4 minutes ago, Dominique_K said:

Two things

- In many airfields I use, there is no guidance light, lucky if there is a windsock. Not only in forsaken places like PNG but it could in Montana or Idaho too.

- As I said in the earlier post, this not about the final glide only. In narrow terrain you do sometimes tight and dangerous turns between valley walls to position the aircraft to final. And you watch the trees. 

I have to say, I haven’t seen the trees at issue, but anyone asserting that vastly incorrect tree height is simply not an issue in a flight simulator is just wrong. For tubeliners, no biggie. For back country and other GA flying it most certainly can be an issue. 

36 minutes ago, mtr75 said:

Personally I would have expected the French to have gone on strike when someone complained about their work!

Well, Asobo is not a subsidiary of the  French Railways, you know. Proud of them. Allez, la France 😄 !

2 hours ago, mtr75 said:

anyone asserting that vastly incorrect tree height is simply not an issue in a flight simulator is just wrong.

Of course if all trees everywhere were too tall, that would be a definite issue.

The question is, are the trees going to be an issue where you are flying?  Maybe yes, maybe no.  I haven't seen any of the supersized trees where I've been flying, but we still see them in some screen shots and videos.

It may take a while to get all 1+ trillion trees correct. 😄 But it is an acknowledged issue and they're working on it.

Hook

Edited August 8, 20205 yr by LHookins

5 hours ago, Slides said:

A commenter above tried to convince us that you should use tree height to determine your glidescope. And an "incorrect" tree height will affect your flying. I guess no one can fly in rainforests then. 🤪

There's a little bit of truth in this. Sort of. Dunno whether they still do this kind of thing with every trainee pilot, but when I was learning to fly, sometimes the instructor would cover over the altimeter in the front cockpit (where I was sat) and then have me make estimates of various altitudes we were at based on the appearance of the terrain. I was pretty bad at it at first, but eventually I got so I'd usually be able to guess our altitude from a few thousand feet up within, at worst, about 200 feet or so. He also used to get me to place a book in the middle of a large hall on the floor and stand in the correct position to have the book's apparent size and appearance be approximately the same as a typical field when you were positioned on a downwind at 800 feet with a 4:1 glide ratio planned, if you were going into it for a forced landing.

The idea behind all this, is that with no reliable pressure reading for your altimeter available, or with the instrument possibly having failed and no atc or radar assistance, if you have to make a forced landing, essentially (when there is time) you are reliant on the Mark 1 Eyeball to help you pick a field.

When you do that, you imagine there is a runway on it, and from the touchdown point of that 'runway', you work out an abridged circuit backwards from that point, so you need to be able to guess reasonably accurately an altitude of 800 feet or so at the start of the downwind position.

When I do this (and I still do so when I fly along, every so often nominating an emergency field, just in case this should prove necessary, since this is a good habit), I usually go off car, house and animal sizes, with trees I'm more concerned with avoiding them rather than using them as a gauge for altitude since they can vary in size, whereas a four-door saloon car doesn't really change size much. Unless it is a transformer. 🤣

But out in the sticks when there are no cars or houses about, I could just about see how maybe, at a push, you'd use trees to judge height a little bit, however, at the point where this really matters (when you are about to touch down), you're taking in all available visual information rather than using the trees as a height estimate because at that stage, your eyes should probably be on the aiming point.

Edited August 8, 20205 yr by Chock

2 hours ago, LHookins said:

 

It may take a while to get all 1+ trillion trees correct.   

You watched the AI video, 30 minutes tops. And if 80% are OK (10% too tall, 10% too small); we could consider the goal as reached.🙃

Edited August 8, 20205 yr by Dominique_K

2 hours ago, LHookins said:

Of course if all trees everywhere were too tall, that would be a definite issue.

The question is, are the trees going to be an issue where you are flying?  Maybe yes, maybe no.  I haven't seen any of the supersized trees where I've been flying, but we still see them in some screen shots and videos.

It may take a while to get all 1+ trillion trees correct. 😄 But it is an acknowledge issue and they're working on it.

Hook

Yeah, I agree with that. I just disagree with people dismissing it out of hand. 

2 minutes ago, mtr75 said:

Yeah, I agree with that. I just disagree with people dismissing it out of hand.

It doesn't matter if anyone here is dismissing it out of hand, people are reporting specific instances of problems on the Beta forum.  And I suspect there are plenty of specific instances to report, even if I haven't encountered any lately.

I did notice in a St Bart's video that the trees to the left of the runway looked a bit... exaggerated. Enough that it needs to be fixed.

