7 minutes ago, wthomas33065 said:

Why is every single knob or screen on an Avionics suite or FMC considered a vital component of a serious flight simulator, but a convincing out the window environment considered mere eye candy?  

 If all you had was 100% fidelity of an instrument panel is that a flight simulator?  If the panel operated perfectly, but has no outside view would it still be a flight simulator? 

Does anyone really learn to fly so they can fly a stack of gauges?  I don’t know, I’m not a real pilot.  But what drives my interest in flight is not what’s happening on the panel in front of me, but rather what’s happening out the window around me.

THATS the flight part of flight simulator. Otherwise it’s just a gauge simulator.

Relegating the outside view as eye candy in the past made it easy for us to accept substandard visuals of the outside world.  It’s mere candy, we don’t need it, we tell ourselves.

 I’ve heard flight instructors state that you can always spot a simmer, because of their obsession with the instrument panel.  That's a fair criticism.  

We focused on the panels because that’s what flight simulators traditionally excelled at.

Now for the first time we have a simulator that actually does an incredible job at tapping into that desire of flight, and our response is still to dismiss it.

Well, You can keep your panel simulators and study level aircraft.  I want to FEEL like I’m flying, and for that, the outside the window view is not mere candy, but a vital part of a serious simulation.

 

 

Exactly this. 110% I think the reason why flying heavy jets is appealing to most people here is because up until recently flying VFR was very limited.  We may have had mods that would render a particular area with photo scenery but even that looks good only from the air most times.  On the ground it looked flat and boring but it works for navigation in those regions.  But there wasn't much of that if you wanted to do that in a particular area and there was nothing there then you were out of luck and the default FSX stuff was not that great.  You could get mesh to at least make the terrain look better and that helped a fair bit but still wasn't very "fun" at least IMO.  So we drifted to airliners up in the sky we don't have to worry about autogen (which back in the day we kept off more then on for performance reasons) the rather boring ground scenery outside of some major cities, and focuses on the ATC and instrument stuff and all that can be fun but I feel like it was where we end up when we hit the limits of the simulators we had.  And 3PD followed suite.  We got great airports (The only thing really a airliner is going to see on the ground in any great detail) and great aircraft that even rendered the interiors so we had something to look at while the plane flies around from point to point.  We got VATSIM and PilotEdge for a virtual ATC network etc.

So here comes a sim that makes the ground scenery (while error prone) still look a thousand times better globally then anything we see before and people want to dismiss it.  That seems so wrong.  VFR flight is the foundation on which all other flying seems built to me.  In the real world this is where pilots start and many stay and I think a fair bit of that is because that is a big part of the joy of flight and flying not just pushing buttons and entering commands into computers those things just make their jobs easier.  The fun bit I would dare say is what you get to see when you fly.

48 minutes ago, leprechaunlive said:

Hey, What host do you use to have your pics occupy the whole space? My pics once posted only fill 3/4 of the witdh of the screen, but they are 1080p shots so must be the host. not sure.

See the post i just replied to on Fisheye correction for part of it.

The rest is editing the screen in a paint program, cropping appropriately and framing up the shot to best highlight the effect I'm going for.   You can achieve alot of that by taking moderate amounts of time in the sim itself, but I prefer the snap pic.....get back to flying.....post-process screenshot after the flight.

Edited October 4, 20205 yr by Steve Dra

37 minutes ago, wthomas33065 said:

I don’t know, I’m not a real pilot.  But what drives my interest in flight is not what’s happening on the panel in front of me, but rather what’s happening out the window around me.

THATS the flight part of flight simulator. Otherwise it’s just a gauge simulator.

One of the first things they teach you in flight training is proper reference of the nose vs horizon. Both in climbs and turns (Left/right turns will tend to have different horizon references for the cowling since you are not sitting in the middle of the plane). After awhile it is farily easy to maintain VY by just trimming for attitude  with full power.
Maybe @sd_flyer can expand on this since I believe he is an instructor who teaches this for a living

Edited October 4, 20205 yr by SAS443

30 minutes ago, wthomas33065 said:

Why is every single knob or screen on an Avionics suite or FMC considered a vital component of a serious flight simulator,

Because the more switches, knobs, dials and levers you claim to have modeled, the more money you can charge. And that gravy train has finally derailed. 

Let me add to my list above:

17. You want nice trees? Sure, another paid addon.
18. How about some nice houses? Yes, sir, right here, get your credit card out. 

15 minutes ago, SAS443 said:

One of the first things they teach you in flight training is proper reference of the nose vs horizon. Both in climbs and turns (Left/right turns will tend to have different horizon references for the cowling since you are not sitting in the middle of the plane). After awhile it is farily easy to maintain VY by just trimming for attitude  with full power.
Maybe @sd_flyer can expand on this since I believe he is an instructor who teaches this for a living

I guess it depends from who and where you get your training. 😀

Without going into the FARs Pre-solo maneuvers, I start with the 4 fundaments of flight. Then I immediately move into integrated flight instruction. 

The reliance on the 6 pack of instruments for precise flying and for putting trust in those instruments is essential to developing good habits.

