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forkedtail

Your opinions on FS Flying School?

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In a moment of weakness I recently purchased the FS9 version of FS Flying School.  After using it a few times, I am wondering why.  Perhaps I am not yet fully engaged with the features that it offers.  As I respect the experience and knowledge of others on this forum, I am interested in the opinions about this add-on and maybe some advise about how to better utilize it.

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Yes I saw this in a promotional email from Sim Market.

Checking the feature set below, I decided to wait and come here to ask if anyone found it useful and instructive!

I'm sure it is very clever, don't give up on us just yet... 

 

FSFlying School Features
  • Evaluates landing with or without ILS at any runway in the world  
  • Automatically creates FSFlyingSchool profile for any powered airplane  
  • Pilot Briefing Tool analyzes all flights to find patterns of performance which need improvement  
  • Option to monitor correct use of aircraft lights  
  • Instructors now give additional warnings before mistakes are made  
  • Instructors have many new helpful and entertaining phrases  
  • Aircraft Failures integrated into scoring  
  • Option to monitor correct use of aircraft engines  
  • Engine fires  
  • Monitors use of emergency communications  
  • Enhanced Help  
  • Instructor optionally reports failures
  • Sound device selection
  • A team of Flight Instructors who talk to you, giving you immediate, detailed advice on your flying technique.
  • Unique scoring system rates all phases of flight: taxi, take off, cruise, approach, landing and much more.
  • Fly a whole flight or just practice landings - you always receive a detailed score.
  • Your flights and their scores are tracked in full detail in your own FSFlyingSchool logbook.
  • Submit your best scores to the FSFlyingSchool web site to show off your flying skills to the rest of the world.
  • Focuses on airmanship and recording your achievements. Track your progress as you improve - take satisfaction from doing difficult things correctly.
  • Works with dozens of the Flight Simulator community's favorite aircraft - add your own in minutes.
  • Highest scores come from good airmanship, often in challenging weather, with the least automation, but you can fly at whatever level is comfortable.
  • From a Cessna 172 landing in a thunderstorm to an FMC controlled flight in a Boeing 747, FSFlyingSchool can handle them all.
  • Instant tests of your airmanship: ask the instructor to immediately test your skills.
  • File a flight plan - follow it carefully to score more points.
  • Large selection of options allow you to configure FSFlyingSchool your way.
  • It's never been easier to use! You can now land anywhere you like and your instructors will know which runway you have chosen. You do not need to file a flight plan and you do not need to create the runway files that FSFlyingSchool used previously. Just get lined up with a runway ahead of you when you descend in landing mode. The instructor will look ahead, figure which runway you are heading for and announce where you are going to land. Easy!
  • No need to file a flight plan! Fly any route you wish with full evaluation of your performance.
  • Instructor knows which runway you are landing at. Even without a flight plan or ILS, and will give advice on how to land.
  • Instructor knows which runway you are taking off from. Instructor will comment and give advice on the runway you have selected.
  • No need to land on a fixed point on the runway. Any reasonable landing on a runway will get a reasonable score.
  • Auto-read FSX's current flight plan. Option so that FSFS2011 will always read FSX's current flight plan when you press the connect button in FSFS2011. This is a great time saver!
  • Spoken Teaching Tips. Option so that FSFS2011 will speak a series of helpful tips when you fly with FSFS2011. Tips are always in the same voice and are clearly different from a normal 'instructor' voice. These tips are like training wheels on a bicycle and are telling you how to use FSFS2011 and Flight Simulator itself. Once you have got the basics of these operations down, you may wish to turn these basic tips off.
  • Friendlier scoring system. Rewards all flights which were basically safe - higher scores require plenty of skill. If you can walk away from your landing - you will get a score. If you crash - you will not!
  • Numerical data added to log book. Shows details of flight performance, such as landing speed, distance from threshold, approach accuracy and more.
  • Runway length and threshold part of landing evaluation. Landings have never been easier - just land beyond the threshold (even when displaced), on the runway, and not too long, and you'll be looking at great scores.
  • Airfield cities and facility names added to log book. No longer just the ICAO code - now you get to see your full airfield names.

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Bought it a couple of years back. The "Instant Approach" feature is quite handy but I guess the novelty wore off after a while. It's no longer on my machine. But seeing as you have already bought it play with it.


Arnie....if it ain't broke, don't fix it...

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A couple of specific things that bug me:

 

On an ILS approach in a Carenado Bonanza, the instructor is constantly telling me to raise the gear even if I am at 500 ft. and full flaps at 80kts.  This would be a pretty nominal configuration, I would think.  Any real world approaches I observe have the plane in gear-down / minimum flaps mode as soon as they turn on final.  FSFS will give you a damaged flaps signal and actually prevent you from raising the gear in that same scenario.  Apparently I am missing something in set-up.  The manual is not thorough at all about how to enter settings for individual aircraft.

 

Another aggrevation is that the instructor automatically downgrades your score by 33% if you use the autopilot during a ILS landing.  If you land without the the auto pilot it does not give you credit for an ILS landing, but instead just calls it "visual approach/landing.  I don't understand why an advanced operation such as an ILS landing would result in a downgraded score.  Again, not being a real-world pilot, I must be missing something.

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I have been using FSFlyingSchool for 7+ years and can only recommend it to everyone. It will enhance your pilot skills nomatter how good - or bad - you think you are. And with all the features the program has gained over the last 7 years, it will do so much more for you.

 

It is very true that you get a 33% reduction of points if you use autopilot below 1000 feet, and/or in landing mode. this of course because if you want point for landing yourself - you need to land yourself, and not have the autopilot do it for you - or MOSTLY do it for  you.

 

But FSFlyingSchool does not change your ILS landings to Visual approach/landing because of not using Autopilot. Those two features have nothing to do with each other.

 

If you file a flightplan, and fly the flight, then approach the runway setup in the flightplan (you can see this in the FSFlyingschool client program) and IF the runway is equipped with ILS (and you can also see this in the FSFlyingSchool client program) and your aircraft has instruments to read the ILS signal, then your aircraft´s instruments will pick up the ILS signal, and you can fly an ILS approach/landing, autopilot or not. Only difference will be the 33% recuction of the score, if you have autopilot on.

 

The instructor in FSflyingSchool Pro will tell you "Glideslope is alive, so we will be doing an ILS approach" - then little after that "I´ll be rating our landing based on the current ILS signal, unless you lose the signal"

 

So unless you fly off the corridor where the ILS signal can follow you, concequently losing the ILS signal,  you´ll be rated ILS landing - regardless of the Autopilot settings.

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I have the X-Plane 10 version and i love it. It's very accurate and useful. Makes you try flying GA by the book and adds a lot of immersion on those VFR hops/ aerodrome circles. Could be used on IFR flights as well.

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At first it looked like a handy tool, but getting instructions from someone you cant communicate with turned out to be more of an annoyance then anything else. But of course, that is my personal experience and to everyone their own, but I tried it for a couple of weeks and deleted it from my system.


Cheers!

Maarten

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On 7/24/2014 at 12:09 PM, leghorn said:

I have the X-Plane 10 version and i love it. It's very accurate and useful. Makes you try flying GA by the book and adds a lot of immersion on those VFR hops/ aerodrome circles. Could be used on IFR flights as well.

I've got FSFlyingSchool 2018 for X-Plane 11 and am really enjoying it. I couldn't live without the evaluation / scoring system, as it keeps me on my toes and sharpens my flying skills. 😃

Edited by fsflyingschool

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You liked it so much that you named yourself for it on the forum.  Thank you for supporting fs9.

 

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