust (could be both) and and a coloured bit; green (good) then a bit of yellow and red, which I assume means you’re overspeeding the props and they’re going transonic (really bad).

Am I on the money here?

Tom Servo
September 19th, 2020, 02:30 PM
Turns out there's a rotary dial on the throttle for my flight stick that was mapped to propeller axis. I still don't totally understand how to use it, but moving that to one end rather than the central position I had it in let me actually get the plane off the ground.

Thanks!

Rare White Ape
September 24th, 2020, 02:11 PM
Japan world update coming next Tuesday: 3D photogrammetry for six cities, six new premium airports, and an updated height map for the entire country. And it’s free.

https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2020-09-24-flight-simulators-first-world-update-out-next-week-gives-japan-a-gorgeous-overhaul#comment-8213870

Rare White Ape
September 25th, 2020, 11:31 PM
I just scored one of these mega cheap off Gumtree! It’s practically brand new. The seller had even kept all the boxes and everything.

Takes a bit of getting used to… mostly because I’ve got to relearn the button mapping.

https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn%3AANd9GcQBN4k1M5YyveOEXy7HNDYgR0rAHBd YdoTAxg&usqp=CAU

Freude am Fahren
September 26th, 2020, 03:08 PM
Finally got home from my long work trip. After the update, I downloaded the Mooney and took a little trip from the keys up to my home airport, KSUA, with a stop & go at MIA.

Pretty fun (and fast!) little plane.

Carenado is known for beautiful planes with lacking systems/physics. But as my first payware for this generation, it seems like it's still better than the stock planes. Maybe not worth the $30 though.

Tom Servo
September 26th, 2020, 03:23 PM
It's hard to justify prices like $30 for a plane when $60 gets you the base sim. That might be partially because I barely know what I'm doing half the time, so all the extra realism/cockpit interaction is lost on me.

Rare White Ape
September 26th, 2020, 03:35 PM
I would only buy planes if they offered a vastly different role, configuration or era. For example, having both the 747 and A320 fills my jumbo jet quotient quite nicely, so I have no need for the 787. Plus there are a heap of small planes already included, so different variations of Cessna are not required.

I will pay money for various military planes or a Concorde when they finally arrive. And helicopters. But I’d still think twice about paying $30 for one aircraft, no matter what it is.

Rare White Ape
September 26th, 2020, 03:36 PM
Also the flight stick kicks arse. It’s so much better than a controller.

I nailed a landing on my second flight :D

Freude am Fahren
September 26th, 2020, 04:17 PM
Yeah, when I was using FSX a lot a decade ago, and again when I got back into X-Plane 11 a couple years ago, the idea of paying anything, much less dozens of dollars for a single plane was absurd. Still though, but I'm kinda hooked.

I think Realistically they should be iRacing car prices.

But I've bought both Toliss' A319 and A321 for X-Plane, because I'm a sucker.

Also, this one is of keen interest to me, since a Mooney would be near the top of the list of planes I might get in real life...


...in 20-30 years if everything goes to plan :lol:

Rare White Ape
September 26th, 2020, 05:16 PM
Stop buying mod planes all the time and you might get one sooner :p

#smashedavo

Freude am Fahren
September 28th, 2020, 01:28 PM
Ugh, just did a pretty long IFR flight from FL to NC, and it crashed when I tried to activate the approach.

Tom Servo
September 30th, 2020, 07:09 PM
I watched some videos on setting the fuel mixture, which is something I've never understood. Spent the past few flights trying to play with it as altitude changed and nothing really happened.

Then I realized I had auto mixture turned on in assistance. That sure changed things.

I also did my first flight from a cold and dark start. I had a feeling that'd be massive nerdy fun and I was right, though when the checklist started pointing my gaze at things like the altimeter *as I'm lifting off and now can't see out of the plane or the artificial horizon*, that was less than helpful.

Freude am Fahren
October 1st, 2020, 07:34 PM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5QITOE-eMNk&feature=emb_logo&ab_channel=Schiyo

Tom Servo
October 3rd, 2020, 03:57 PM
I was piddling around in the Icon A5 again and I just for the life of me cannot seem to figure out the GPS/computer unit in that plane. Anybody happen to know what model it is? It looks kinda like a Garmin Aera 795, but doesn't quite match what I'm seeing and I'd love to be able to find a manual for it.

Tom Servo
October 4th, 2020, 07:02 PM
Well, whatever it is, the soft buttons on the side of the unit don't work, so I guess at least at the current moment it's not the most useful piece of gear.

Rare White Ape
October 4th, 2020, 11:02 PM
I just go with the VFR map and Google maps open on my phone :lol:

Tom Servo
October 14th, 2020, 09:39 AM
Having a hell of a time trying to learn ILS landings. I finally thought I had something going by doing a low-level IFR flight from Yuma to Montgomery Field in San Diego (a personal favorite as I grew up under its flight path). I thought everything was reasonably dialed in until I got to the last waypoint before the airport and ATC never asked me to drop below 5100. I eventually started to descend to land at the airport and got yelled at by ATC, at which point I just had to cancel the IFR flight and bring it in by hand.

I swear, Flight Sim used to have these great manuals that explained so many things. I hope they have plans to massively expand the flight lessons part of the sim.

Freude am Fahren
October 14th, 2020, 02:44 PM
Part of the problem is that the systems in MSFS 2020 are pretty broken.

