For those of you who feel MSFS or X-Plane are worthless or worse-than-worthless for primary training, what was your exposure to these flight sims before you started your training for private? I started using the SubLOGIC flight sim as a young kid, and continued using it through my private (1995) and instrument (2002) training. It is a procedures trainer. It teaches you the basics of flight control. It teaches you navigation. That it doesn't simulate stall and spins correctly is inconsequential. No non-motion simulator could ever due an adequate job of simulating those sensations. For that matter, even primary training does a very limited job of teaching stall and spin behavior. You're up there in a 172, just you and instructor and forward CG, but the plane will respond quite differently at max gross weight near the aft CG limit.
I've spent more hours than I can count on the sublogic flight simulators from late 80's. Its great because you really have to use your imagination to picture the scenery around you Who needs 4K resolution when your mind has a much higher resolution?
Was part of their early marketing materiel. But... I should also know better. Ha. Yay marketing wank!
Dude, you are singing my song! I started with SubLOGIC Flight Assignment ATP, moved onto FS98, Sierra ProPilot and then X-Plane. (I'm actually responsible for the timer in the aircraft) I was hopeful for FS2020 but they made testers pay for an Alpha product and I'm ambivalent about that. Back to the point, these sims are invaluable as familiarization tools and procedures trainers. My first formal private lesson, I was able to land the plane and the instructor looked at me sideways and said "Hish, are you with the FAA?" That had me beaming even if he was just blowing smoke. But I'd say yah, those flight sims were huge in my early days of learning flying. One more thing...FS2020 is atrocious. Hish
So, I have not given up on FS2020. This evening I figured out where to find the FSX simconnect files and installed them. FS2020 will use those for most things, but it doesn't appear it otherwise has a working version of simconnect. Or maybe it does, but the bridge program I needed required a specific version of simconnect, which isn't the FS2020 version. I downloaded from this site, I have no responsibility for what you do. http://www.fspassengers.com/?action=simconnect Once installed, you have FSX simconnect. If you previously had FSX with simconnect installed, then you're probably using that version and it appears it has always worked. As a result of that, I was able to get my Simionic G1000 PFD/MFD bezels up and running too. There's issues still, but it's better. The AP run by Simionic is funky and wobbles either up/down or rolls left right a degree or two every second, it's pretty uncomfortable to watch, but they're working on it. The AP also has a big pitch issue. I didn't catch it, but something in the AP reset the trim to very nose high so that when I disengaged it, the airplane stalled. Growing pains, it still works on XPlane and works much better there.
I used P3D/X-Plane for 7 years before getting my PPL this July, and I absolutely attribute the fact that I got my license right at 40 hours to all that simulator work over the years. VATSIM played a big role too, communications wise.
I see all sorts of unnatural structures in FS2020. This image is taken close to the Sporty's airport (Batavia, OH). You can see mesa structures like in the desert southwest, except these have trees growing along the side walls. Very bizarre. Obviously, no such thing really exists in this part of Ohio.
Oh - and I lucked into a 1.2m score landing at Courcheval, which I think is pretty good given the difficulty in getting the sim to act the way an airplane would (0 throttle / nose up => 20k climb and increasing airspeed? In a Robin?)
Those scenery bugs will be worked out. There is AI that determines height, and what things look like. Globally, there are issues!
Thanks for all the commentary on the new M$ Flight Simulator. Even though it's M$2020, I just can't clearly see buying and installing it any time soon. As it is, I'm mostly finishing rebuilding my PC after crashing it up trying to overclock a new set of memory so I could have an overkill amount of level 1 cache to use with my copy of PrimoCache! I think, when I have some free time, I can start installing FSX:SE, then all the 3rd party add-ons I've accumulated over the years. BTW, I bumped the memory voltage up a bit, and it runs fine, slightly over-clocked, now.
Read an article today that the next update is expected in the next couple days and is supposed to address complaints about ATC as well as GA avionics among other things.
For further disappointment, the Honeycomb yoke is backordered. Amazon has the prices jacked to $450+ but Sporties and others still have them for $250ish but backordered through at least October. I’m waiting also for that timeframe for the 3080 gpu. I hate the control setup in MSFS 2020. It’s annoying guesswork to figure out which axis will work with what. Also, is there a way to reduce the upper end sensitivity setting? Xplane lets you drag the top range up and down but I’m not seeing that in 2020.
Those $450 prices are eBay pirates. I have read of a bug with brake pedals treating the midpoint as neutral, but no other control issues. To calibrate, you need to use an external program to press the pedals down to the halfway point, then calibrate them in FS2020. That would explain why I cannot stop in a 172
The flight sim control market is truly insane right now. Thankfully I was able to get in on the presale for the Honeycomb Bravo throttle. I’ve been wanting to upgrade my X52 stick and throttle to a Warthog as well but not right now.
I thought about getting in on that Bravo presales, too. However, I decided I'd wait until MSFS2020 has released a few updates and such. No point in letting the Bravo sit around unused like my Alpha at the moment, although I guess I could fire up FSX. I figure it'll give Honeycomb users a chance to discover any flaws in the next few months as well. If the Charlie pedals are anything like the Alpha/Bravo components, I'll probably end up with the trifecta.
I have a solid xplane setup for IFR practice so I’ll still get use out of it until MSFS catches up. Has any info on the pedals been released?
