Stuff I did during my first evening of flying...
Took off from my local airstrip (Hawarden in the UK) in a Daher. Tried to see my house but it was all I could do to keep it in the air. Flew to RAF Valley on Anglesey, crashed on landing.
Left from an airport on the Gold Coast of Australia in an Icon A5. Landed way out to sea. I was looking for the barrier reef but maybe I need to start further north? Took off from the sea and asked my nav system to find my nearest airport which happened to be Noosa. This was a nice surprise because I've actually been there many years ago. Noosa airport happens to be a dirt strip but I managed to land successfully!
Boom, I call that a successful evening of flying. Only one death, no landmarks founds but plenty learnt about flying.
Got my first short flight in. No major gripes other than my airport not having buildings. Did a quick circle around San Francisco in the C172. Of course everything looks amazing.
A few things on setup.
- Went back to Very High settings, turned off vsync (I have a gsync monitor) but pretty much left everything else as is. I had fiddled with a few more settings previously trying to push the envelope so I just wanted to go with the Very High preset.
- Went to keyboard mappings and unmapped any aircraft control that is mapped to a keypress, especially any surfaces or throttle. I didn't want to press a button I'm used to using in Xplane out of habit and make the plane fall out of the sky. The only control I have mapped is "toggle parking brake", just because that is something you use maybe 2 or 3 times during a whole flight and I prefer not to use a button for that function. There are A LOT of flying controls mapped to keyboard by default so if you have any sort of HOTAS or Yoke, I would look carefully.
- Every button on my yoke other than trim controlls and AP master seems to be a camera control, yet I have no clue how to control the camera
- Set the Assist to "True to Life"...Auto mixture? Auto Rudder (more on this later)? come on now.
- Track IR worked out of the box. Awesome.
Observations
- Elevator and rudder control are really sensitive. Aileron control feels pretty good. What's interesting to me is that when flying IRL you actually don't need to move the controls that much to get it to do something at higher speeds. At lower speeds you really need to move the yoke to get it do something. In a Sim that's pretty hard to replicate, since resistance on the controls increases as speeds go up, but not on a game controller. In most sims I think that gets compensated by always requiring some extra action on a yoke or joystick. In MSFS it feels like everything is calibrated towards how much control is needed at high speed. Would love to get a much more experienced IRL pilot to comment on that. Will need to tweak response curves.
- Right rudder needed on TO roll, but very little needed for climb. I had to go check my settings to make sure "auto rudder" wasn't accidentally ticked on. This felt pretty unrealistic. Almost no rudder needed for coordinated turns.. though I admit I didn't do any sharp turns. Even with zero rudder the ball barely moved on climb.
- Once you're trimmed out the aircraft seems to fly straight as an arrow. no bumps no deviation in the altimeter or vertical speed indicator. Its a calm day here in SF so maybe that was it, but it was flying a line once I was trimmed. Also, not too realistic IMO.
- Aircraft seemed slightly overpowered on cruise. 110 knots indicated at 2200 RPM in calm winds for this aircraft is higher than you would expect. Not really a big deal though. Climb actually felt pretty good at 700-800 FPM at 75 kts.
- ATC is annoying. There has to be a way to turn this off. I know "realism"... but no ATC is better than bad ATC. 5 minutes after departing out of DVO, ATC gives me IFR clearance and gives me a squawk code. This was a VFR flight no flight following out of a non-towered airport. There is no requirement to talk to ATC, even in busy San Francisco airspace as long as you adhere to VFR rules and stay outside the Bravo airspace. That's probably too much for any AI ATC to figure out on its own, but if I don't ask for ATC it shouldn't force it. Is there a setting to just shut it off completely?
Anyways more flying to come and I'm looking forward to understanding the camera system better so I can actually see what I want to see.
Jonman, attach your HOTAS before you fire up the game, so it can detect it. It should then offer you a standard config.
Make sure your Steam sync is off for the game. That will avoid any issues with the sync servers. You're probably not going to play it on other systems, right?
First flight was from a nearby airport. I was able to find my house, and, well, everything in my city that I looked for. Even the markings and wear on the sports fields behind my house. The national award-winning library is the real deal, not some rectangular placeholder (it's a sort of fan shape). The dirt on the baseball fields is the correct color. The tail end of the nearby lake is a marsh, just like in real life. I mean... It's really accurate.
