- ATC doesn’t make any sound. It talks in the dialog box, no sound out of the speakers.

- All the boats around St. Maarten and Anguilla are underwater. Same for piers, docks, etc. 

- After 20 minutes of flying around, all the cockpit switches, levers, etc. stopped working, i.e. you could no longer actuate them with mouse clicks. Good thing you can make a no-flaps landing in the 152. 

- Runway at TNCM (St. Maarten) just looks... weird. I think it’s from the supposed elevation changes? Makes it look like the runway isn’t straight.

As far as actual flight, p-factor on the prop is way overdone. And I mean way overdone. You push in the throttle on the 152 and the plane makes an almost instantaneous 60-degree turn to the left. This is from a 100 HP engine? C’mon. Trim seems pretty good, which is not the case in other flight sims. Pretty twitchy in pitch on approach and landing. Quite a lot of porpoising in the flare.  

So far I’d say the visuals are quite good (running on ultra), performance seems quite okay (ultra on a 8700K/GTX1080 in 2K), visual modeling of the planes is excellent, flight characteristics seem ...interesting on takeoff and landing (I’m a real-world pilot). Lots of bugs, and big ones, found already. 

I’m sure the first update will bring a lot of improvements. Has a lot of potential. But the people who absolutely hammered the initial release of P3Dv5 and told the world that MSFS would be perfect (and there were a LOT of you) are looking pretty stupid right now. 

Edited August 19, 20205 yr by mtr75

We need more honest reports like this.

11 minutes ago, mtr75 said:

 

- All the boats around St. Maarten and Anguilla are underwater. Same for piers, docks, etc.

- Runway at TNCM (St. Maarten) just looks... weird. I think it’s from the supposed elevation changes? Makes it look like the runway isn’t straight.

 

You got that wrong, they just took the terrain data back in September 2017. 😉

No, seriously thanks, I was thinking in getting my copy but as with any previously hyped release nowadays I am really careful about it....

18 minutes ago, dilore said:

We need more honest reports like this.

Yeah, I tried to argue that having pilots instead of gamers in the alpha and beta was a good idea. I was poo-poo’d for that suggestion. 

Edited August 19, 20205 yr by mtr75

1 minute ago, Soulflight said:

You got that wrong, they just took the terrain data back in September 2017. 😉

I actually considered that possibility. No joke. But I will say also that the level of detail in the terrain is astounding. I can see the dolphin pen on the coast of Anguilla. I can pick out individual buildings that I know. The color of the water, particularly of the salt ponds on the island, is uncannily correct. But then the runway seems like it’s on a mesa. And the island is plum flat.

I thought the same thing about the p-factor.  How do you feel about rudder input?  I did a couple of hours last night in various locations.  Either I need to revisit my sensitivity settings (I have MFG Crosswind) or I felt like rudder was almost not necessary during flight - almost as if "auto turn coordination" was enabled.  My desk has a shelf underneath it (and above/behind the pedals) and I was tempted (and almost able to) land with my feet up.

Scenery needs some work too.  I haven't checked the area around TNCM (it is one of my favorites) but rather stuck around my hometown.  For instance, the Buffalo, NY metro looks great (some inaccuracies but nothing big) but the downtown area bears no resemblance to reality - the building heights are way off on most of the taller structures (as in footprints being correct but heights way too short) in the sim.  I suspect this is true of many mid-size and large cities not covered with photogrammetry, but I would need to investigate further.  As great as it looks, I still found myself wanting for my US Cities X.

Also, is it just me, or is there a complete lack of navigational hazards, particularly radio towers?  There are a multitude of them along the Lake Erie shoreline south of Buffalo and I don't recall seeing one.  I also spent some time flying around the hills of central Pennsylvania and usually there are plenty to be found on the various hilltops.

Edited August 19, 20205 yr by Sabretooth78

30 minutes ago, mtr75 said:

As far as actual flight, p-factor on the prop is way overdone. And I mean way overdone. You push in the throttle on the 152 and the plane makes an almost instantaneous 60-degree turn to the left. This is from a 100 HP engine? C’mon. Trim seems pretty good, which is not the case in other flight sims. Pretty twitchy in pitch on approach and landing. Quite a lot of porpoising in the flare.  

