GWJ FBO: Flight Simulation Catch-all

Veloxi wrote:

I live 20 minutes from LAX and holy hell that's astounding.

Wait, you live across the street from LAX?

Carlbear95 wrote:
Veloxi wrote:

I live 20 minutes from LAX and holy hell that's astounding.

Wait, you live across the street from LAX? :)

I was gonna say two blocks, but you beat me to the punch.

HAhahah oh you guys.

Hopefully they've improved things, but during construction, if Term 1 was your destination.. Terminal 3 would be 20 minutes away.

Anyone looking forward to gliders?

Looks like Xplane is doing itself no favors with its launch of XP12. Would have been perfectly fine if not for MSFS now here, but basically its where MSFS was when it launched. Lots of stuff not working great, still bugs with weather and flight models. However at least MSFS had marketing and the eye candy to give to basically force it to the lead spot.

The current product certainly won't convince anyone to switch from MSFS who isn't already an Xplane fan.

Even more telling is that there's a rumored P3D update in the works. I honestly felt that product would be left for dead after MSFS, but clearly someone there sees an opportunity in the training/"hardcore" sim market that XP12 has failed to capture.

Ultimately I feel like Xplane 12 is probably going to end up where it is now.. a distant 2nd and more geared toward the training crowd. I personally have no problem with that, but that will likely impact the 3rd party developers who in nearly all cases are small if not one-person teams who have to choose how to allocate their time and resources.

Too bad... there was a great opportunity here for XP12 to gain some traction. It was never going to surpass MSFS in market share, but I'm not even sure its going to grow at this point. Some number of XP11 users have permanently switched to MSFS, and unless something dramatic changes, I have a hard time believing a new sim pilot who has only known MSFS is going to make the leap to XP12.

After a somewhat torrid (for me) pace of flights earlier in the year, I've only been able to fly about once per month over the summer & fall.

Between January and the Fourth of July, I flew 76 flights that covered from Worcester, Mass, a lot of time over northern New Jersey and Long Island, along the Appalachians to southern Florida (with stops in Huntsville, Birmingham, and Montgomery AL), then finally along the Caribbean islands to Martinique.

In the nearly five months since then, I've flown four times and finally reached South America, departing Port of Spain T&T landing at SVMG on the island of Margarita.

IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/mYJK0u0.jpg)
If you look closely you might still see Paul Caligiuri down there!

Assuming I get more flying time over the winter, I plan to fly along the northern coasts of Venezuela and Colombia, to Panama, then up Central America and Mexico to reach the western US.

XPlane 12 now up to 'Release Candidate' stage. RC1 released yesterday and patch again today to RC2.
https://www.x-plane.com/kb/x-plane-1...

DonD wrote:

Microsoft Flight Simulator celebrates 10 Million Pilots
10. Million. In a niche genre.

Game Pass probably helps a lot with those numbers.

For those intersted, Xplane 12 is on sale for $40 on Steam.

I've finished up the year with two flights across northern Venezuela, into Caracas, then from Caracas to Puerto Cabello.

IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/waNcVAQ.jpg)

Caracas is an interesting city. It's high up in a mountain valley. There is a military airstrip in the valley at elevation 2700 feet while the main airport is along the coast, just the other side of the mountains at only 176 feet.

IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/dwxc13m.jpg)

Some of the nicer buildings in town came from a pair of scenery packs on flightsim.to.

This is a section of Avenida Bolivar, with the Palace of Justice, a bullfighting ring, and what I think are some hotels. The weird building at the bottom of the image is El Helicoide, which was apparently built as a shopping mall but converted into a notorious prison.
IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/l9j3Aby.jpg)

IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/ov1zTcR.jpg)

IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/rOZTrW5.jpg)

My next few trips will be to the ABC Islands (Aruba, Bonaire, Curaçao).

So this happened.