Hook

3 minutes ago, LHookins said:

It doesn't matter if anyone here is dismissing it out of hand, people are reporting specific instances of problems on the Beta forum.  And I suspect there are plenty of specific instances to report, even if I haven't encountered any lately.

I did notice in a St Bart's video that the trees to the left of the runway looked a bit... exaggerated. Enough that it needs to be fixed.

Hook

I noticed the same thing in an SXM video, and 80% of my flying will be in that area. 

1 hour ago, Dominique_K said:

You watched the AI video, 30 minutes tops. And if 80% are OK (10% too tall, 10% too small); we could consider the goal as reached.🙃

Again, I haven't really gotten too far as seeing the trees in question goes, but ten feet too tall? Big deal. Three times as tall as they should be? Problem. 

5 minutes ago, mtr75 said:

80% of my flying will be in that area. 

I like flying in the Caribbean as well.  I haven't flown there lately though.  When I landed at St Barts I noticed the trees, but was concentrating too much on my approach to care.

The best advice I can give at this time is, don't expect perfection.  It shouldn't be awful, but it won't be perfect either.

Hook

20 minutes ago, LHookins said:

I like flying in the Caribbean as well.  I haven't flown there lately though.  When I landed at St Barts I noticed the trees, but was concentrating too much on my approach to care.

The best advice I can give at this time is, don't expect perfection.  It shouldn't be awful, but it won't be perfect either.

Hook

I just watched a St Barts approach in MSFS on YouTube. Now granted, I’ve landed there in real life and I watch the webcam of that airport literally every day, so I may have a different perspective than the casual gamer/simmer, but while the tree size was basically fine, there were way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way too many trees there. Like absurdly too many trees. 

1 minute ago, mtr75 said:

way too many trees

Welcome to MSFS!  Enjoy your stay. 😄 

Eventually trees might be the least of your worries.  But don't worry... all the problems should be fixed in say, six months to a year. 😄 

Hook

23 minutes ago, LHookins said:

I like flying in the Caribbean as well.  I haven't flown there lately though.  When I landed at St Barts I noticed the trees, but was concentrating too much on my approach to care.

The best advice I can give at this time is, don't expect perfection.  It shouldn't be awful, but it won't be perfect either.

Hook

And the other problem of course is that for the past 6 months to a year, we have been told by everyone (at least on this board) to expect just that from this sim: perfection. I’ll wait until I get my hands on it, but I’ve seen some bizarre things in the videos I’ve watched. To the extent that it makes me wonder if they’ve had programmers and graphic artists and engineers work heavily on this sim, but very few actual pilots. Like having to request clearance through a Charlie airspace when you took off from the primary airport. Or seeing the TBM getting pushed back from the front with the engine running. 

The visuals at altitude are stunning though. But I’ve seen some weird things. And yes, I realize it’s in beta. So I’ll see what we get in 2 weeks. 

10 minutes ago, mtr75 said:

very few actual pilots

Well, they aren't up to A2A standards in any case. 🙂 I think a lot of the development team are taking flying lessons, at least, and some already have a pilot's license.

Six months to a year ago we had no idea what we'd be getting, just gorgeous screen shots and videos.  Then some of us were flying in the Alpha.  We weren't supposed to talk about it, and I avoided talking about problems and features while still trying to give some idea of what it was like.  Finally we got some leaks, then some Youtube personalities were allowed to make videos and we got to see some of the problems up close and personal.

I've gotten to the point where I do the pushback before I start the engine.  This is not required, however. 🙂   The first thing I did was turn ATC off and fly places where it wasn't required.

I keep saying, it's not perfect, it's not finished, and it's still just a flight simulator.  

Hook

9 minutes ago, LHookins said:

Well, they aren't up to A2A standards in any case. 🙂 I think a lot of the development team are taking flying lessons, at least, and some already have a pilot's license.

Six months to a year ago we had no idea what we'd be getting, just gorgeous screen shots and videos.  Then some of us were flying in the Alpha.  We weren't supposed to talk about it, and I avoided talking about problems and features while still trying to give some idea of what it was like.  Finally we got some leaks, then some Youtube personalities were allowed to make videos and we got to see some of the problems up close and personal.

I've gotten to the point where I do the pushback before I start the engine.  This is not required, however. 🙂   The first thing I did was turn ATC off and fly places where it wasn't required.

I keep saying, it's not perfect, it's not finished, and it's still just a flight simulator.  

Hook

Overall thumbs up?