Microsoft Flight Simulator

[Stanley]

3 minutes ago, stan said:

so I bought the premium edition. do I have to manually install updates? Like, for example, there is a world update and it says 'purchased' and if I click into it is says 'owned', but I actually still have to install it?!

Yes that’s correct. 

[stan]

lol they really need to work on their copy

 

telling you you've purchased something and also that you own it, makes you sort of assume..

[SteveH]

34 minutes ago, Stanley said:

Adjusting trim in the external view is difficult without the attitude dial, I think you can have it on screen though by checking one of the options. 

Yeah that same guy in those recent videos mentions that. Though it was already enabled for me for some reason.

[Harrisown]

Is there a spreadsheet of the Xbox controller default layout anywhere?

can’t find one anywhere 

[Transient Curse]

Is this how the London Eye looks when you fly by it? Like it's not been used in a few years and is covered with cobwebs? I'm sure there's something I've got to do to make it look better but I cannot work out what it might be. 

 

https://imgur.com/gallery/y88p9nG

[TehStu]

Oh man, just had an amazing flight. Now, bearing in mind I've barely done tutorials, my son and I took off from a dreary Heathrow in a 747 (because 8 year old) and headed for Charles De Gaulle. Except there was no obvious direction, so we guessed and flew south and farted around with dials on the cockpit to fly a specific altitude and speed. But then we couldn't turn that off. Then I realized we had drifted east and didn't know where the hell we were until I spotted French sounding names, and then we figured out from the menus how to put a little heading on screen to destination. Oh, we're MILES off. So I'm fighting the damn speed and trying to make it go lower without over speed for the best part of 125 miles. Finally get below the cloud cover too late to find us zooming over the airfield. Do the quickest 180 I dared to, we're way off and too fast and I can't figure out airbrakes because of you let go of the stick it snaps around wildly. Anyway, zero throttle and increasing the flaps and we gently put down... just off the runway and I get the achievement for taking off, flying 300 miles, then landing... just before I hit a tree.

 

Yay!

 

Small plane, next time.

[Stanley]

That is what is so brilliant, getting there by trial and error, picking up things gradually as you learn, like when I tried flying a Cessna 152 from Liverpool to Cork thinking it won’t take too long 😬

[Eighthours]

How do you activate the drone camera on Xbox?

[K]

That twin engined private jet is terrifying if you’re used to the Cessna. I was buzzing around Brighton in it, set both engines to full power to see what this baby could do, and was at 10,000 feet in a few seconds. I got a genuine, dizzying sense of vertigo as it blasted through the cloud deck. 

[Stanley]

8 minutes ago, K said:

That twin engined private jet is terrifying if you’re used to the Cessna. I was buzzing around Brighton in it, set both engines to full power to see what this baby could do, and was at 10,000 feet in a few seconds. I got a genuine, dizzying sense of vertigo as it blasted through the cloud deck. 

Does anyone know if you can fly by wire in this like in the Airbus or 747? I was basically trying fly it manually and struggling a bit - that’s the thing with this isn’t it, every plane is an entirely new game in itself.

[Eighthours]

The training missions seem particularly busted right now. Objectives not triggering/appearing much more than before in my current game.

 

EDIT: Yep, have watched a YouTube video of a guy doing the taking off and landing missions, and so much of what he’s seeing just isn’t appearing in my game at the moment. Oh dear!

[spanx]

The CJ4 (private jet) is pretty well set up to just configure it to climb to cruise, sit there, then manage its own descent. You can even configure the ILS to pretty much take you to a few hundred feet from landing. 
 

Edit: meant to @Stanley

[deerokus]

1 hour ago, Wahwah* said:

Is this how the London Eye looks when you fly by it? Like it's not been used in a few years and is covered with cobwebs? I'm sure there's something I've got to do to make it look better but I cannot work out what it might be. 

 

https://imgur.com/gallery/y88p9nG

I think that's how things look when it's not bringing down the streamed data fast enough. Maybe.

[Stanley]

56 minutes ago, spanx said:

The CJ4 (private jet) is pretty well set up to just configure it to climb to cruise, sit there, then manage its own descent. You can even configure the ILS to pretty much take you to a few hundred feet from landing. 
 

Edit: meant to @Stanley

Brilliant thanks for that, I haven’t figured any of this out yet but I’m enjoying learning! 

[SeanR]

2 hours ago, TehStu said:

my son and I took off from a dreary Heathrow in a 747 (because 8 year old) and headed for Charles De Gaulle. Except there was no obvious direction, so we guessed and flew south and farted around with dials on the cockpit to fly a specific altitude and speed.

bizarre! My son asked me to do the exact same thing. We crashed somewhere in Belgium…

 

this was takeoff

 

 

[shirubagan]

Went over to my brother’s house today and was trying to sell him Flight Sim as he’s bounced off it. I found his house and crashed my Cessna, then landed the Airbus in Japan from the Challenge/Activity menu and scored an unbelievably crap 2/2,000,000

[Harrisown]

Just had a few crashes.

Trying to do a cold start in Dallas and do a fly past of the AT&T stadium. It’s a high detail airport.

I’m starting up my Cessna with a G1000 nag unit and for some reason the screens go black and it’s eventually crashes.

Perhaps a memory problem?