Not that I've seen. I think they were supposed to be announcing the Charlie line back at the FlightSim Expo in April but obviously that got nixed. They were reportedly supposed to come out Q1 2021 if that timeline still holds. Remains to be seen what the pricing will be ($250 seems to be a theme), but I'd guess the Thrustmater TPR is the closest competition.
They seem to be making a lot of headway with the updates. I'm still waiting a little longer till all of my hardware works correctly.
Still waiting for them to support VR. For now, I will stick with my trusty X-Plane 11.50. One of the guys from VFlyteAir (X-Plane payware designer) even designed a livery that pretty much matches the paint on the Arrow. So on days like today when I can't fly and have done all the IR practical studying I can possibly do... nothing better than firing up the sim and flying holds and approaches in VR. Oh, the Honeycomb stuff people are talking about is legit. I have the Yoke with the TQ on pre-order. Yoke, throttle and pedals with VR for everything else = wow.
I'm waiting on my Bravo throttle, too. VR was just too clunky when I tried it with my Rift and having to use the hand controllers to manipulate anything in the cockpit. At least with the Brave more things will be where they're supposed to be, still not sure what to do about tuning radios/flipping switches, etc. Until there is a decent solution for that it's still not really any kind of training tool.
It's definitely not good for training in the classic sense of how people use BATD/AATDsfor training - it's not official and you can't log it for sure. But it is sort of like chair flying... but where you can see approach plates (I use something called Avitab with approach plates/charts in VR) and have simulated instruments that react to what you do with the yoke, throttle and pedals. And the Arrow I use in X-Plane happens to have an Aspen and 430w just like in our real Arrow. It is surprisingly close to the real deal.
I got the chance to fly UND's VR sim at the Symposium this year. What an experience! With very realistic force-feedback controls and a realistic flight model, it actually felt like a full-motion sim even though it was not moving at all. To the point where when I went to land and stalled a foot or so too high I actually tensed up in anticipation of the smack. If they can crack the code on switches and knobs (the wand and projected hand just does not cut the mustard) they will really have something there.
Any chance you know what flight controls they were using? I wasn't aware of anyone producing force feedback controls these days.
Right, I didn't mean to imply on the level of an ATD, just meaningful practice. I can do that with Xplane, my radio stack, and PilotEdge right now to an extent. Once everything works just as well in MSFS I'll move over to it, and hopefully once they get VR functional it will be at the level I'd like.
I haven't flown a real airplane in almost a year. I have some electronic courses to keep my ground sharp. Out of desperation to 'fly' something that isn't remote controlled, I decided to try FS2020 again. I originally downloaded it with a $1 game pass for one month. That expired so I had to pay $60 to play it this time. I hate to say it but it was worse than my original experience. First the game wouldn't start. I had to reinstall it. I get into the menu and accidentally hit the mode button on my gamepad, game locks up. It's worth it I tell myself. Fire the sim back up, pick out a scenario I would fly in real life. Spawn on the runway, engines running ready to go. Can't release parking brake. Great.... On to the controller options where everything looks normal. Reassign parking brake control. Back to runway. Still no turning off parking brake. Reduce myself to using the stock keyboard command to turn off parking brake. Nope, that's not working either. Restart computer and sim. Parking brake can now be turned off, let's do this! No pre-flight, so of course I wouldn't notice any other messed up controls. Full power, rudder is ailerons and throttle is elevator. Back into the menu we go, where everything looks normal. Reassign every control I have assigned. Back to the runway, OMG it works, finally... yes! No. Couple minutes later crash to the desktop, no error logged. Fire up X-Plane 11, maxed out graphics settings, in VR using a Rift S and same gamepad. Zero issues, except the ground looks like a polished turd.
The ones with decent flight models, like X-Plane and FlightGear, are getting better for low-altitude VFR pilotage with the integration of OpenStreetMap data, right down to individual houses (if your graphics card can handle it).
It's a really hard problem. I don't think any of the flight models in commercial sims calculate control loads directly, so you'd need custom code trying to infer the loads from other factors so that you could send the correct inputs to the physical device, and you would probably have to do that customisation on an aircraft-by-aircraft basis. There's a reason the real sims the airlines use cost so many $$$.
Aside from the trees growing up the sides of the buildings that doesn't really look any different than an X-Plane screenshot. I thought the visuals in the new MSFS were a giant leap forward. Or perhaps it's just because you had the graphics settings turned down low (?)
It's getting better... but mostly because I bought the 3rd party Carenado Piper Seminole. This plane is excellent, and everything works as it should. This has revived the game for me. All of the planes that came with the game are still completely junk and are operating at maybe 30-70% capability depending on the plane. I'm still bummed about the lack of IFR resources, lack of water graphics for amphibs and lack of helicopters... but it's getting there. I'm getting used to the UI and quite a bit has been improved lately. I think 3rd party planes will end up carrying the franchise since the stock ones still have a looooong way to go.
You got @Mtns2SkiesBetterHalf a virtual Piper Seminole for Christmas? Instead of the 150 taildragger she asked for? Talk about the need for a "Disappointment thread" Is she still speaking to you? Just checkin' Flowers might help...
I still haven't got back into it. At this point I'd rather just wait and get my sporadic local flights in.
Lack of instant replay. What??! Lack of rotary-wing flight model. What??! No backwards-compatibility (like in FSX) for FSX/FS2004 airplanes. What??! Something tells me they hacked out much of what MSFS used to be just so they could add people and cars (that can drive vertically up the sides of buildings, etc). Going back to FSX.