In another state, the area near where my Mom lived for a while was still under construction. Her building was there, but the surrounding homes were mostly dirt lots, with 2 being worked on. The lighting effects for the evening sun over the nearby lake were amazing.
Toured a bit around Hawaii, too. Quite impressive. They have the results of the recent eruptions.
I need to figure out how to properly program my HOTAS. Some buttons work, some don't. Not a big deal, all the important stuff auto-configured. I just need to set up a proper config for it.
Even with everything on Easy and All Assist, you get the feel of balancing forces. You can't zoom climb or power dive without red-zoning the airframe. Trim really works (when I can remember the keys lol). Internal screens are real time. Soooo impressive.
I ran into a few chunky moments, but they resolved quickly. Two or three in two hours, lasting a few seconds each. There's some obvious texture loading at times, but very infrequently. I think this is where having 32GB of RAM might just be helping me...
All in all, I'm happily surprised that my system is handling this so well. Really enjoying it.
Jonman, attach your HOTAS before you fire up the game, so it can detect it. It should then offer you a standard config.
Haven't figured out how to get it to recheck and offer me that.
Robear wrote:Jonman, attach your HOTAS before you fire up the game, so it can detect it. It should then offer you a standard config.
Haven't figured out how to get it to recheck and offer me that.
What HOTAS? My older X55 Rhino Throttle is not recognized even though the X56 which is essentially the same thing, I believe is. So yeah everything is manual mapping for my throttle.
Carlbear, I noticed that at times, flying a few thousand feet AGL and trimmed, when I went over a large hill or ridge, the plane would judder a bit, especially at low speeds. For what it's worth.
Carlbear, I noticed that at times, flying a few thousand feet AGL and trimmed, when I went over a large hill or ridge, the plane would judder a bit, especially at low speeds. For what it's worth.
Yeah, could very well have been the environmentals that had me flying so straight. I'm sure if I turned more winds or some other factor it wouldn't have been so smooth. I've just never seen a flight (sim or IRL) that literally flew a line like that which was kinda weird.
Also I found a tutorial on Camera.. based on this I should be able to basically mirror xplane controls so I dont' lose my mind as I switch from one sim to the other.
That camera video is a lifesaver.
Plugging in an XBOX controller makes controlling external cameras so much better. Now I'm in Oakland and it does look a lot more like the real thing now that I can actually look around so that certainly makes me feel better given how major this airport is up here.
Also, when selecting an airport if you zoom in on the map in that menu it does show the parking spaces so it becomes a lot clearer where you are parking. The nomenclature is a bit off.. but Oakland does have labeled Gates even though they say "small" which I guess means smaller than an A380 or B787? Because these are the gates Southwest and other major airlines use for 737 and A320 ops.
So some of the concerns I had in my "first 10 minutes" review are being allayed! I've started futzing with the controllers and sensitivities as well.
Supposedly TrackIR is supported but I cannot for the life of me figure out how to enable or activate it in game. With Elite or F1 2020 it just works automatically. With ACC it's a checkbox in options. But I'm not having any luck here.
Supposedly TrackIR is supported but I cannot for the life of me figure out how to enable or activate it in game. With Elite or F1 2020 it just works automatically. With ACC it's a checkbox in options. But I'm not having any luck here.
When you open up the TrackIR software click the trackIR icon in the upper left and make sure you have the latest version of the software then "Check Game Updates". MSFS2020 was just added in the last 48 hours to the software.
As long as you have the TrackIR software open before you launch MSFS 2020 it should just work.. at least it did for me.
As a casual flight simmer (below amateur but in it for what realism I do understand and hoping to learn more) I'm pretty darn impressed, especially with the accuracy and fidelity of the world from what I saw.
Bopped around New Orleans a little bit, was particularly impressed that as I headed towards Marrero where my mom lives I could identify the West Jefferson Medical Center visually from a good ways off, and was able to identify my mom's house and the neighbors (I've known that location my whole life, it was my grandparents' home). I was also fairly impressed with the Huey P. Long Bridge, though that and the Greater New Orleans Bridge both have this weird rendering bug where they're properly raised up and textured, but aren't actually open underneath. It's hard to explain, but you're bound to see some bridges look like this and immediately see how it's wrong.
