Flight Sims

[Freude am Fahren]

Yup, disabling HDR fixed it. Hopefully they have a fix for that.

But anyway, yeah that was awesome. Need to play with settings, but it's already quite a bit better than X-Plane in immersion, but it definitely runs a bit slower.

[Tom Servo]

Right as I start to try to fly the 747, they broke all the liveries with the latest update.

As far as the attempts go, on the first one I didn't realize I needed to disconnect the auto-throttle and ended up with it desperately attempting to maintain 180 knots as I tried to brake. Ended up running off the end of the runway at LAX, crossing Pershing and smashing into the butterfly sanctuary. Second one went better, but then ATC guided me to GA parking and it turns out you can't fit a 747's wings between the buildings there at Phoenix airport and it told me I broke the plane.

[Rare White Ape]

The 747 is a bloody pain in the arse to fly. It doesn’t respond very well to my stick inputs. I was having a go last night and all I did was zig-zag all over Southeast Queensland thanks to severe PIOs. And then you’ve got the aforementioned autopilot settings; that middle console and me make good friends with button mashing to turn everything off.

It’s a good thing most aircraft have their controls in aaaaaaalmost the same spot. It’s funny though, it might look a bit wintery outside, so before take off you look for the pitot tube heaters. Lean forward, point the mouse at buttons in the anti-ice section. Is it that one? No. Is it that one? No. There it is! On. Then you look up and the windscreen is fully frosted up

[Tom Servo]

Woot, successful IFR flight from Montreal to LAX in the 748, ILS landing on 7L. I do wish I could figure out why the sim is so insistent that we should be taking off/landing towards the east in the LA area when, in real life, it's almost always to the west. Made it really exciting that as I was slowing down on the runway, a live-traffic plane took off heading the other direction right over me. Also, I thought all that autopilot stuff was supposed to be able to get the plane all the way to the ground in one piece, but it had a great time slamming the plane into the ground so hard it bounced right back into the air.

And while I'm sad that the fuselage livery is now broken on the 748, Eddie still looked good on the tailfin and it was fun having ATC call me "Iron Maiden CC666".

[Rare White Ape]

I had a bloody great time today flying around Malaysian Borneo. I did a few flights out of Kota Kinabalu, which is on the north-west coast of the island. Couple of circuits in the Cessna 172 to check out the utterly broken terrain around the nearby Gaya Island, then a joy flight in a Piper Cub over the forest. I followed that up after lunch by putting on some cruisy stoner rock and flying the TBM 930 around Mount Kinabalu, which also has some very, very broken terrain. About an 80km round trip Unfortunately the game has decided to place a 10-story building right at the northern approach to the runway but eh... it's an extra challenge.

This VR thing is such a game changer. Jesus. I mean, flying is heckingly boring at times but put the HMD on and you're on another planet, allowing you to gawp out the window and look at the little cars on the roads way below you! I wish I had slightly more grunt to be able to run similar settings to flat-screen mode and get some detail back, but I guess I'll make do until I win the lottery.

[Freude am Fahren]

Yeah, Autoland still isn't really implemented in the Sim. I don't think even the A320NX has it working.

[Freude am Fahren]

Just did a A320 flight from Denver to Seattle in VR. Man getting everything setup is so much easier in VR. And the way the mouse works is great. It like moves to the plane of the surface you're on, and it stays referenced to the plane, not the headset. So you can move your head around and the mouse stays over the button (as long as you keep it in sight I think). Even better than the normal non-VR mouse behavior. Better than X-Plane too.

My FPS wasn't too bad. Don't have the counter up, but was totally playable the whole time, other than when switching to/from VR. And that's where there's a big bug. Don't know if it's the Fly-by-wire A320, or MSFS, but when you switch between VR and non-VR modes, you lose your flightplan in the MCDU. Luckily now they (A320NX) have Simbrief integration, so it's super easy to reload. But make sure you get back into VR before starting your arrival.

I'll have to test if the same thing happens in the G1000/3000 planes.

[Kchrpm]

[Tom Servo]

Even I'm starting to get a little annoyed by the bugs. Been enjoying learning how to fly the A320neo. However -

• It can't get even close to its operating ceiling/where ATC generally wants you to fly. Once I hit about 30k it can barely climb at 300ft/min, and by 35k it can barely climb at all. Spent a good portion of one flight struggling to reach 37 while the ATC repeatedly yelled at me to expedite my climb to 39. From what I gather it used to be massively overpowered, now it seems massively underpowered.
• Extension of the same bug all the other autopilots seem to have - you get your approach from ATC, punch it in and activate it, and the plane tries to turn around and go back to the previous waypoint. I did manage to remove the previous waypoint from the list and get it to turn back on track, but then it had a neat thing where it kept wanting to skip waypoints after that, had to babysit it the whole way in.
• Had probably my best landing in it yet, thrust reversers and autobrakes worked great, and didn't get yelled at to do a go around despite there being pretty heavy traffic. Then I asked ground to tell me which gate to go to. Tells me gate 4, but my only option to respond was "Say again?", no way to acknowledge it and go to that gate. Ended up having to quit out, no credit for the flight.

It's a good thing the sim is so damn pretty.

[Freude am Fahren]

Are you using the Fly by Wire Mod? It completely transforms the A320. I haven't tried the default one though in ages. If you're familiar with Zibo from XP11, it's similar, but they're starting with a more broken product to begin with. There's even a downloader now to keep you on the latest version (manually), so you don't have to deal with github nonsense.

At the end of the flight, just go to anywhere and shutdown to get the flight to "finish".

But yeah, bugs abound still.