Do you already have flights planned?

[LHookins 3,102]

I have several flights already planned for the new sim.  These are flights I've made in FSX and P3D, some many times.  Some of these will test the sim's limits.

The first one is the Maule from McMurdo to the South Pole Station.  I've done this in FSX many times and the geometry falls apart the farther south you get.  The clouds get squashed as well but I understand the latest version of Active Sky fixes this.

I want to explore Easter Island and look for stone faces.  There are a few in FSX.

I want to fly up the Orinoco River all the way to Bogota.  This is more interesting than the Amazon.

I want to check out Mount Rushmore and see if they have the Crazy Horse statue to the west, just north of the town of Custer.  (Irony much? 😄 )  

I want to fly from Innsbruck to look for the Newschwanstein castle.  It's not there in FSX.

I want to fly a DC-3 (please let there be one!) from Yakutat to Sitka, the flight described in the FSX documentation.

Eventually I want to make an around the world flight plan to hit all the known high resolution cities.

Anyone else have any favorite flights they are already planning to make?

Hook

[F737MAX 5,515]

12 minutes ago, LHookins said:

Anyone else have any favorite flights they are already planning to make?

I'm as keen as anyone to explore the new FS2020 world that Microsoft will offer.

Though without knowing what is going to be implemented and where, this thread would seem rather premature...

[LHookins 3,102]

They've already said they have the whole world.

These flights are to find out what is implemented and where.  It's pretty much the same thing I did when I upgraded from FSX to P3Dv2.5 and from that to P3Dv4.

Honestly, I expect South Pole Station to be just as bizarre in MSFS as it is in the previous sims. 😄

Hook

[Paraffin 2,197]

Mine is easy. Take up whatever is close to a Cessna trainer. Check out entry to stall, stall recovery, and if I can do a decent side slip in a crosswind on landing. Find out whether there is a perceptible ground effect for the flare in landing. See if mild turbulence and "buoyancy" feels like I'm flying a lightweight plane and not a camera viewpoint. Find out how it models weather. The usual stuff.

Clearly, we will all be looking for something different. 🙂

I'll be looking at scenery eye candy too, but if it's not what I consider a good flight sim, then I won't be spending much time with it, no matter what the scenery looks like. 

Standard disclaimer: I am hoping MS pulls out all the stops on this, and I am excited to see what they come up with for both flight modeling and scenery. I will definitely buy and try it.

[F737MAX 5,515]

1 minute ago, LHookins said:

They've already said they have the whole world.

And I have very limited interest in landclass. 

You're also assuming that there will be modelled points of interest dotted around the globe. 
Apart from cities, there's nothing in the trailer or pictures to suggest that, yet.

If there are contiguous areas of photo scenery, you can bet that I'll be flying amongst them.
 

[LHookins 3,102]

1 minute ago, Paraffin said:

Mine is easy. Take up whatever is close to a Cessna trainer. Check out entry to stall, stall recovery, and if I can do a decent side slip in a crosswind on landing. Find out whether there is a perceptible ground effect for the flare in landing. See if mild turbulence and "buoyancy" feels like I'm flying a lightweight plane and not a camera viewpoint. Find out how it models weather. The usual stuff.

I think I can predict most of this.  I'm expecting to see the flight model from Microsoft Flight.  They've already got it, and no sense reinventing the wheel.

I think you'll like what you find.  The only thing I can't predict is weather.  Flight's weather left a lot to be desired.

As for the flight model, it had a slightly slippery feel, even in smooth air.  It was the first time I ever felt like I was flying a 6 degree of freedom flight model.  You definitely weren't flying on rails.

Hook

[LHookins 3,102]

1 minute ago, F737NG said:

And I have very limited interest in landclass.

I've flown all over the world and have seen a huge variety of regional landclasses.  Enough that I've never gotten bored... as long as I was flying somewhere new occasionally.  Personally, I don't care if the entire world is landclass as long as it's interesting and an improvement over what we have.

 

3 minutes ago, F737NG said:

You're also assuming that there will be modelled points of interest dotted around the globe. 

Are you assuming there won't be?  And if so, why?  I'm not assuming anything at this point, which is why I've got the flights planned.  I want to see what's there and how they did it.  If I ever went with XPlane, I'd be doing the same thing.

I'll be looking for Stonehenge.  It may be there, it may not be.  Somehow I think England will be there.  I'll be looking for the Old Faithful geyser.  It's somewhat unfulfilling in FSX.  It may be there, it may not be, and I intend to find out.

Hook

[LHookins 3,102]

21 minutes ago, Paraffin said:

Check out entry to stall, stall recovery, and if I can do a decent side slip in a crosswind on landing.

For example, the Stearman in Flight had an activity where you did various aerobatics and were awarded points.  Stall, spin, recovery, all were there and felt pretty good.

There were landing challenges and there was ground effect.  In the Stearman you almost had to do a slip on approach just to see some of the tiny runways.

One thing I noticed in the Stearman was that if you had the power set a bit too high, the plane wanted to pull to the left.  If it was too low, it pulled to the right.  There was a sweet spot where it was balanced.  Obviously, in a climb you needed right rudder.  But also, in descent you needed left rudder, something I encountered my first time in a Cessna 150, but haven't noticed much in flight sims.

Hook

[MikeT707 1,181]

Great topic and I think it is great for people to share what might be of interest to them. For me, I would love to see many parts of Africa, especially the eastern coasts. Patagonia and the mountains and fjords of southern Chile would also be fascinating. To add, I would love to see Greenland. Remote places are very interesting to me and it would be amazing to fly over them to see the beauty of the world that most people do not get to see.