Flew around Cedar Rapids a bit too, likewise impressed with the accuracy of the city overall, though there are some locations missing or misrepresented which isn't surprising. I'd say the most surprising though is that there are no buildings at all where the Quaker Oats facility is downtown right at the river. Did find my house, and it looked closer to reality than I expected.
Tried popping a few other places around the world for a look-see, and the only one that really failed to render in any way like I expected was McMurdo and the immediately surrounding area. Not totally surprised by that, but a little disappointed.
Flying was great to my inexperienced self. I've spent time with many of the previous iterations of MS Flight Simulator, probably the most in FSX back in the late 00's, but have never really gotten a handle on things past the very, very basics. I do want to learn more and gain better appreciation and enjoyment for flight simming, particularly since now we have a sim that is working towards the uncanny valley of providing a full virtual Earth to explore from the air. I may never be able to travel the world properly in real life, but sims have always held an appeal to me from the perspective of doing so virtually to some degree.
I was also fairly impressed with the Huey P. Long Bridge, though that and the Greater New Orleans Bridge both have this weird rendering bug where they're properly raised up and textured, but aren't actually open underneath. It's hard to explain, but you're bound to see some bridges look like this and immediately see how it's wrong.
Yes I can imagine that bridges are generally hard to get right. I've spotted a few from my local area that are basically just flat roads extending across the water. The arches and girders that are there IRL aren't represented at all, but I get that they're hard to model from satellite imagery.
When you open up the TrackIR software click the trackIR icon in the upper left and make sure you have the latest version of the software then "Check Game Updates". MSFS2020 was just added in the last 48 hours to the software.
As long as you have the TrackIR software open before you launch MSFS 2020 it should just work.. at least it did for me.
Rad, thanks. For whatever reason I didn't even consider that it might need a software update. Probably because it worked with F1 2020 which is recent. Though that's using a tried-and-true engine (heyo, motorsport joke) so that probably explains that.
Gonna give that a shot when I get home.
Yeah, for just touring around the world and relaxing this is an awesome approach.
Hardware news... if anyone is interested, Honeycomb has announced that they will be taking pre-orders for their Bravo throttle quadrant starting September 1.
Its not cheap, but relative to flight sim hardware, this fits right into a sweet spot. The thrustmaster/logitech stuff works, but its not great... there is high end desktop gear that goes for like $800-$1000 per piece and for the longest time there was nothing in between. Honeycomb squeezed in there with pieces in the $200-$300 range. I use the yoke and it is incredible, great accuracy and range of movement, all the buttons and switches feel good.
I waited on getting the yoke from a retail re-seller, this time I'll probably just go ahead and pre-order direct from Honeycomb.
And first free scenery announcement.
Drzeiecki is a pretty well known scenery developer and his stuff is usually very high detail. More importantly, now we know how free stuff for MSFS can be distributed and installed.
I'm going to sit down today and remap manually on my Warthog. Some controls just don't seem to work... Is it possible, though, that putting the game on Easy/All Assists is locking out, say, trim controls?
I'm going to sit down today and remap manually on my Warthog. Some controls just don't seem to work... Is it possible, though, that putting the game on Easy/All Assists is locking out, say, trim controls?
Probably. You can dig down into the assists and see which ones are enabled, and see if there's an auto-trim.
I finally figured out how to get the game to assign a default config to my X52, instead of giving me an entirely blank slate.
You just plug the stick in after the game has started (at the welcome screen).
:facepalm:
I finally figured out how to get the game to assign a default config to my X52, instead of giving me an entirely blank slate.
You just plug the stick in after the game has started (at the welcome screen).
:facepalm:
I didn't have that issue. Mine was still plugged in after fresh driver install and testing in Elite the night before release. Everything worked perfectly. (pinkie button will always be a hassle until you set up a profile, but that aside)
I'm going to sit down today and remap manually on my Warthog. Some controls just don't seem to work... Is it possible, though, that putting the game on Easy/All Assists is locking out, say, trim controls?
Could be. Didn't look at the trim controls specifically, but the electric trim (the ones you see on a C172 yoke) require electric power to operate, while the actual trim wheel is manual. Not sure how the controls are defined though, so you way need to turn on the aircraft first and check to see if they work.
Any tips on how to tell which direction to approach a runway from? I've just been setting my departure and arrival airports and it draws a straight line from point to point on my nav map. I'm having to eyeball the runway to work out where I need to approach from.
