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Tricky22

The IFR Project?

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First post, very casual flyer, but do enjoy reading and learning from the forum - most of the time:)

Asobo provide more feedback and interaction that most other studios, but I do feel it is rather vague and in places slightly pointless.  I found it embarrassing that two of the top guys on the project had to spend even a minute of their lives discussing the need or not to "press a key". I get that it shows they are listening to the community but when you read the issues and wish-list there's little logical structure to them.

Ask 100 people about the strength of MSFS and 99% of answers probably include VFR. Ask about IFR and there will be a consensus that the program is lacking in many areas.

So why don't Asobo actually start an IFR project where they gather information from knowledgeable people about the issues which prevent some IFR flights and procedures not being achievable?  They are invested for 10 years and I'm sure they have a development roadmap for a lot of that time, but having had 2 months of discussions and suggestions on the various forums, a clearly communicated short-term project would I think be a 'win' for them and us.

This would mean looking at various parts of the program including the Garmin development, the ATC, flight planning etc.  But instead of putting a team on a full overhaul of the ATC, you simply focus on the parts which are the most relevant and inconvenient to IFR flying.  Like the way the ATC isn't very good at giving altitude instructions.  For the Garmin it would be allowing you to make flight plan changes on the fly and make sure things like the Direct To option works.

If Asobo are monitoring the forums they should know the people who can bring knowledge and experience to the party and should reach out to them personally and tap in to that.  Both in terms of technical ability and virtual/real piloting experience. It seems such a waste of resources when two very talented teams, Asobo and the community, end up working on the same area, which is what we will get as development continues.

It just seems to me that pulling various areas of the program together into a small and manageable project with an initial goal to fix things which exponentially improve the IFR experience and then to have a specific roadmap to address the longer term issues would be a huge benefit.

Richard.

 

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I agree but I suspect their resources are fully consumed getting this game ready for the new X-box platform and VR support.  I hope once those are done, their productivity level on addressing SIM issues will increase because it’s been pretty abysmal since launch. 

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3 hours ago, Tricky22 said:

First post, very casual flyer, but do enjoy reading and learning from the forum - most of the time:)

Asobo provide more feedback and interaction that most other studios, but I do feel it is rather vague and in places slightly pointless.  I found it embarrassing that two of the top guys on the project had to spend even a minute of their lives discussing the need or not to "press a key". I get that it shows they are listening to the community but when you read the issues and wish-list there's little logical structure to them.

Ask 100 people about the strength of MSFS and 99% of answers probably include VFR. Ask about IFR and there will be a consensus that the program is lacking in many areas.

So why don't Asobo actually start an IFR project where they gather information from knowledgeable people about the issues which prevent some IFR flights and procedures not being achievable?  They are invested for 10 years and I'm sure they have a development roadmap for a lot of that time, but having had 2 months of discussions and suggestions on the various forums, a clearly communicated short-term project would I think be a 'win' for them and us.

This would mean looking at various parts of the program including the Garmin development, the ATC, flight planning etc.  But instead of putting a team on a full overhaul of the ATC, you simply focus on the parts which are the most relevant and inconvenient to IFR flying.  Like the way the ATC isn't very good at giving altitude instructions.  For the Garmin it would be allowing you to make flight plan changes on the fly and make sure things like the Direct To option works.

If Asobo are monitoring the forums they should know the people who can bring knowledge and experience to the party and should reach out to them personally and tap in to that.  Both in terms of technical ability and virtual/real piloting experience. It seems such a waste of resources when two very talented teams, Asobo and the community, end up working on the same area, which is what we will get as development continues.

It just seems to me that pulling various areas of the program together into a small and manageable project with an initial goal to fix things which exponentially improve the IFR experience and then to have a specific roadmap to address the longer term issues would be a huge benefit.

Richard.

 

They are not listening to the community. They are doing whatever they want. If they were, they would have addressed the live weather & lighting bugs as soon we said it had to be addressed. Don't get me started with the ridiculous "press any key" or loading times.

I still love the sim and use it daily.

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A pilot is always learning and I LOVE to learn.

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I just want to add that the removal of press any key is more important then you might think. I have an nvme ssd so load times are not that bad for me but pressing he button doesn't even work if the game is out of focus. 

Starting the game and actually going straight to the main menu eliminates on simply annoying aspect of the sim. And it makes sense to do it early, because it is an easy fix and prevents a lot of annoyances especially for content creators who frequently need to restart the sim to test stuff. 

