Printable Manual??

[alanchown 8]

12 minutes ago, Dominique_K said:

Expecting anytime now in a bookshop near you :

FS20 for the Dummies 

 FS20 : the Strategy Guide

Fs20: Play like a Pro in 10 easy lessons

FS20 : Ten Things You Should Not Do

 

 

 

 

 

I'm surprised there were not any out on launch day! Hopefully there will be some good ones.

[RustyFlyer 182]

19 hours ago, SeanMo said:

"... And I last read a manual in 1989...." 😉

 

I am extremely glad that you chose not to attend medical school and I am incredibly glad & lucky that you did not & will not, therefore, become my family's physician lol.

I tend to agree that printed manuals are redundant and mostly simply take up space, however a manual available in .pdf format would be most useful... even for a long-time simmer such as myself... for *any* product really. Heck, I can even dl a .pdf manual for my $22 toaster lol.

Help menus are fine, but they are no substitute for comprehensive manuals. "Learning by doing" is fine and dandy, but it is supplemental to instruction.

Let me guess: When you buy an expensive electronic component, you do not read the accompanying instructions. Instead, you may watch a YT or two, and then simply start pressing buttons! Yaayyy!

[ryanbatc 12,857]

19 hours ago, Andy- said:

Anything to tell me how to use the Garmin for IFR flight would be a bonus!

It's kind of not great for IFR flight.  Use VOR's for now.  To use the RNAV(GPS) functionality you need to first load a flight plan in the World Map (which is annoying since I fly in real time - world map is for people who fly offline).  I was able to use WM to load a flight plan with SIDS/STARs then when I attempted to load an IAP it did work, but after trying another feeded it froze my sim.  I hope they can get that functionality working....default XP11 has it.

[wrap23 27]

On 8/18/2020 at 6:42 PM, W2DR said:

But wouldn't be nice if the OP could print one? If the OP want's one in print form that's his business, not yours nor mine, The fact is that not including ANY  type of manual (either printed or digital) is a major MS screwup. And I'm not being sarcastic. I've been around this business long enough to know that the lack of any sort of written documentation is going to cause a lot of folks to just give up in frustration.

I was a part of the Alpha from day one and yep, it was non-intuitive enough I found it frustrating. This program is detailed and needs explanation. I don’t think any quality third party developer releases a scenery and certainly an aircraft without documentation.
Being part of the Alpha shouldn’t have been figuring out how it works but if it works as it should. A paying customer certainly shouldn’t have to spend hours figuring out through trial and error how the sim works. Nor should they have to wait until someone who enjoys that kind of thing publishes tips or creates a YouTube video or worse pay $20 for the documentation MS should have included in the first place. I may not print the documentation but I sure would reference it.

MS has said this simulation should help usher new flight simmers into the hobby. Well imagine starting into flight simulation with no experience and starting up MSFS for the first time. You might be overwhelmed. Even you SeanMo. This is a major oversight!

[Torg Smith 31]

Has anybody seen a PDF of a POH for the Cessna Citation Longitude floating around the digital wires?

[Jetman67 517]

On 8/19/2020 at 8:42 AM, W2DR said:

But wouldn't be nice if the OP could print one? If the OP want's one in print form that's his business, not yours nor mine, The fact is that not including ANY  type of manual (either printed or digital) is a major MS screwup. And I'm not being sarcastic. I've been around this business long enough to know that the lack of any sort of written documentation is going to cause a lot of folks to just give up in frustration.

Good way to alienate the very users your trying to capture, the new crowd may not be as savvy as the old simmers and will give up and go back to something easier

[Jetman67 517]

1 hour ago, wrap23 said:

I was a part of the Alpha from day one and yep, it was non-intuitive enough I found it frustrating. This program is detailed and needs explanation. I don’t think any quality third party developer releases a scenery and certainly an aircraft without documentation.
Being part of the Alpha shouldn’t have been figuring out how it works but if it works as it should. A paying customer certainly shouldn’t have to spend hours figuring out through trial and error how the sim works. Nor should they have to wait until someone who enjoys that kind of thing publishes tips or creates a YouTube video or worse pay $20 for the documentation MS should have included in the first place. I may not print the documentation but I sure would reference it.

MS has said this simulation should help usher new flight simmers into the hobby. Well imagine starting into flight simulation with no experience and starting up MSFS for the first time. You might be overwhelmed. Even you SeanMo. This is a major oversight!

Absolutely agree this is basic stuff and I find it hard to believe this never came up at a development meeting

[AntillesFlyer 58]

2 hours ago, wrap23 said:

MS has said this simulation should help usher new flight simmers into the hobby. Well imagine starting into flight simulation with no experience and starting up MSFS for the first time. You might be overwhelmed. Even you SeanMo. This is a major oversight!

Like me, I'd have liked to have seen at least a page listing the take off and landing speeds for each plane for when I move on from the Cessna's.. 

