I am a plane spotter in real life and love going to the airport every chance I get just to watch the planes taxi, land, and take off. I tried doing this in FSX using some of the default views like tower and runway and can't really get anywhere. They're limited. Tried the advice that people suggested with turning on the pan mode with the shift+o I believe. Still doesn't work for me. So I tried using some helicopters and it was okay but difficult to control and get them to where I want, and then I tried the trike, works pretty well. But there has got to be a much easier and more intuitive way to do this? Perhaps slew mode or something else? In X-Plane 10 its quite easy to move around the 3D world with the arrow keys, but I find this difficult to accomplish in FSX. I would like to move on the x,y and z axis, but i find that when I am able to pan around its only x and y, no z (height). For example I would like to position myself on certain parts of the runway and be able to raise the view point to a higher vantage point so that I am able to look down at the airport. I like to move around quite a bit when plane spotting so moving around with the keyboard, mouse or controller would be great if I can get it to work more intuitively.

 

I've tried the ORBX BOB thing and didn't really like it much to move around. The controls feel sloppy and weird. I need something more precise and natural.

 

Which view would you use to accomplish this? I'm assuming spot view since you can pan around, but then how would you move around?

 

Would be great if I can use my xbox 360 controller or keyboard+mouse combo to be able to run around the airport as if I'm playing a fps game like Call of Duty or Battlefield 3.

Probably the best thing is to join Vatsim and do it that way, then you can spawn yourself at a gate and watch from the aircraft, just don't spawn onto a runway! Download vatspy will show you where the traffic is, have a Read of vatsim website first for programs needed to install. Cheers.

Slew mode is good enough, and commands are simple.

Do as I do and use the slew command (Y) then you can go up (Q) or down(Z) and position yourself anwhere on the airport at any altitude you want to watch the traffic. You can pan around using shift-4 and shift-6 or use your hat switch. You can also quickly move around the airport using the slew commands (number keys or joystick) to change the runway you are watching when aircraft appear. I have spent hours doing this watching traffic at various airports using MyTraffic 2013. You can see which traffic is around by using the view command in the menu bar, or you can see where the aircraft are by using Plan G (free but requires the free version of FSUIP). By mousing over the aircraft in Plan G, you can see where they are coming from and going to, and identify the ones that will come to your airport.

 

Note that using the view command to watch traffic and moving between aircraft using the A key is hard on memory due to changing scenery and will eventually crash FSX when the memory runs out.

 

Some of the best airports to watch traffic are Heathrow (EGLL) and Los Angeles (KLAX) because with Mytraffic all runways are used and all four runways are parallel.

 

Have fun.

 

Henri

Okay tried the slew command Y and was able to use my xbox controller to move around, pretty awesome. A few question, this seems to only work correctly when in the virtual cockpit view. So therefore can i use orbx Bob in order to plane spot around the airport?

 

When hitting q and z to lower or raise altitude, how do you get it to stop? When I use my controller to lower and raise height it works fine. But with the keyboard it either keeps rising up descending.

 

When I'm in SLEW mode, how come everything is paused and the sounds are off? Finally, this is the perfect way to plane spot but is there a way to turn the sound and action back on while in this mode?

 

Nevermind, i see activity while in slew mode but no sounds at all?

1) Slew works in every view, and it works with BOB as well, it's just a little less comfortable, because you can't always be sure which direction "forward" really is.

 

2) Press the 5 key on the numpad, that stops every movement in slew mode. Otherwise, you can use the opposite key in order to slow the movement down until you come to a complete stpo, but that's a little unprecise.

 

3)+4) Nothing's stopped, as you found out, it's just that sounds are off.

 

Regards,

Flo

If you have the Freeware ORBX AU AI Traffic add-on installed they include a couple of Control Towers (Hi and Low) which you select from the FSX Aircraft menu. Once in the Sim you then slew the tower around to a good location and enjoy the view. You can even open up panels for the radio comms and radar to assist with the spotting.

 

I was using this a few days ago after forgetting it was installed and had quite some fun just lazing about spotting aircraft.

 

Regards,

Serge