As you can imagine, "hardcore" simmers aren't thrilled as this shows more gamifications improvements than flight model improvements (compare to Xplane 12 presentations on flight dynamics). More importantly very curious what this means for add-on, especially paid add-on developers. MSFS is pushing "Whole new sim", so this doesn't seem like some upgrade or expansion. MS/Asobo saying they will continue to support 2020, but call me skeptical. I'm assuming 2020 will come off Gamepass to be replaced by 2024, and that's where the userbase next year will be. Why would they continue to support an older product?

Curious how many casual flyers are engaging with MSFS on a regular basis now that we're nearly 3 years into this thing and is there enough for them to come back next year. For me, as a VFR training tool its helpful for visual cues but flight dynamics still aren't as good xplane 11, at least in the small aircraft I fly, even with some community created mods.

As a simcasual (I lean more into simulation settings in "games" like MSFS, racing sims of various stripes, etc, but I enjoy having a bit of a gaming progression "layer" on top as an option even if I spend the bulk of my time sandboxing), I'm honestly really excited about the variety of missions in that trailer. Enough so that I can see myself jumping into MSFS 2024 as a replacement for 2020. I haven't fired 2020 up this year since I needed to free up drive space but have been itching to get through some of my heftier game installs so I can get MSFS loaded back up, but I'll probably wait for this instead.

I suspect I am the target audience for a product like this, rather than the hardcore sim community, which leaves me with mixed feelings. I'd rather see the products target folks like you Carlbear, and if they happen to have useability options to help ease in people like myself then I'm all for it. But I don't want to see one of the few "premier" simulation products out there leave the deeper simulation community underserved in an effort to cater too much to folks like myself.

I haven't really processed this change yet, so don't know what to think. My gut reaction is "not happy" but we'll see.

I meant to go look at the MSFS forum yesterday but never got around to it.

I have those same concerns/questions about paid addon developers.

They did have a follow up post where they said that virtually all addons from 2020 will work in 2024, and that any marketplace purchases will not need to be purchased again. This might hurt the career addon stuff though, unless they can integrate with the in game career stuff.

I actually think the mission/campaign stuff is interesting.. I've always thought one of the hardest things to figure out is "Where should I fly" when you have access to the whole world, but that is also solved by various free and paid addons that are available now on most sims. No doubt Asobo can make that much more polished vs. just some layer on top of it, so curious to see what they come up.

If it has all of that AND its a better flight sim, AND add-on devs are onboard, then an extra $60-$80 every 4 years is well worth it.

Yes, I’m looking forward to the missions. I don’t think we have much detail yet, do we? I miss the “game” wrapper that I grew up with in 90s sims (contrast, say, Strike Commander to MSFS or DCS) and I’d like to see more in modern titles. Civil aviation has a lot of potential — for example, firefighting missions now that the game will include water bombing.

And now for something completely different...

This is free on flightsim.to.

Carlbear95 wrote:

Curious how many casual flyers are engaging with MSFS on a regular basis

For me, not at all, I don't have the time or patience for it. Therefore, them adding career modes, which is something I've always wanted in a flight simulator, is exactly what I want. I will definitely be buying this.

So I've heard that A2A Simulations knows how to make some nice aircraft...

Rumor has it that this Comanche 250 with Accu-Sim will be released this month.

Looks good. I haven't been doing much flying, real or simulated lately. On the sim side, I feel like I've been hitting up against system specs and I've been telling myself "I'll get a new computer soon", and I'll fly when I do that. Unfortunately "soon" has basically been going on 12 months now, but I finally pulled the trigger during the Prime Day sales, so pc building gods willing my new PC will be up and running this weekend and I plan on jumping back into both sims (picked up XP12 during the last steam sale as well).

That A2A model looks great.. I've been looking for a good, accurate single engine GA plane to fly that's faster than the 172s and that may be the one.

Well, it turned out that "this month" meant today (now yesterday) for the release of the A2A Comanche!

