Imagine putting this much work into every detail of your simulation, and then getting negative reviews on Steam because there's background music during the initial download.
tbf, the initial download screen is so bad I can't believe it was actually coded by a microsoft studio. It's a 120GB download, so I thought ok, I'll just play some other game in the meantime, right? Nope, they forgot to check if the application is in the foreground and check for button presses even when the download window is minimized, meaning that when I play something else pressing "A" on the controller presses the "help" link on the download screen, opening a new browser window and microsoft help page. So....nope, I can't play something else while Flight Simulator is downloading its data, because whoever coded it doesn't know basic principles of input capture on MS platforms.
The downloader itself also just doesn't meet the level of quality I'd expect Microsoft would want before putting their name to something. Microsoft is meant to be all about cloud, and this seems to be a single threaded downloader, pulling one file at a time, then decompressing it. Once it's decompressed fully, it moves into the next file.
It's not a deal breaker for me - I just left it running for a couple of hours, but the process seems sufficiently fragile that many people had quite serious problems getting it to download.
I'm not a game dev, but it feels to me like there's a few areas where FS falls short of what I'd be expecting as Microsoft. I'd want it to be responsive and start quickly (at least presenting something on the screen), and I wouldn't want it to be using full GPU in the menus. Teething issues are to be expected, but the downloader is critical and it's the first experience people have. A shame they didn't use some more reliable file transfer tech (or even just thread it!) The general lack of multi core use on the sim is definitely quite disappointing though for a 2020 release that's doing lots of general calculations and other tasks that benefit from threading.
Ok, the download screen is even more broken than I thought. I'm using a GTX1080Ti, and when the download screen is in the foreground, it's using about 15% of my GPU(still stupid, for a static text screen, but whatever), but when the application is in the background.....it's using 60% of my GPU!!! So it's literally burning about 200W of GPU power just to download some files. And all because they probably forgot to enable a framerate limiter on that screen when in the background. Mind boggling.
Yeah, it's bad, and it's the first thing you see as well. But it's not "negative review for the whole game" bad. I just muted it in Windows in the volume mixer (although I bet a lot of people don't know you can mute individual apps). I didn't notice your input problem but that sounds pretty annoying.
You can control the volume of individual applications from the volume center on Windows. Shouldn’t be necessary, but I assume that would probably work.
To be fair, the negative reviews are mostly because the steam installer only installs the game installer which then downloads the actual game. And that counts towards gameplay hours. And just the sheer size of the download means the number of hours spent downloading and thus counting as hours played puts the game outside of the refund window.
- As others have pointed out, you can't background it during a 100G download. It continues to capture keystrokes.
- There's no way to mute the annoying music. So forget about passing the time on Netflix or YouTube.
- If the download craps out midway, it frequently gets stuck. Meaning you might have to delete those 80g you already have & start again. (Unless you tell what is complete & isn't.)
I think it's completely legitimate (not necessarily the music, but the launcher has enough issues). I'm not sure why we're expected to put up badly designed software just because at some point we get to play a good game. I will absolutely give a game a bad review if certain parts of the on-boarding experience are terrible. My most recent one was Fallout 76, where all the problems getting the game running in the first place drained any interest I had in trying the game and at least giving it a chance.
Just yesterday I watched a few "real X pilot flies X in a simulator" videos. One of my favorites was a real Rafale pilot flying a Mirage 2000C in a dogfight in DCS [1]. Amazing instincts and skill.
Are there any good videos like this where the dogfights are many-on-many instead of just one-on-one?
I'm not a pilot, and my knowledge of dogfighting is next to non-existent, so please correct me if I'm wrong, but I'd expect that it would be much harder to utterly dominate one's opponents when there are a lot of planes in the air, any one of which could take you out when you think you've got an advantage on someone else.
A busy dogfight would probably be more exciting to watch, too.
