Microsoft Flight Simulator

[K]

This is such a great game, the visuals are absolutely stunning. The only negative thing visually is that tall buildings look weirdly awful at night. They all have the same pattern of lights, which looks odd, and they're not luminous enough. It's especially obvious if you fly over Chicago or New York at night - the skyscrapers downtown look darker than the surrounding city, which is just wrong. They should be lit up like the rest of the city.

 

It's odd, as everything else looks almost photorealistic - the streetlights and low buildings look almost perfect. They've just tweaked the night lighting in the latest update, so hopefully they'll address this in future.

 

That aside, the bush trips are great - you see some lovely scenery, the directions they give are just engaging enough to keep your attention, and they've cleverly divided them up into lots of shorter legs that take about 20 minutes to do.

[Boozy The Clown]

 

 

[metallicfrodo]

Still absolutely blows my mind every time I boot this up. A game shouldn’t look this good.

[spanx]

Looking forward to booting up with Sim Update 6. PC version has got some pretty significant visual boosts by the sound of it. Finally getting DX12 upgrade soon too, so hopefully some more coming with the GOTY edition. 

[Boozy The Clown]

 

[Eighthours]

No actual air racing in the trailer. Amazing. 😂

[metallicfrodo]

The attention to detail is insane!

[RFT]

15 hours ago, Boozy The Clown said:

 

 

 

Ooh boy, I;d forgotten quite how ugly the Pilatus was.

 

One thing I haven;t seen mentioned is that the GOTY update is bringing a load more photgrammetry cities to the UK -  Brighton, Derby, Eastbourne, Newcastle, and Nottingham. (so, just england, then.)

[Isaac]

1 hour ago, RFT said:

One thing I haven;t seen mentioned is that the GOTY update is bringing a load more photgrammetry cities to the UK -  Brighton, Derby, Eastbourne, Newcastle, and Nottingham. (so, just england, then.)

 

Yep, that means that the list of photogrammetry cities in England is looking pretty healthy, post update:

 

• Birmingham
• Bristol
• Brighton
• Cambridge
• Derby
• Eastbourne
• London
• Newcastle
• Nottingham
• Oxford
• Southampton
• Portsmouth

 

Only real obvious large cities not in there now are Liverpool, Leeds and Manchester. Perhaps you could make a case for Sheffield too. I'd love them to do Norwich but can't see it happening.

[Boothjan]

Probably a good idea that they leave Wolverhampton alone though.  As awesome as it would be to fly low over Molineux, I don't think ANYONE wants to see any other part of Wolverhampton city centre in 4k up close.  Not without some sort of content warning.

[Boothjan]

Is anyone else UTTERLY HOPELESS at this?  I am just appalling at landing.  I can never get it right - I've looked at tutorial videos, I've had a go at the lessons etc but my landings tend to be like the one in Hot Shots.

 

 

Such a lovely game, very interesting but I am very glad I'm not ever going to be trusted to control an ACTUAL plane.

[Gigawatt]

You know what they say, any landing you can walk away from is a good one. 

[tronied]

35 minutes ago, Boothjan said:

Is anyone else UTTERLY HOPELESS at this?  I am just appalling at landing.

I find the best things for landing are:

 

1) Make sure you give yourself enough room. Line up with target runway at a decent distance (couple of miles)

2) If you're using cockpit mode, I always find it helpful to "sit up" a bit (press space) to increase visibility.

3) Use the flaps and power to control the glide slope. You can land without flaps, but then it's all down to controlling the power. Decrease the power to see how it affects altitude and use that to control your approach aiming the downward trajectory for the start of the runway.

4) Once you reach just before the runway and are at a lowish speed and altitude, cut power to near 0 (if not using flaps) and slightly flair the aircraft. Eventually gravity will do the rest.

 

Just takes some practise but you'll get there. 

[Simmy]

19 hours ago, Isaac said:

 

Yep, that means that the list of photogrammetry cities in England is looking pretty healthy, post update:

 

• Birmingham
• Bristol
• Brighton
• Cambridge
• Derby
• Eastbourne
• London
• Newcastle
• Nottingham
• Oxford
• Southampton
• Portsmouth

 

Only real obvious large cities not in there now are Liverpool, Leeds and Manchester. Perhaps you could make a case for Sheffield too. I'd love them to do Norwich but can't see it happening.