[LHookins 3,102]

1 minute ago, MikeT707 said:

I would love to see Greenland.

Narsarsuaq is on my list of places to visit.  Typically a waypoint on a transatlantic flight in a smaller plane.

Hook

[Paraffin 2,197]

39 minutes ago, LHookins said:

Narsarsuaq is on my list of places to visit.  Typically a waypoint on a transatlantic flight in a smaller plane.

If I'm not mistaken, that's also the site of the WW2 US Army airfield "Blue West One," mentioned in the classic "Fate is the Hunter" book by Ernest Gann.

I haven't done it yet, but I've always wanted to recreate that flight he mentions from the North American coast to Blue West One in a C-47 (I think?), using only his compass and then landmark descriptions to find the right fijord entrance among many, and then finding the airbase flying at low level under the clouds through the fjiords. Seat of the pants flying for real. 

Maybe we'll get a DC-3/C-47 in the new MSFS, if not on release, then eventually. I actually hope it's later, because a good model with realistic engine management shouldn't be a basic default aircraft, but something special and deeply modeled. 

[cmpbellsjc 2,960]

2 hours ago, LHookins said:

 

Anyone else have any favorite flights they are already planning to make?

Hook

One of my favorite flights to do in the US and in real life is from KDFW to KFLL or KMIA, but am always let down when I’m in the Ft. Lauderdale/Miami area because even with photoreal, it’s still missing tons of the high rise condos and office buildings, so I will be exploring that area.

I’m mostly just excited to jump in a helicopter and explore whatever High Detailed cities are included in the sim. The ones they showed in the preview, Frisco, Seattle, Houston, and Chicago looked pretty awesome, so I can see myself just flying choppers around those city scales for a while just exploring them. I don’t fly choppers often in FSX since even the FSX detailed cities are still missing lots of stuff.

Once I complete all the exploring of city scapes and checking out new features and weather, I’ll get back to my normal stuff like airline flights and the occasional SuperBug flight through the Jedi transition or just messing around with it.

My airline and SuperBug flights might come to a halt however depending on what PMDG and other makers of 3rd party aircraft can do with this sim. If PMDG and other high end parties don’t have an SDK or no plans to develope for it, then I’ll just use it for exploring with the default planes. I just can’t do much “serious” airline flying with what have been default planes in the past, so I’m not sure if that will be different this time or not. I don’t expect any “study level” aircraft being included by default since those would be too difficult for new users to figure out.

[irrics 1,517]

I’m going to fly right over to Babbage’s and buy the game!

 

Wait, what year is this?

[LHookins 3,102]

1 hour ago, Paraffin said:

If I'm not mistaken, that's also the site of the WW2 US Army airfield "Blue West One," mentioned in the classic "Fate is the Hunter" book by Ernest Gann.

 

Interesting.  First time I've heard the full name.  And yeah, I looked it up, BW-1 is Narsarsuaq.

Quote

...told us where we’d be flying: Goose, Gander, BW-1, Meeks, all names without meaning. Zimmerman chuckled at our ignorance and then said these places were in Labrador, Newfoundland, Greenland, and Iceland,

Buck, Bob. North Star over My Shoulder: A Flying Life (p. 186). Simon & Schuster. Kindle Edition. 

 

He even mentions Gann:

Quote

Pilots came in whom you hadn’t seen for years; one day my old friend Ernie Gann came through the screen door swinging his B-4 bag—a GI clothes bag we all had—calling out greetings and exclaiming with a laugh to anyone listening, “What the hell’s this all about?”

Buck, Bob. North Star over My Shoulder: A Flying Life (p. 201). Simon & Schuster. Kindle Edition. 

 

Describing a flight:

Quote

May 6:Went to Goose, then off to BW-1 [in Greenland] between layers and on top; clouds broke up off Greenland, saw pack ice and icebergs and beautiful mountains with icecaps behind them. Went up fjord to field. Some fjord! [BW-1 was at the end of a fjord one had to fly up almost forty miles; near the end it forked, and it was crucial to pick the correct fork because the wrong one came smack up against a glacier with no room to turn around. Going up the fjord with low visibility was dicey; there was a small boat anchored off the end of the runway to help identify the airport, which started right at the water’s edge.] Took off from BW-1 for Meeks, landed in good weather. Got set to leave for Prestwick, but engines would not start. Poor flight engineer changed three sets of plugs.

Buck, Bob. North Star over My Shoulder: A Flying Life (pp. 216-217). Simon & Schuster. Kindle Edition. 

 

It should be an interesting flight.

I liked Narsarsuaq so much the first time I flew there (in the Baron, ATC routed me into the airport from the east) that I spent some time researching it.  A very interesting place.

Hook

[LHookins 3,102]

A bit more on the Stearman and Microsoft Flight from a poster in another forum:

Quote

As for some comments about features introduced in MS Flight that I particularly loved.

Ground handling was phenomenal in MS Flight. I have around 15 hours flying a Stearman, so not very much, but enough to know how it handles on turf and asphalt. Flight shined here!
Ground effect and the landing effects were also great.
Curved runways. One of my favorite features of Flight were curved runways. No runway in RL is perfectly level or flat. Some are very "warped" where you can't see the far end or even an aircraft holding short of the runway a little than halfway down. This affects visual perception as well as the handling of the aircraft.

 

If we get the flight model from Flight, which I think is very likely, the new sim should be just as good.

Hook