That said "see and avoid" is always the PICs primary responsibility weather flying in VFR or IFR conditions.

 

I would want to hear or read of a quantum improvement in physics and systems implementation. I seldom use external views of an aircraft unless on the ground preflighting in which case I zoom on gear, engines, pitot, and try to walk through preflight. I would love to pop a cowling and pull a dipstick. In the air I'm very busy with the flying and don't often take in scenery details. I believe the most important places for near photo real accuracy are a 20 mile radius of airports, especially one with four character icao codes and certainly in corridors under low altitude airways. I also like to see as much real to sim system implementation as possible. For years now MS could have established commercial looking FMS systems in their airliners. Afterall, there are android apps that can do that and in sim gauges like isg. MS could have been doing that since 2002. They produce different packages for their sims. The Pro Versions could have been near PMDG levels for years. Just the point of view from a simmer who appreciates Real As It Gets.

Edited October 4, 20205 yr by Gary1124

Well hey, we got our cage fight after all!

6 minutes ago, DJJose said:

The reliance on the 6 pack of instruments for precise flying and for putting trust in those instruments is essential to developing good habits

That usually comes later - at least it was for me - in the PPL training (with the obstructed windshield and partial panel traning lessons) 😀

I was drilled to trust my senses in VFR (listening to the engine/vibrations, feel the coordinated turn, fix the nose properly towards the horizon for climbs,  level flight and descents

13 hours ago, bobcat999 said:

Amazing pics.  I find myself downloading a lot of these to show people at work.

I thought Steve's C172 was actually real, until I checked the reg! 😄  Amazing atmospheric lighting effects in this sim. 👍

This one literally made me hit pause and drag my wife into the office to look....and when you get an "oh wow" from a non-simmer who has no idea of where we've come from, you know you've accomplished something. 🙂

 

42 minutes ago, SAS443 said:

One of the first things they teach you in flight training is proper reference of the nose vs horizon. Both in climbs and turns (Left/right turns will tend to have different horizon references for the cowling since you are not sitting in the middle of the plane). After awhile it is farily easy to maintain VY by just trimming for attitude  with full power.
Maybe @sd_flyer can expand on this since I believe he is an instructor who teaches this for a living

Yes, eyes outside the cockpit. We teach primary students to look outside and just glance at instruments. At the same time we do have some portion of training under "the hood" we student must only use instruments. With iPad, gps and other gadget a lot of student get preoccupied  which could  lead to very bad consequences.

Unfortunately midair collision that something happens very often in our cojnsted airspace, even when pilots under supervision of ATC. I myself had near miss long time ago during one hazy day while flying VFR. I was distracted then when get my  eyes to I look up outside the cockpit. I so object quickly growing in side. I barely had time to pull to the side and down and just saw belly of twin engine dashing by. Obvious up to the end he didn't even noticed me. So yeah I learn my lesson long time ago!

16 hours ago, bean_sprout said:

It must be a divided camp because I'm looking for the realistic environment rather than the techno-pizazz but to each (his or her) own.

Cheers

 

 

As I have noted elsewhere, the big difference for me is this sim’s ability to render light and space, and just as importantly, the rendition of terrain contours. That’s what can make me feel like I’m back in an open cockpit, on a cool early morning, at a familiar airfield waiting to taxi out. The light, the familiar mountainous terrain, the putt putt of an idling continental...it’s all there. What isn’t there, and likely never will be are familiar,  detailed man-made structures. Yeah, a lot of polygons are in the right places - they just don’t look right. 

27 minutes ago, DJJose said:

 

The reliance on the 6 pack of instruments for precise flying and for putting trust in those instruments is essential to developing good habits.

 

 

 It reminds me of that old pic LOL

In the end every IFR approach ends up more of the same ... not so stuff like this every new landing in a new location is unique ...

 

 

2 hours ago, Steve Dra said:

Absolutely.   One of the first things I did as a screenshot enthusiast was play with the camera settings to achieve the best aspect ratio to get rid of the insidious fisheye look that most have just become comfortable with looking at.🤣

Sadly it's set to 50% by default...and is not "Persistent" ....meaning you have to set it up every session....not a biggy though...about 3 seconds out of my life each time...worth it.

Thanks for this information, glad to know its easy to disable but also puzzling that theres no option to make it persistent. Perhaps that will come in a future patch or a cfg tweak somewhere. I see a lot of nice shots from MSFS but so many of them are stretched out towards the edges. Some pics I've seen of the A320 flightdeck its like the pilots seat is in first class. So zoomed out fisheyes style. This (well for me) spoils the shot. 

1 hour ago, SAS443 said:

That usually comes later - at least it was for me - in the PPL training (with the obstructed windshield and partial panel traning lessons) 😀

I was drilled to trust my senses in VFR (listening to the engine/vibrations, feel the coordinated turn, fix the nose properly towards the horizon for climbs,  level flight and descents

Part 141 is a little more stringent that Part 61. As a CFI (under 61) I can follow my own syllabus.

In a 141, the CFI follow the schools syllabus or protocols.