Microsoft Flight Simulator

[K]

23 hours ago, Valver said:

 

Last night as I flew along the coastline of Naples and there were some big cruise ship moored up in the bay.  One of them had a big bushy tree on it! 

 

They really need to dial back the trees in urban areas quite a bit, the AI is a bit trigger happy with them. I was doing one of the discovery flights in San Francisco last night, and in the docks in Oakland, nearly every container ship had trees growing all over them. It was doubly weird as the ships were 3D models and looked like they were in the right place, so the AI is obviously doing something right, but the trees make it look very odd. It reminds me a bit of when my son is playing on Minecraft and builds a house that looks pretty good, and then gets obsessed with plonking crystals or dragon heads everywhere and absolutely covers it with them.

[K]

3 minutes ago, Harrisown said:

One thing I don’t really like is all the pc window stuff for the ATC and whatever else there is. It’s just in the way and could have been handled much better.

 

It's really annoying when you click L3 to get the menu up, open the weather screen, make an adjustment, and click L3 to close it. The icons at the top disappear, but the weather screen stays, blocking your view, forcing you to click L3 again and fiddle around trying to click on the X in the top right of the window. Surely nobody would want those Windows 95-looking UI elements up while they're flying?

[Hitcher]

6 hours ago, SteveH said:

I have been disappointed with the supposed realtime weather so far. Walked to the corner shop yesterday just in time for it to start pissing down, so I get back home and boot up the game only to find the Manchester in the game had blue skies without a cloud to be seen anywhere. Started flying to Blackpool and it didn't change at all. Got everything enabled to allow the weather, streaming etc. 

I can look at 2 different weather apps and they'll both say different things!

[Uncle Nasty]

1 hour ago, Gotters said:

I can totally see how this isn't for everybody as a game but as a software toy to play with its fantastic.

 

Going to buy that super slow £8 single seater player to make even better but a low slow flight over London last night was just beautiful, if you know the City you just recognise so much and it's the sort of game that gets partners who wouldn't look at a game interested. Once she recognised London and a lot of spots we did a flight over Tokyo where neither of us have been, was nice, felt like going on a mini trip without leaving the sofa. 

 

 

Software toy is a great way of describing this. There's something really addictive about flying around your own area with live weather at the actual time of day, I've also discovered that you can rewind time to specific dates so you can experience the particular weather conditions from that day.

 

I set myself some routes last night - touring British castles, tracing the route of the grand union canal, flying to the source of the Thames from London, visiting music festival locations, visiting seaside places I went on holiday to as a kid (quite melancholic) - I'm a bit of a map nerd and these kind of expeditions press a lot of buttons for me. Very interesting to see how many private airstrips there are and how difficult they are to land at. 

 

Hardly even ventured outside England yet.

[Uncle Nasty]

17 minutes ago, K said:

 

They really need to dial back the trees in urban areas quite a bit, the AI is a bit trigger happy with them. I was doing one of the discovery flights in San Francisco last night, and in the docks in Oakland, nearly every container ship had trees growing all over them. It was doubly weird as the ships were 3D models and looked like they were in the right place, so the AI is obviously doing something right, but the trees make it look very odd. It reminds me a bit of when my son is playing on Minecraft and builds a house that looks pretty good, and then gets obsessed with plonking crystals or dragon heads everywhere and absolutely covers it with them.

 

Some of the urban areas end up looking like Chernobyl does now with the amount of trees.

 

That's given me an idea for a new flight path though.

[RFT]

This would be an ideal thing for a smartglass (remeber that?) Solution. I'd love to have ATC and/or the Garmin nav running on my phone or ipad.

[Stanley]

1 minute ago, RFT said:

This would be an ideal thing for a smartglass (remeber that?) Solution. I'd love to have ATC and/or the Garmin nav running on my phone or ipad.

I was just thinking that the other day, I’d love an iPad open with my waypoints on it etc. 

[spanx]

2 minutes ago, Stanley said:

I was just thinking that the other day, I’d love an iPad open with my waypoints on it etc. 

Navigraph Charts is lovely for this (PC only for now). It links to the sim and ensures I can see myself on my flight plan, pull up radio frequencies and approach plates, etc. I really hope they can do something similar for Xbox

[BitterToad]

23 hours ago, BitterToad said:

But this doesn't quite scratch that itch in the same way for some reason. There's just not that thing that ignites my interest and I can't really work out why. It's just a map. A really beautiful, stunning achievement of a map, but still just a map. Power to anyone that's really loving it though, I'll definitely keep reading through the thread because there's something in there that I really wanted to love. It's just not quite done it for me with what's on offer from a gameplay perspective quite yet. 

 

After posting this I watched Squirrel's videos on getting started and landing and then last night I flew from Southampton where I was at Uni to London where I live now whilst watching TCGS on twitch. One of the better gaming experiences I've had in a while.