Carlbear95 wrote:

Looks good. I haven't been doing much flying, real or simulated lately. On the sim side, I feel like I've been hitting up against system specs and I've been telling myself "I'll get a new computer soon", and I'll fly when I do that. Unfortunately "soon" has basically been going on 12 months now, but I finally pulled the trigger during the Prime Day sales, so pc building gods willing my new PC will be up and running this weekend and I plan on jumping back into both sims (picked up XP12 during the last steam sale as well).

So did you take any additional time off that just happens to coincide with the arrival of your new machine?

Carlbear95 wrote:

That A2A model looks great.. I've been looking for a good, accurate single engine GA plane to fly that's faster than the 172s and that may be the one.

I'm still loving the time I spend in my Blackbird (fka Milviz) C310R, but man everything I read about this Comanche is so tempting. This is exactly the kind of plane I want to see more of, even if the Comanche itself doesn't excite me as much as the C310R.

That said, my word tour has me currently landed in the Andes at Quito, so I have been pushing the ability of the C310 (and of its pilot) to fly up at 12,000+ feet. I've been thinking of breaking out my trusty Piper Turbo Arrow III for this part of the trip. I haven't flown any of my arrows since I got the C310R last May.

I'd love to tell you all how its going, despite what I thought was "we've made download and install sizes smaller", that is most definitely not the case.

Main game was 120GB, these world updates are like 80GB, and for some reason I just don't understand MS downloading is just so slow. Every other game service I use takes advantage of most of my gigabit connection but MSFS rarely breaks 200 and most of the time its in the low 100s...

Carlbear95 wrote:

I'd love to tell you all how its going, despite what I thought was "we've made download and install sizes smaller", that is most definitely not the case.

I think that making the download sizes smaller is their plan for 2024, not the current version.

Since I tend to make only short flights, and depart from my previous location, I only download the WUs that will impact me. So far that's only the two for the US. I'm sure they will announce a WU for South America just when I head north!

As I mentioned a few weeks ago, the latest few legs of my tour has led me toward the two bespoke South American airports in MSFS: SEQM (near Quito Ecuador) and SPGL (Chagual, Peru).

Getting into and out of Quito was interesting, as it is nestled in the Andes and the C310R is not turbocharged. It struggles above 12.5K or so.
IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/BfI62O9.jpg)

The aircraft ahead of me had to hold short because of these guys buzzing the runway.

IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/Q5iPoBl.jpg)

I finally got airborne, and had a nice view of Quito.

IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/vMo9tXs.png)

IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/fS5CDfE.jpg)

I managed to fly through a mountain pass to reach the coastal plain to the west.

IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/SU9bK7e.jpg)

IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/TmkAkTJ.jpg)

IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/zlgg9U3.jpg)

IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/IEK0rKx.jpg)

I eventually landed at the city of Guayaquil. That completed my crossing from the Atlantic to the Pacific which "started" at Williams Harbor in Labrador.

I've also flown over the equator for the first time, but expect to be heading north in the near future.

Listed on craigslist near me, in Independence Oregon.

IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/GebuG2y.png)

The link, while it's still up.

https://salem.craigslist.org/avo/d/i...

Wow! Crazy model...

@hrdina you've inspired me to do my own across the [somwhere] flying. I'm likely going to pick up the A2A comanche and another GA aircraft, and just crisscross around.

From where I sit now, I'm probably going to be in MSFS for the near future. With my new PC, the effort required to get Xplane 12 in the same shape I had XP 11 is just so much. MSFS for the most part just works. I've invested in spad.next to maximize my alpha/bravo setup and actually control everything, not just what MSFS thinks you should only be able to control. These payware aircraft really seem to be hitting the mark as far as flight models go, so that's fine.

At some point I'll definitley go back to Xplane. The most current beta release of XP12 looks to address some issues, but it seems to have broken more things than fixed, so when that settles down I'll probably hop back into some of my aircraft there.