One of the big problems is that when you try to activate an approach, it always tries to go start it from the previous waypoint before the transition waypoint, sending you in circles. There's a sort of fix by adding the transition waypoint manually before the approach I think.

If you want to practice ILS landings though, find the ILS Frequency (Skyvector.com or airnav.com can help), enter it into NAV1, and practice without an IFR plan, or even ATC if you want.

To be honest, at this point with the sim, I prefer just GA VFR flying. I do some IFR planned stuff, but still only in GA aircraft. I'll go over to x-Plane if I want to play airline pylote though. I hope they get it fixed, because the visuals, and some of the flight characteristics are so good.

Rare White Ape
October 14th, 2020, 03:02 PM
I might’ve shared this video already who cares?

But it’s about ILS and it might give you all the answers.


https://youtu.be/FmKuT4C5YlM

Tom Servo
October 14th, 2020, 03:30 PM
I did watch that one and it gave me a better idea than I had, for sure. I wasn't for the life of me able to figure out how to add a waypoint with the G1000 in the 172 though, I fiddled with that thing for a while and never quite got it. 'Course, part of what I might have screwed up is I think that Montgomery field only has one ILS approach on 28R and I managed to ask to land on runway 5 from the set up screen. Maybe I'll just have to try it in that plane first and actually get the IFR flight plan set up somewhat right before the flight.

It was kinda fun chugging ever so slowly up to 11000 feet, the rate of climb getting slower and slower until I was doing about 250-300fpm, and right as I hit 11, ATC tells me to go to 12.

Freude am Fahren
October 16th, 2020, 05:44 PM
Ugh, another flight, another complete disaster on approach.

Caravan San Diego to LAX. Try to enter the approach, starts goin gin cirlces. Clear the approach and try to enter manual, crash.

I'm getting increasingly frustrated with it. And frankly Asobo. This is like early beta type stuff.

Tom Servo
October 27th, 2020, 01:22 PM
I finally just figured out how to add waypoints to the route from the flight planning screen. I still haven't figured out if you can re-order waypoints and accidentally created a flight that took off from Austin, flew to AT&T stadium outside of Dallas, back to COTA, then to DFW, so now I know to enter the waypoints in the opposite order of when you want to arrive at them.

Also had a fun flight from Cancun past Chichen Itza and then down to Belize. Couldn't see Chichen Itza at all, but the stormy weather that kept visibility at zero was pretty cool. Finally saw the rain streaking across the windshield effect, and had turbulence so strong at one point that you could hear the airframe groan.

Finally tried to do a trip to Machu Picchu. I knew the altitude was a little much for the 172, so I took a Beechcraft Baron instead. It is much harder to turn around in those canyons than I expected with that plane, I'm sorta amazed I managed to make the flight in one piece.

Kchrpm
October 27th, 2020, 01:42 PM
How does COTA look in game?

Tom Servo
October 27th, 2020, 03:14 PM
Not too bad. Should have taken a screen shot. All the painted markings around the track are there, and the general track shape looks spot on. The satellite imagery appears to be just before the track opened - I don't see any grandstands at all, and there's a big construction trailer where the T12 bleachers should be. Also, it's got the issue that a lot of non-hand-modeled places have where it's trying to guess at ground levels/altitudes, so the straight from T11 to T12 is remarkably hilly looking. I'll do another flight over there soon (and some other tracks now that I know how to navigate to arbitrary latitude/longitude coordinates) and grab a screenshot.

Speaking of, I really wish they'd fix the active pause - that or let us do an inactive pause but still see what's going on instead of popping up the menu immediately.

Tom Servo
October 27th, 2020, 04:19 PM
I put together an album here: https://imgur.com/a/vR7cBZW One fun thing is that the tower isn't there, it's just a small building, but next to the building you can see the image of the tower projected on the ground.

Here's one image from it:
https://i.imgur.com/FeRx54D.jpg

Note the fun with active pause. I was doing about 90kts when I paused, I'm now just about to start going into overspeed, all while sitting still.

Kchrpm
October 28th, 2020, 03:29 AM
So cool :up: Would be neat if they figured out what were racetracks and had race cars driving on them 24/7.

Tom Servo
October 31st, 2020, 04:58 PM
Finally messed around with one of the smaller jets, the CJ4. Surprisingly had no real issues with the autopilot other than it was really aggressive about climbing when I'd ask it to, immediately lunging for like 5000fpm. While it's entirely possible that I don't know what I'm doing with the jet, it did seem like fuel usage was pretty off. I started with the standard 50% load in Seattle and according to the map that should have been enough to make it at least to Chicago, but I was down to about 20% halfway across Idaho. At least you can just refuel mid-flight.

Rare White Ape
November 5th, 2020, 11:02 AM
Arrrrrrrgh this game is so good. So detailed.


https://youtu.be/Sl7a4fKerY4

Tom Servo
November 5th, 2020, 12:35 PM
I've been to Geiranger, it is pretty spectacular, and also known for Trollveien road as you descend from the mountains just to the north of Geiranger. That said, FS2020 seems to *really* struggle with the terrain in Norway, and you can see it in the video. A bunch of the lakes appear to be up on pedestals, almost like mesa with lakes on them. Mountains have weird bottomless pits all over them and look like the surface of the moon. I'm sure it'll be fixed, but Norway appears to be one of those places the AI just can't figure out from the maps data.

That video sure made me miss traveling though. We wanted to go to Copenhagen soon, here's hoping someday we'll be able to again.