[Transient Curse]

1 hour ago, deerokus said:

I think that's how things look when it's not bringing down the streamed data fast enough. Maybe.

Thanks for the reply, I've just been on again, the network stats on Xbox say 475Mb/s down, 31 up. And yet, it's still looking pretty ugly / weird.

[Talk Show Host]

There’s a constant awe with this game and the gameplay is really something. Trying to learn a plane and it’s systems and fly it as properly as you can, dealing with ATC, flight plans, etc is really rewarding. 
 

I got to say though, this barely reaches  30 fps on the X for most of the time (and I’m not talking about cities etc). Hopefully a couple of patches will help with performance.

[Naysonymous]

On 31/07/2021 at 18:42, Eighthours said:

How do you activate the drone camera on Xbox?

It’s clunky, but you click in the left stick and go to the camera option in the menu I forget what the label is for the drone but it’s the third tab  labelled showcase.  You select that and it switches to a virtual drone. There are a few options within that menu like drone speed and camera zoom.  You can follow your plane or freely roam.  
 

 

I had a look at Mount Rushmore and the nearby Crazy Horse memorial.  I’m guessing Microsoft didn’t expect as many people to go see Crazy Horse. 
 

 

Edited August 2, 2021 by Naysonymous

[HarryBizzle]

9 hours ago, Stanley said:

If you watch his first video specifically for Xbox he calibrates the controls for sensitivity which might help a bit, someone also included the settings earlier on in the thread. 

 

Thanks for this. Gave his Xbox videos a go and they’re great. Got me flying with the Hard settings, which is only a bit more difficult but makes it feel much more involved, and I managed to land the Cessna by following his instructions. 

 

This really is wonderful.

 

[TehStu]

1 hour ago, Wahwah* said:

Thanks for the reply, I've just been on again, the network stats on Xbox say 475Mb/s down, 31 up. And yet, it's still looking pretty ugly / weird.

My son reckoned London looked like it had been in a war earlier, buildings busted in weird ways and shabby. Don't think it's my connection per se.

 

Also yeah, with thick clouds and other stuff going on, it chugged a bit on approach to Charles De Gaulle in a way it hasn't elsewhere for me. I chalked out up to the bonkers weather.

[HarryBizzle]

London is a complete mess for me, but looking on YouTube, plenty of people seem to have it working just fine. 

[tobert]

4 hours ago, Eighthours said:

The training missions seem particularly busted right now. Objectives not triggering/appearing much more than before in my current game.

 

EDIT: Yep, have watched a YouTube video of a guy doing the taking off and landing missions, and so much of what he’s seeing just isn’t appearing in my game at the moment. Oh dear!

It continues to be a bag of balls for me. Today I did the VFR one, the objectives stopped coming so i tried pausing and going into the options screen and back out to see if that would trigger and it's stopped giving me the option to go back in to the game. I had to restart and it said I had completed the mission

[Transient Curse]

52 minutes ago, TehStu said:

My son reckoned London looked like it had been in a war earlier, buildings busted in weird ways and shabby. Don't think it's my connection per se.

Thanks for the reply, also to @deerokus, there's a world update for London you can install that makes the world of difference to certain landmarks.  Things like The Shard still look pretty crap (and it seems far too small), but the London Eye I saw earlier looked great. 

 

I had a fly around Christ the Redeemer earlier, and as the sun was starting to drift towards the horizon, I felt like I got the relaxing quality of this for the first time. Then I tried to adjust something with a half remembered command, that actually turned the engine off. I couldn't work out how to turn it back on, but managed to glide to the sea (and crash). 

 

My old Design Technology teacher made his own aeroplane and brought it into school one day for everyone to see.  I feel slightly jealous of him now, he's the only person I know (I think) who had their own aeroplane.

[Harrisown]

 

Pretty proud of that

[tobert]

To follow up on the training issues, I quit out of the game and restated the console and it seemed to fix it.

[TehStu]

I didn't realize it would score you on activities against friends. Hit me up if we're not already, gamer tag my forum name!

[Gotters]

this looks PC only initially but hopefully comes to Xbox

 

 

[Talk Show Host]

Orbx stuff are great but they bring the fps

down in most cases, despite their “fps friendly” claims. There are a couple of meshes to buy right now, Switzerland and New Zealand, but im sure environment packs will be available soon. Hopefully in properly optimized versions.

 

After leaving Cessna I went for the Diamond Da40ng as my go to plane. It has great specs, proper aviation tech and, most importantly, a great peripheral view, really really great. I’m focusing on small flights at the moment and learning the procedures, from starting the engine to properly get ATC clearness, etc. I’m playing on total simulation on piloting,  damage, etc and no helps at all (but mechanical damage is off). It’s hard to say the least 😅.  
 

I bought the VFR training package which explains many things, but it’s not so well implemented and it assumes knowledge on various things. With that said, I went out of it totally capable of properly trimming and learning how to use low speeds on low altitudes without stalling and enjoying a stable flight. 
 

After spending time flying around in south Norway, I will take a flight over Iceland today and hopefully I won’t crash and burn. There are many little airfields there which are completely basic, so it will be a good opportunity to test landing approaches. For those who haven’t done it and need some help, you can activate “landing approaches” help from the menu which will bring out a red path in game, while you fly, which guides you on how to approach the airstrips for landing. 
 

All in all, what a game.