The video is a reconstruction from the radio recordings. I learned that air traffic controllers are rarely themselves pilots and that finding someone with King Air experience during an emergency isn't easy. This video is recent, but the incident happened in 2009. News story from that year:
He only knew how to use the radio because he'd had the pilot show him before take off. He described the King Air as being so different from the plane he'd learned on that it might as well be the space shuttle.
One of the controllers who helped get him down realized she had to simplify the plane for him. He had been struggling with the autopilot and she got him to turn it off and fly it manually. He was fortunate to have some great controllers to help him and a clear day with no wind.
After the incident, he started flying again and went on to become a rescue pilot.
Youtube's been trying to get me to watch that for eons, and I kept clicking away from it because it's simulator video. I thought it was just someone roleplaying.
Now knowing it's an actual event being recreated, I might have to go give it a watch!
There was a similar recording 2 years ago: retired soviet military pilot (no piloting experience in 20yrs) is trying simulator of MiG 29 (with VR helmet). He did some maneuvers and even land the plane.
I have GamePass, so I thought: "I'll give this a go. How hard can it be? I'm really good in Elite Dangerous."
Turns out: Quite hard. I have a newfound respect for airline pilots.
On a related note, even my RAF cadet experience 20 years ago counted for naught. Whilst I could keep the plane in the air, landing proved the most difficult, and I crashed and bounced and would not have survived without invulnerability switched on.
It’s not that difficult to land; especially in a sim where you can experiment without worry.
It’s all in the setup - as you line up on your final approach, make sure you are at a prescribed speed and rate of descent; generally in a small plane (172 etc), you’re aiming for around 300-500ft/m at 70-80kts, and the plane is pointing to hit the runway at the threshold (piano keys / white lines).
Counter intuitive: Throttle controls rate of descent, elevators control speed. Mess around until you feel these two things clicking.
When you’re around 20-30ft above the threshold, reduce power to idle, keep the aircraft straight and level or the nose just slightly high and just let the plane drop on to the runway!
Whatever you do - don’t force it, take your time and you’ll have far more fun actually going to places and stopping there!
These are good tips for flying GA and getting started in the sim. Older versions of FS used to teach more of the ground school theory than the current version. I did the tutorial just out of curiosity but it didn't really teach enough to have an understanding of flight in the way the FS2004 lessons did.
For flying jets though (assuming this is what the GP means when mentioning the respect for airline pilots), you'll have some higher numbers, and you'll use the thrust for speed rather than the "counter intuitive" approach you'd use in a smaller aircraft.
The things to remember at first are that you're moving faster than you think in the air, so you need to take a longer final approach than you may think as a newcomer, as you're "consuming" that distance rapidly. You'll also need to get used to lining up with the runway (assuming you're doing VFR approaches, which isn't how airlines do it in reality) and find a reference in the cockpit. And chances are you'll be coming in far too high as well - you will feel lower down when you get the view from up front (compared with a side window) and often end up too high. If this happens, go around and try again - if you dive down to compensate, you'll end up gaining too much speed and miss your touchdown zone on the runway.
A good way to learn and practice landings is to wait until ILS and autopilots in FS get their bugs fixed, and learn enough to configure them to fly the landing. If they're accurate replicas, the A320 neo should be able to land itself from ILS. Learn what the approach looks like, and get used to the height and view of the descent. Then try some ILS approaches with flight director on, but autopilot off, so you're flying the approach yourself, but with guidance. This can be tricky if you're not used to the auto throttles on an Airbus though.
I feel like learning to safely land whatever plane I'm flying in is just due diligence. I wish each seat had a simulator for the current aircraft available as an entertainment option, for me to brush up on in case everyone else who could fly it chooses the wrong entree for dinner. You know the toy steering wheels that children play with in cars? Like that.
It’s hard! They’re not slow by choice, they’re slow because of the years it takes for safety approvals, testing, and certification to complete. I’ve met a creative director who’s responsible for Norwegian’s IFE last year, and she was telling me about some of the crazy challenges it is to try and work with the hardware and software constraints they get. The software teams certainly have the resources and knowledge to build a great, modern platform.