 

I genuinely find it mildly offensive that in the UK update(s) we've not had one Scottish city given that lick of paint.

 

I mean even Edinburgh at the bare minimum - it's embarrassing how flimsy that city looks in the game.

[Boothjan]

6 minutes ago, Simmy said:

 

I genuinely find it mildly offensive that in the UK update(s) we've not had one Scottish city given that lick of paint.

 

I mean even Edinburgh at the bare minimum - it's embarrassing how flimsy that city looks in the game.

 

You want Forza Horizon 4 AND Flight Simulator??!  Pfft!

[layten]

1 hour ago, Gigawatt said:

You know what they say, any landing you can walk away from is a good one. 

I say the opposite.

[jonathanhoey]

I‘ve always enjoyed the longer version of that adage. “A good landing is one you can walk away from. A great landing is one where you can use the aircraft again.”

[Hamus]

On 22/10/2021 at 11:28, layten said:

I say the opposite.

 

Remembering when people said that throwing eggs at him was wrong.

[spanx]

Sim update 6 is a very nice update. Significant visual boost to LOD helps a lot, and the ATC seems to have had an upgrade too. Nice and stable too, good work Asobo

[iwan_canobi]

Got all set up for a VR session tonight and loaded up, 82GB update….That put an end to that! Really annoying how the updates have to have the game running to actually download. 

[mexos]

I know that this is not what the game is about and in a post 911 world we would never get it

 

BUT

 

I would pay proper money for Beam NG deformation physics in this. I'd just fuck around forever trying to do things like fly a 747 under bridges, land a plan on my high st etc. 

 

I used to play Indy 500 on the Amiga for two reasons - one because it was a great game and two because the crashes were epic. I want to see the results of my lack of ability.

[Meers]

8 minutes ago, mexos said:

I know that this is not what the game is about and in a post 911 world we would never get it

 

BUT

 

I would pay proper money for Beam NG deformation physics in this. I'd just fuck around forever trying to do things like fly a 747 under bridges, land a plan on my high st etc. 

 

I used to play Indy 500 on the Amiga for two reasons - one because it was a great game and two because the crashes were epic. I want to see the results of my lack of ability.

 

The engine used for the Battlefield games have planes and realistic structural damage physics...so why not in FS2020 indeed?

[Gotters]

Hell no to crashes or rubbish like that.

 

One of the best things about this is its a game/software designed by adults for adults, not designed by a committee of white blokes trying to be cool and engage with the yoof or get some viral tiktoks going.

[K]

The other thing about including realistic crashes is that while the game looks utterly stunning and eerily realistic while flying, the buildings and scenery look awful close-up, because it's designed to be seen from hundreds of feet away. The airports look nice because they're the only structures you would ever really see up close when playing the game; I can't really see some painstakingly-detailed Burnout Paradise style crash would look very satisfying when it's crashing into a street texture that looks like a closeup of a cardigan, interspersed with nightmare polygons branching off at all angles like something out of HP Lovecraft.

[footle]

47 minutes ago, Gotters said:

get some viral tiktoks going.

 

It'd be bloody awful.

[mexos]

23 minutes ago, K said:

The other thing about including realistic crashes is that while the game looks utterly stunning and eerily realistic while flying, the buildings and scenery look awful close-up, because it's designed to be seen from hundreds of feet away.

 

Solution: Just make all the buildings hi res. 

 

[mexos]

8 minutes ago, footle said:

 

It'd be bloody awful.

 

Does anyone here use Tiktok? I thought we were all too old for for that sort of thing?

[deerokus]

There's no way the various licences would allow crashes anyway.

[Meers]

My copy of FS2020 crashes enough on my laptop (GTX1050 mobile, 16GB, i5 7300) so I got what I wished for. 😅

[SteveH]

Edit: sold out already. Bit odd that they allowed 2 per customer. But they have stated that they will be manufacturing more of them. 

 

The Turtle Beach Flight Stick is up for pre-order (£349.99)
https://uk.turtlebeach.com/products/velocity-one-flight

 

They are starting shipping on 14th November.