Another Asobo example of "look what we can do, and we are going to exaggerate it by a factor of three just so you know we don't want any more "flying on rails". Luckily you can reduce the pfactor slider, though I've yet to test whether it works. Unfortunately many people here have fallen for it, thinking that unsubtle movements and ridiculously exaggerated behaviour equals "authentic".

What Asobo just doesn't understand is that aircraft behaviour is SUBTLE. In their efforts to get rid of what they mistakenly feel is  "flying on rails", they have swung the pendulum miles too much the other way. Take the inertia behaviour for example. Many of the lighter aircraft are moving with the tiny inertia of a radio controlled model with a mass of a hundredth of these sim aircraft. I'm baffled that any self-respecting pilot could possibly regard this as realistic.

Edited August 19, 20205 yr by robert young

12 minutes ago, Sabretooth78 said:

I thought the same thing about the p-factor.  How do you feel about rudder input?  I did a couple of hours last night in various locations.  Either I need to revisit my sensitivity settings (I have MFG Crosswind) or I felt like rudder was almost not necessary during flight - almost as if "auto turn coordination" was enabled.  My desk has a shelf underneath it (and above/behind the pedals) and I was tempted (and almost able to) land with my feet up.

Scenery needs some work too.  I haven't checked the area around TNCM (it is one of my favorites) but rather stuck around my hometown.  For instance, the Buffalo, NY metro looks great (some inaccuracies but nothing big) but the downtown area bears no resemblance to reality - the building heights are way off on most of the taller structures (as in footprints being correct but heights way too short) in the sim.  I suspect this is true of many mid-size and large cities not covered with photogrammetry, but I would need to investigate further.  As great as it looks, I still found myself wanting for my US Cities X.

Also, is it just me, or is there a complete lack of navigational hazards, particularly radio towers?  There are a multitude of them along the Lake Erie shoreline south of Buffalo and I don't recall seeing one.  I also spent some time flying around the hills of central Pennsylvania and usually there are plenty to be found on the various hilltops.

I actually thought p-factor on climbout was overdone as well. The ball was fully outside the cage to the right. In a real 152 you can basically put your feet on the floor after liftoff. 

And I'm from just east of Syracuse, based at Griffiss in real life (KRME). Haven't checked our area out yet, went straight to the Caribbean!

5 minutes ago, robert young said:

Another Asobo example of "look what we can do, and we are going to exaggerate it by a factor of three just so you know we don't want any more flying on rails". Luckily you can reduce the pfactor slider, though I've yet to test whether it works.

What Asobo just doesn't understand is that aircraft behaviour is SUBTLE. In their efforts to get rid of what they mistakenly feel is  "flying on rails", they have swung the pendulum miles too much the other way. Take the inertia behaviour for example. Many of the lighter aircraft are moving with the tiny inertia of a radio controlled model with a mass of a hundredth of these sim aircraft. I'm staggered that any self-respecting pilot could possibly regard this as realistic.

I didn't know that there was a slider for p-factor. That would indicate to me that the flight modeling isn't accurate, because if it were it would just... work. Realistically you can't change the effect of air on one particular object and not another. Unless I misunderstand physics. 

41 minutes ago, mtr75 said:

told the world that MSFS would be perfect

Who said that? 

2 minutes ago, Slides said:

Who said that? 

Hyperbole.

45 minutes ago, mtr75 said:

I’m sure the first update will bring a lot of improvements. Has a lot of potential. But the people who absolutely hammered the initial release of P3Dv5 and told the world that MSFS would be perfect (and there were a LOT of you) are looking pretty stupid right now. 

If you recall that was before the release date was announced and we assumed that it would stay in the pipeline until at least November. 😉

16 minutes ago, robert young said:

I'm baffled that any self-respecting pilot could possibly regard this as realistic.

A lot of things can be baffling for some people.

28 minutes ago, Sabretooth78 said:

Also, is it just me, or is there a complete lack of navigational hazards, particularly radio towers? 

It's not you. Another downside of taken a procedural approach.

6 minutes ago, Slides said:

Who said that? 

Only about 1,000 people on the P3D forums in the last 6 months.