Any tips on how to tell which direction to approach a runway from? I've just been setting my departure and arrival airports and it draws a straight line from point to point on my nav map. I'm having to eyeball the runway to work out where I need to approach from.
Runway name? The same physical bit of asphalt will be named differently depending on which direction you're approaching from.
See this map of Chicago's O'Hare - the "horizontal" runway at the top (with the orange HS5 label) is Runway 9L when approaching from the west, and 27R when approaching from the east.
Of course, that still requires you to eyeball the runway to read the dang label on it, but you can always pause the game and google the airport map for your destination (is there a way to pull them up in the cockpit? Electronic Flight Bag? in-game iPad? Incidentally, I just discovered the Active Pause, which is brilliant for things like this - lets you pause the airplane in the air, but still look around and operate cockpit controls. Bind that STAT!
In general, the L, R, C suffix refers to left, right center, and is usually applied to parallel runways. So if you're looking for Runway 47L, you know that'll be the leftmost one as you're on approach.
Its a sim fly straight-in
That being said it really depends what aircraft and what rules you are flying. If you are flying VFR GA with no instruments its one answer, if you are flying a jet or an airliner, you really should be programming in an instrument approach in your GPS/FMC and let it guide you basically to the runway.
If you're asking "which runway", you generally Take off and land into the wind. Major airports have preferred runways and will land on specific runways even with a slight tail wind, but smaller airports will generally expect you to take off and land into wind and tower will tell you so or in untowered, you are expected to.
If you want to know the wind direction use ingame ATC to tune into the local ATIS or AWOS frequency. In case you weren't aware, runway numbers are basically the direction the runway is heading. Runway 27 is heading 270 (really 266-275 I think) and flows east to west, and the opposite end of the runway would be runway 09 (heading 90) landing west to east on the same runway. So if the weather says winds are 280 @ 5 knots you are expected to land runway 27.
For a straight in approach you can use that numbering to help you line up. So if you are going to land runway 27, you know that runway is going to go from East to West, so you want to make sure you are on the east side of the airport, and you should turn west heading 270 and look for the airport.
For a visual GA flight, the real answer is you normally fly the traffic pattern. You can find someone much better at explaining it than I could, but here is a diagram. You enter in the downwind leg at a 45 degre angle (the circle labeled 1) and make two left or right turns to enter into your base and final.
Thanks both for the explanations. I did wonder why a tiny airport near me had a runway labelled Runway 9, when it was the only runway there.
The other 8 fell over, caught fire and sank into the swamp.
Yeah, for just touring around the world and relaxing this is an awesome approach.
One of the reasons Teresa and I have been kind of interested is that we've been watching the Apple TV Aerial screen savers, which are 4K drone shots over different parts of the world, and try to guess where it is. Some are easy, like Dubai. It makes for fun chats, so this could be another way to do that.
Last night I flew around in Dubai just for Teresa, and I got my first landing. Well, I completely missed the runway, and the entire airport, honestly. I ended landing in the desert, skipping like a rock until I got the brakes on and came to rest just outside Dubai, looking at that tall ass building.
I am doing the tutorials, and I look forward to really learning how to manage more parts of the plane. For now, I'm just looking for cool places to fly around. I also did pass on the statue of Liberty last night, flying around New York without really knowing where stuff is, so just looking and finding things. The landmark points really help, obviously.
Thanks Jonman & Carlbear, those explanations were very very helpful!
Thanks Jonman & Carlbear, those explanations were very very helpful! :)
I'm kicking myself for forgetting to mention that the numeric part of the runway name is the compass bearing as you land on it! Glad Carl was there to make me slap my forehead!
This evening's flight.. a 30 minute easy going trip from Fuerteventura to Lanzarote. Flush with new information gained upthread, I knew that runway 22 at Lanzarote meant I needed to come in from the north. Ish. Since I was flying north from Fuerteventura I did a go around. Not sure if that's the right phrase but it almost sounds like I know what I'm talking about. It's convinced my wife anyways. I'm still a bit panicky when it comes to landing. I'll think I'm heading for the runway only to realise I'm probably going to put it on the grass about 10 metres to the left. Cue frantic rolls to try and get in line, no doubt forcing my co-pilot to become reacquainted with his last meal. However, I have got the basics of steady and level flight quite nicely now, albeit only in the Icon A5. Tomorrow perhaps I'll try something with a bit more juice.
I am having such a good time so far.
Pages