[CurryKitten]

Oooh, this is pretty isn't it.  I just signed up to Gamepass to play this on my Series X.  I would say I'm not really one that plays flight sims... that said I actually have written on (and keep developing it) bu that's for quadcopters, so quite different.

 

This is actually the first thing I've played on my Series X that's designed for the Series X, everything else has just been shinier versions of Xbox One and 360 games.  The tech in this is so impressive.  I mean, not up close obviously.  If I use the "drone" camera and find my house then it's a horrible clump of stretched pixels over a box with some trees that aren't there... but I mean, we're talking about the whole world here so I think they can be forgiven for not getting every detail just right.

 

That said, there were some locations where I thought they'd go back and check but looked bad.  I went around and started visiting all the places I'd been on holiday.  In Yosemite National Park in the US, I flew through the valley and whilst the famous El Capitan peak looked lovely, there was a clear gap between part of half dome's base and peak.  A magical floating mountain.

 

I think for many this will just be a really interesting way to view a map and nothing more.  Which is fine, because it's not a game after all, it's a sim.  So the sim guys can get their fancy HOTAS setups, talk to ATC, taxi around a lot and then do real time cross atlantic flights and things.  Me, I'll enjoy taking off and landing at various places whilst saying "look, I've been here" at various stages.

 

Any talk of adding heli's BTW.  It gets slightly closer to the sort of drone flying I'd typically be doing ?

 

[Valver]

13 minutes ago, CurryKitten said:

Any talk of adding heli's BTW.  It gets slightly closer to the sort of drone flying I'd typically be doing ?

 

Yup, the Devs have it on their roadmap.  Currently listed as "Planned 2022" though

 

 

 

edit: And on PC there are already some hacked together Helis:

https://www.msfsaddons.org/aircraft/airbus-h135-helicopter-for-microsoft-flight-simulator-download-link

 

 

[CurryKitten]

6 minutes ago, Valver said:

Yup, the Devs have it on their roadmap.  Currently listed as "Planned 2022" though

 

Thanks - even the non-heli heli already looks pretty cool

[cowfields]

2 hours ago, Harrisown said:

That looks unplayable to me.

I can’t see how they are going to make the Top Gun planes work.

 

I wonder if they figure out some kind of low res polygons for buildings if you're in a certain speed or type of plane. 

 

Obviously the stuttering ruined the impact a bit. My xbox is hardwired to the network and I have something like 600meg with virgin. So it's not like that should be a problem. 

 

Weirdly I forgave it because it was a third party plane and its a sandbox kind of game. 

[fattakin]

12 hours ago, TehStu said:

With its own marketplace, purchases can't be shared, right? Not sure I want to get extra planes if the kids can't use them. Well, on their own users.

 

Was wondering this too - you go first and let me know

[iwan_canobi]

5 minutes ago, cowfields said:

 

I wonder if they figure out some kind of low res polygons for buildings if you're in a certain speed or type of plane. 

 

Obviously the stuttering ruined the impact a bit. My xbox is hardwired to the network and I have something like 600meg with virgin. So it's not like that should be a problem. 

 

Weirdly I forgave it because it was a third party plane and its a sandbox kind of game. 

 

Is it the same in the cockpit as well? It still looks like great fun to try.

 

I tried climbing through some thick cloud yesterday and it really showed why light aircraft aren't allowed to lose sight of the ground. I got totally disoriented and ended up in a turn whilst climbing, and at one point started descending even though I thought I was level and climbing. Managed to right it by switching to the external view but man, I'd have been screwed if that was a real life situation. It did fill me with panic even though I knew I was just sitting on my couch.

[SharkyOB]

5 minutes ago, iwan_canobi said:

 

Is it the same in the cockpit as well? It still looks like great fun to try.

 

I tried climbing through some thick cloud yesterday and it really showed why light aircraft aren't allowed to lose sight of the ground. I got totally disoriented and ended up in a turn whilst climbing, and at one point started descending even though I thought I was level and climbing. Managed to right it by switching to the external view but man, I'd have been screwed if that was a real life situation. It did fill me with panic even though I knew I was just sitting on my couch.

 

This is what your instruments are for; if you can't see anything outside, fly using the artificial horizon.

[SharkyOB]

2 hours ago, Isaac said:

Loving the new PC performance update but I'm getting a lot more random freezes / crashes to desktop.

 

Hopefully the hotfix out later today sorts it, because I'm loving how I can now play this on Ultra with decent FPS.

 

Has a time been specified for this at all?  The game is unplayable for me at the moment due to constant crashing, so I'm pinning my hopes on this patch!

[K]

2 hours ago, Uncle Nasty said:

 

Some of the urban areas end up looking like Chernobyl does now with the amount of trees.

 

That's given me an idea for a new flight path though.

 

I'm still getting used to the idea that I can think of somewhere in the world, and then go there in the game.

[Harrisown]

10 minutes ago, SharkyOB said:

 

This is what your instruments are for; if you can't see anything outside, fly using the artificial horizon.