First you need to know how to use the radio to ask for that help. Just putting the headset on isn't enough; finding the microphone button is half the battle, and then you need to know what frequency to tune to, and how. Then you need to follow along with those instructions.
Even assuming everything goes perfectly up to that point, the plane can only /land/ itself -- assuming you're approaching an ILS autoland-capable runway, in a plane with autoland equipment installed. You still have to idle the engines on touchdown and engage reverse thrust. You may have to keep the aircraft on the runway centreline after touchdown. Then you need to shut down the engines so emergency vehicles can approach and passengers can evacuate safely.
Unfortunately this is typical "All you need is..." fallacy.
Even assuming for a moment that yes, all you need to do is dial in the numbers...
Have you ever tried to run tech support over a dodgy phone connection to someone who's never touched technology before? Where one wrong button push turns off all of that automation? Where there's no chance to go "Ooops, undo that!"? Where it's a very high stress situation, involving a huge number of acronyms?
Even just managing radios could be a major problem - you may quickly find yourself out of range of the controllers, and if you haven't figured out how to ask for and change frequency, well you're now not talking to anyone.
Now the thing to understand about Center controllers, was that whether they were talking to a rookie pilot in a Cessna, or to Air Force One, they always spoke in the exact same, calm, deep, professional, tone that made one feel important. I referred to it as the " Houston Center voice." I have always felt that after years of seeing documentaries on this country's space program and listening to the calm and distinct voice of the Houston controllers, that all other controllers since then wanted to sound like that, and that they basically did. And it didn't matter what sector of the country we would be flying in, it always seemed like the same guy was talking. Over the years that tone of voice had become somewhat of a comforting sound to pilots everywhere. Conversely, over the years, pilots always wanted to ensure that, when transmitting, they sounded like Chuck Yeager, or at least like John Wayne. Better to die than sound bad on the radios.
This reminds me of a story that I think was about Yeager, where due to some human error on the part of a mechanic (I think in regards to fueling his plane) Yeager almost died, and after the accident he surprised everyone by asking for the same mechanic to be assigned to service his plane on his next flight. He explained his choice by saying expected that mechanic would not make the same mistake twice.
I probably butchered that story a bit.. anyone recognize it and have a link to the original?
Given how much pilots and ATCs talk among each other on the radio, I suppose it isn't all that surprising that they would develop an identifiable accent.
Geez, you seem to have a hard-on for this "more diversity!" issue.
Does it matter much for piloting? It's quite a mechanical job. I'd argue diversity matters more if you have a team of movie writers (how many movies have terrible female/minority characters because of the diversity problems?) or UX designers, but I don't think your race or gender matters much when piloting a plane...
Of course there is probably currently an excess of white male pilots, but that seems cultural and a socio-economic problem, if you fix the culture (e.g. if little girls also get asked equally as often as little boys if they'd like to be a pilot (instead of a nurse; or if the same percentage of black folks can afford pilot school as white folks), shouldn't this problem fix itself?
Personally I'd cheer on a pilot scholarship for disadvantaged groups, because it'd be nice to see them having some sort of advantage in reaching their dreams after hundreds of years of disadvantages, but I don't think having more black or female pilots would change the job, since, as I said, it's quite a mechanical job. Whereas having a woman or minority in a movie writing crew would probably make a better story due to a more diverse perspective.
I appreciate the downvotes, but there is a reason that most people in this job (that costs tens if not hundreds of thousands of pounds to train for) sound reassuringly like a middle class man. I am not trying to make anyone feel bad for noticing the pattern, and certainly not for enjoying planes or computer games, but given that the UK government, industry groups like IATA, and several airlines all admit the issue, let's all take a deep breath.
Does anyone have any insights regarding licensing?
Is MS opening a big wallet or is it the other way around where these companies want their newest planes in these type of games?
In the video you see "unbeatable fuel efficieny" and I remember seeing Iberia on one of the boeings in the launch trailer, seems like adverts to me.