[fuzz_bucket 5]

On 8/18/2020 at 1:58 PM, alanchown said:

As a newbie that is not great!

it's actually in my opinion unprofessional to offer such a grandiose product. so complex you literally need to research all available avenues to find info on the sim... terrible...

[cianpars 1,166]

Absolutely right. There should be an online PDF manual at the very least. I've been simming since the late 80s so know my way around these things pretty well, but MSFS is proving to be a bit of a learning curve in more ways than one. I can't imagine how a newbie would feel.

Surely, if you can produce and market such a complex piece of software, you can tell purchasers how to use it.

I really can't understand Microsoft's rationale for this at all.

Edited January 25, 2021 by cianpars

[wim123 763]

agree, the documentation in fsx was/is awesome, here very minimum, thats not helping any newbies

[KevyKevTPA 46]

On 8/18/2020 at 5:10 PM, Andy- said:

Anything to tell me how to use the Garmin for IFR flight would be a bonus!

Here's a copy of the Garmin G1000 Manual, specifically for the 172S, though it's probably close enough to teach you what you need to know in pretty much any G1000 equipped aircraft, especially for simulator use.  I'm sure it has everything you would ever want or need to know about using it for IFR operations, and then some.

But I have to warn you ahead of time, it's 508 pages long, and so detailed you might want to be using Working Title's G1000 mod, as it makes your in-sim G1000 much closer to the real one described in this manual.  As of this writing, version 3.4 is current (and the one at the posted link), but just a few hours ago they posted version 4 of their G3000 mod, so if I were a betting man (and, I am), I'd bet that v4 of the G1000 can't be far off.  I know for a fact there's a beta out there somewhere, but I do not have any information on where that update stands, other than my (reasonable?) assumption based on the G3000 version.   

OK, so I posted this as a bit of sarcasm, but at the same time, as a bit serious, too.  Those who want these manuals can get them online with a simple search (that's how I found this one), and there are lots of others that are out there, too.  Sometimes you'll find a newer (or older) version, sometimes it's for a different aircraft (for example, here is the POH (Pilot's Operating Handbook) for a Cessna 182T, which isn't part of the main sim, but can be purchased from Carenado via the in-sim Store.  But it's 355 pages itself.)

Now, MS could have included a copy of all of these (and one for every other plane/avionics device in the sim), but the printing costs alone would literally have added hundreds of dollars per copy to the price of the sim, not to mention you'd probably need a good 6 linear feet of shelf space to store them all, if not more.  And that doesn't even account for copyright issues, which even though these are freely available all over the web (and I think you can even get a copy of the Garmin ones directly from the Garmin website), to get permission just to redistribute them would be enormous as well.  And some that aren't freely available (like the Citation Longitude) you can get for the low, low, low, low price of about $600 each.  For an electronic copy.

And now that they've decided to pay those prices, even if for just electronic copies, who (besides me, because I'm odd that way) would ever bother even skimming them, never mind reading them for real?

But aside from all that (possible nonsense) that I wrote above, there's this...  Learning to fly is an expensive and time consuming endeavor.  Thinks like freely available manuals online and YouTube videos have made that easier, but it doesn't change the underlying facts.

In addition, MS/Asobo themselves have included an 8-lesson "learn to fly" series in the sim itself, which is nowhere near a full pilot's license course, but IS at least a place to start.  How many people even bother with that?  Or do they just jump straight into a TBM, or a Baron, or even a 747 and expect to figure it out through osmosis, I guess?

PS...  To anyone who is bothered, yes, I know I'm reviving an old thread, and I apologize for that, but for some inexplicable reason I had it bookmarked from who knows when, probably before I even became a member here.  In organizing/cleaning out my bookmarks, I ran across this thread (apparently again), and felt the need to contribute my $0.02.  I'm sorry if I caused any inconvenience to anyone.  

[andy1252 3,867]

As a man that used to write training manuals for mainframe software, I'll stick my two cents worth in here and say that I suspect one of the problems (apart from the general historical trend away from manuals) might be that it's difficult to produce a worthwhile manual for a product that itself is not finished and subject to constant changes. And that's not a dig at the state of the sim - I'm more than happy with the sim, in fact I'm delighted - but simply a suggestion.

Frustrating though. I've only been simming for maybe six years or so and still remember the problems trying to get any kind of real understanding of how to do anything beyond the very basics.

 

 

 

[bobcat999 8,484]

As Andy says above.  Maybe it needs to settle and be fully featured first, then they may think about producing one.

For now, I would just like more explanation about what some of the settings do in sim.  The pop-up text at the side is virtually useless - for instance, what is the difference between high scenery vector detail and ultra?  Just saying' increasing this may affect performance' is fairly useless and obvious anyway.

Also, although we aren't supposed to play in it, the user config file has some settings in it which I would love to know what they do (secondary scaling etc.)

So just an explanation of the current features / settings would do for me for now, for the other stuff it is easy enough to get in an aircraft and figure it out, or download the checklists.

Edited January 25, 2021 by bobcat999

[CJ1045 469]

In the modern world on-line videos have taken over. Backed up by forum discussion and FAQ docs.

CJ