Last night I flew to the storm that was passing Ireland and heading for the south west.

PITCH BLACK. Cessna of course with the G1000.

it’s so simple to use it’s pretty great. Unfortunately I just wasn’t getting anywhere after an hour so ducked out and picked a jet which I was able to take I to the clouds.

I think I need to look at calibration on Xbox , does the Xbox still crush blacks? It seems too.

 

We should all pick an airport and go there. Maybe some wacky races to a destination.

 

What is this game place to be? What the most popular airport? There was about 6-8 people buzzing round St Maarten on launch night.

[iwan_canobi]

31 minutes ago, SharkyOB said:

 

This is what your instruments are for; if you can't see anything outside, fly using the artificial horizon.

 

I was in the Flight Design CTLS which doesn't have one. Unless I was missing it somehow.

[Isaac]

1 hour ago, SharkyOB said:

 

Has a time been specified for this at all?  The game is unplayable for me at the moment due to constant crashing, so I'm pinning my hopes on this patch!

 

8am Pacific, which is 4pm UK.

[SharkyOB]

4 minutes ago, Isaac said:

 

8am Pacific, which is 4pm UK.

 

Great, thank you!

[SneakyNinja]

Better not be another 124Gb download

 

(Still going to download it either way  )

[RFT]

1 hour ago, iwan_canobi said:

 

I was in the Flight Design CTLS which doesn't have one. Unless I was missing it somehow.

 

It doesn;t have a dedicated dial, but you can switch the garmin touchscreen display on the right into a combined attitude/speed/alt display by pressing the "3D" button on the touchscreen (you'll prob need ot shift the camera right up to it, so don;t try if you're flying or not paused). Found that this morning...

[Uncle Nasty]

UI issues aside, the actual flying is surprisingly accessible and easy to enjoy. I was expecting a much more austere and intimidating first few days with this. Even landing is something I look forward to now. I like the way the game knows if you're lining up with a random runway for an unscheduled landing and you get the guiding lights and ATC (learning the lingo, there) voice chatter. Found a couple of airfields quite close to each other near Lizard in Cornwall and spent hours hopping between them in different weather conditions, using the taxiing and queuing lessons from the tutorial to do it properly. Really satisfying when you take off without getting an earful about it being unscheduled. I actually feel bad if I just abandon a flight in mid air now and always try to land even if it's a boneshaker.

 

Easy to see how people get so deeply into this. It's as complex or simple as you want it to be, whether you're just going for a pootle around the Cornish coast or strapping in for a serious transatlantic long haul.

 

This game makes me smile a lot. The sunsets, the familiar sights, the way that it combines map nerdery with gaming, the insane graphics, the endless ambition and scope of it.

 

 

[iwan_canobi]

37 minutes ago, RFT said:

 

It doesn;t have a dedicated dial, but you can switch the garmin touchscreen display on the right into a combined attitude/speed/alt display by pressing the "3D" button on the touchscreen (you'll prob need ot shift the camera right up to it, so don;t try if you're flying or not paused). Found that this morning...

 

Ah ha, thats cool, will need to try that. I was using the HOTAS for the first time last night and the looking around is binary with the HAT, so I ended up having the controller sat next to me as well, would need to use that to actually access the cockpit controls.

[stan]

5 hours ago, K said:

The active pause button seems to have permanently disappeared, and I can't see any option that would bring it back. However, if you're on Xbox, I would recommend binding active pause to LB+L3, as it's not used for anything else and is more convenient than clicking L3 and trying to aim at the right button while your plane is careering towards the Tyne Bridge.

when I first played the game the other night there was definitely no active pause icon in that top row when clicking L3, but last night I noticed it was there. I assumed something had updated 

 

5 hours ago, spanx said:

 

There's an option in the assistance menu to turn on something called taxi ribbon. Once you've contacted ATC and got clearance it should give you a nice path to follow

sweet. Thank you!

[TehStu]

7 hours ago, cowfields said:

So I want to make a case for speed still being a worthy addition. 

 

 

Yeah, I went #yolo and bought it last night, too. I didn't have the streaming issues flying through downtown Chicago. It was snapping all over the place while flying through, although I think that's very likely the more-pronounced default left stick sensitivity (given you're moving faster) and me having everything on easy so the kids can play. 

 

It was pretty bonkers, managed to land it after bouncing down the runway.

[HarryBizzle]

One of my dad’s best mates gave us his old 486 back in the day and Flight Sim was one of the first games I ever played.
 

Anyway, I sent him a video of this - he plays Xplane on his Mac these days, and assumed he’d need a mega PC to play this, so was pretty shocked you can run it on a £250 Xbox and is thinking about picking one up. He’s not been in the best of health recently, which has led to him being a bit more isolated and doesn’t live nearby, so I’m kind of hoping we can get into it together. 

[Transient Curse]

 

Is this what the game looks like for everyone (series X)?