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It's not a deal breaker for me - I just left it running for a couple of hours, but the process seems sufficiently fragile that many people had quite serious problems getting it to download.
I'm not a game dev, but it feels to me like there's a few areas where FS falls short of what I'd be expecting as Microsoft. I'd want it to be responsive and start quickly (at least presenting something on the screen), and I wouldn't want it to be using full GPU in the menus. Teething issues are to be expected, but the downloader is critical and it's the first experience people have. A shame they didn't use some more reliable file transfer tech (or even just thread it!) The general lack of multi core use on the sim is definitely quite disappointing though for a 2020 release that's doing lots of general calculations and other tasks that benefit from threading.
Essentially all the reviews I've seen of the actual game and experience have been extremely positive.
- As others have pointed out, you can't background it during a 100G download. It continues to capture keystrokes.
- There's no way to mute the annoying music. So forget about passing the time on Netflix or YouTube.
- If the download craps out midway, it frequently gets stuck. Meaning you might have to delete those 80g you already have & start again. (Unless you tell what is complete & isn't.)
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rlM53d9g9q4
I'm not a pilot, and my knowledge of dogfighting is next to non-existent, so please correct me if I'm wrong, but I'd expect that it would be much harder to utterly dominate one's opponents when there are a lot of planes in the air, any one of which could take you out when you think you've got an advantage on someone else.
A busy dogfight would probably be more exciting to watch, too.
Tons, yes, here's one to get your started:
Superior Dogfight: 4 x Navy F-18 vs 4 x Air Force F-15 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=80rDX3pANeE
Something like this? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WWa7NrSd55w
https://youtu.be/aqPvVxxIDr0
The video is a reconstruction from the radio recordings. I learned that air traffic controllers are rarely themselves pilots and that finding someone with King Air experience during an emergency isn't easy. This video is recent, but the incident happened in 2009. News story from that year:
https://www.aopa.org/news-and-media/all-news/2009/april/14/u...
[0] He'd earned a private pilot's license 18 years prior, but had quit flying shortly after with only 80 hours total time logged.
It’s kind of the argument for basic first aid training and other things like that.
One of the controllers who helped get him down realized she had to simplify the plane for him. He had been struggling with the autopilot and she got him to turn it off and fly it manually. He was fortunate to have some great controllers to help him and a clear day with no wind.
After the incident, he started flying again and went on to become a rescue pilot.
Now knowing it's an actual event being recreated, I might have to go give it a watch!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hEGH965Dvp8, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zjDhZ2Qx2bw
Turns out: Quite hard. I have a newfound respect for airline pilots.
On a related note, even my RAF cadet experience 20 years ago counted for naught. Whilst I could keep the plane in the air, landing proved the most difficult, and I crashed and bounced and would not have survived without invulnerability switched on.
It’s not that difficult to land; especially in a sim where you can experiment without worry.
It’s all in the setup - as you line up on your final approach, make sure you are at a prescribed speed and rate of descent; generally in a small plane (172 etc), you’re aiming for around 300-500ft/m at 70-80kts, and the plane is pointing to hit the runway at the threshold (piano keys / white lines).
Counter intuitive: Throttle controls rate of descent, elevators control speed. Mess around until you feel these two things clicking.
When you’re around 20-30ft above the threshold, reduce power to idle, keep the aircraft straight and level or the nose just slightly high and just let the plane drop on to the runway!
Whatever you do - don’t force it, take your time and you’ll have far more fun actually going to places and stopping there!
For flying jets though (assuming this is what the GP means when mentioning the respect for airline pilots), you'll have some higher numbers, and you'll use the thrust for speed rather than the "counter intuitive" approach you'd use in a smaller aircraft.
The things to remember at first are that you're moving faster than you think in the air, so you need to take a longer final approach than you may think as a newcomer, as you're "consuming" that distance rapidly. You'll also need to get used to lining up with the runway (assuming you're doing VFR approaches, which isn't how airlines do it in reality) and find a reference in the cockpit. And chances are you'll be coming in far too high as well - you will feel lower down when you get the view from up front (compared with a side window) and often end up too high. If this happens, go around and try again - if you dive down to compensate, you'll end up gaining too much speed and miss your touchdown zone on the runway.
A good way to learn and practice landings is to wait until ILS and autopilots in FS get their bugs fixed, and learn enough to configure them to fly the landing. If they're accurate replicas, the A320 neo should be able to land itself from ILS. Learn what the approach looks like, and get used to the height and view of the descent. Then try some ILS approaches with flight director on, but autopilot off, so you're flying the approach yourself, but with guidance. This can be tricky if you're not used to the auto throttles on an Airbus though.
The current ones from Panasonic seem to have caught up to the original iPad: https://www.panasonic.aero/our-offerings/systems/x-series-bl...
I thought modern airliners can auto-land? All you need is someone to walk you through dialing in the numbers.
Even assuming everything goes perfectly up to that point, the plane can only /land/ itself -- assuming you're approaching an ILS autoland-capable runway, in a plane with autoland equipment installed. You still have to idle the engines on touchdown and engage reverse thrust. You may have to keep the aircraft on the runway centreline after touchdown. Then you need to shut down the engines so emergency vehicles can approach and passengers can evacuate safely.
It's not as simple as "dialling in the numbers".
Even assuming for a moment that yes, all you need to do is dial in the numbers...
Have you ever tried to run tech support over a dodgy phone connection to someone who's never touched technology before? Where one wrong button push turns off all of that automation? Where there's no chance to go "Ooops, undo that!"? Where it's a very high stress situation, involving a huge number of acronyms?
Even just managing radios could be a major problem - you may quickly find yourself out of range of the controllers, and if you haven't figured out how to ask for and change frequency, well you're now not talking to anyone.
Now the thing to understand about Center controllers, was that whether they were talking to a rookie pilot in a Cessna, or to Air Force One, they always spoke in the exact same, calm, deep, professional, tone that made one feel important. I referred to it as the " Houston Center voice." I have always felt that after years of seeing documentaries on this country's space program and listening to the calm and distinct voice of the Houston controllers, that all other controllers since then wanted to sound like that, and that they basically did. And it didn't matter what sector of the country we would be flying in, it always seemed like the same guy was talking. Over the years that tone of voice had become somewhat of a comforting sound to pilots everywhere. Conversely, over the years, pilots always wanted to ensure that, when transmitting, they sounded like Chuck Yeager, or at least like John Wayne. Better to die than sound bad on the radios.
https://www.thesr71blackbird.com/Aircraft/Stories/sr-71-blac...
Tom Wolfe has a great novel about Yeager and other test pilots called "The Right Stuff."
[1] https://www.wearethemighty.com/history/silky-smooth-chuck-ye...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=np272lmVRkU
I probably butchered that story a bit.. anyone recognize it and have a link to the original?
Does it matter much for piloting? It's quite a mechanical job. I'd argue diversity matters more if you have a team of movie writers (how many movies have terrible female/minority characters because of the diversity problems?) or UX designers, but I don't think your race or gender matters much when piloting a plane...
Of course there is probably currently an excess of white male pilots, but that seems cultural and a socio-economic problem, if you fix the culture (e.g. if little girls also get asked equally as often as little boys if they'd like to be a pilot (instead of a nurse; or if the same percentage of black folks can afford pilot school as white folks), shouldn't this problem fix itself?
Personally I'd cheer on a pilot scholarship for disadvantaged groups, because it'd be nice to see them having some sort of advantage in reaching their dreams after hundreds of years of disadvantages, but I don't think having more black or female pilots would change the job, since, as I said, it's quite a mechanical job. Whereas having a woman or minority in a movie writing crew would probably make a better story due to a more diverse perspective.
Dead Comment
Is MS opening a big wallet or is it the other way around where these companies want their newest planes in these type of games? In the video you see "unbeatable fuel efficieny" and I remember seeing Iberia on one of the boeings in the launch trailer, seems like adverts to me.