But sure, ifr is very important. What doesn't seem to be getting enough attention is an accurate failure simulation. First thing they absolutely need to do is let you save the failure setting like the atc ones. I like to fly with failures enabled although randomized only is not ideal. I set the time frame to 30000 minutes because that is what I used for X-Plane 11. Not too often, but also not too rare. 

Entering all those numbers for very flight is annoying as hell and letting me save that removes one think I need to do before every flight.

Next up would be to add more failures: Ailerons, flaps, rudder, instruments and so on as well nuances of the existing failures like a slow oil leak instead of it basically just falling out of your plan instantly. 

Next step would be to have those failures be persistent. So for example if you ignore the oil leak, it might not cause much of a problem in one short flight, but starting again and you are in trouble (I am not a pilot, so forgive me if that would be impossible to work like that in RL)

This could also be done by third party devs if the sdk and api allows it but I know you can activate failures in the sim via third part programs. Onair and Neofly would be some examples where it would make sense for existing ones. 

Failures are important because without them a huge part of the sim is pretend only. Doing a pre flight check, monitoring instrument, proper flight planning and actually follow emergency checklists and have to actually make important decisions are all basically meaningless if every flight will play out exactly as planned.

As far as I can tell, at least for the non airliners even overstressing the engine does nothing atm. At least using Onair I have an incentive in conserving fuel, but people not using that don't even really have that aside from very long trips. 

 

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I do not intend to be negative, but trying to simply state the obvious facts that "settable" and generated IFR conditions, if "included", would have and should have been a focus during development for a Flight Simulator; not after. But sure - we'll take it if the focus will be there eventually!

If the real weather is going to be how it is, we need a really good map/forecast system that hooks into MSFS and displays the weather conditions - much like windy.com but just for MSFS.

Even something not as complex would be fine like https://www.aviationweather.gov/

Right now we just go flying and if using real weather it's like spinning the wheel and we'll take a chance on what the conditions will be, going in with no knowledge of conditions especially during cruise and destination. At least we get a little picture for conditions at the departure...

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What is badly needed is a more fully developed SDK and a partnership with a time and product proven simulation-based avionics developer.  Period.  It appears at this point that the current team is not fully understanding of IFR navigation.  The 180° U-turn flaw, lack of an effective [D→] function, and inconsistency of RNAV (GPS) approaches are clear examples.

Here is a link to an excellent video showing how the G1000 behaves and enunciates the phases of an RNAV (GPS) LPV approach.  Note how the pilot is able to activate the approach to the IAF.  Also note the green GPS  AP  and GP enunciations in the top bar, the magenta G and the magenta diamond in the glidepath scale during the approach
.
(click the link immediately below, the image is a screen capture)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R59m7EYqpfk

image.png.b3148dec435fecbe2844ae7a55d41e9a.png

Edited by fppilot
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50 minutes ago, KERNEL32 said:

I do not intend to be negative, but trying to simply state the obvious facts that "settable" and generated IFR conditions, if "included", would have and should have been a focus during development for a Flight Simulator; not after. But sure - we'll take it if the focus will be there eventually!

If the real weather is going to be how it is, we need a really good map/forecast system that hooks into MSFS and displays the weather conditions - much like windy.com but just for MSFS.

Even something not as complex would be fine like https://www.aviationweather.gov/

Right now we just go flying and if using real weather it's like spinning the wheel and we'll take a chance on what the conditions will be, going in with no knowledge of conditions especially during cruise and destination. At least we get a little picture for conditions at the departure...

There an free mod called "unreal weather" that is a WIP that could be the answer to our prayers, but my tests have shown which is  the mod to be problematic. I like the idea of getting all pertinent metar info, but we need smooth cloud & wind transitions, and stability. 

There's also REX WF (payware) as an option, but not enough good has been said about the mod to justify a purchase.

Both mods will be at the mercy of the ASOBO SDK and monthly updates. We are slowly getting there.


A pilot is always learning and I LOVE to learn.

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I may be in the minority but ever since the last update I haven't had to press a key during the load process.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I click the mouse button instead.

 


"That's what" - She

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5 hours ago, Tricky22 said:

So why don't Asobo actually start an IFR project where they gather information from knowledgeable people about the issues which prevent some IFR flights and procedures not being achievable?  They are invested for 10 years and I'm sure they have a development roadmap for a lot of that time, but having had 2 months of discussions and suggestions on the various forums, a clearly communicated short-term project would I think be a 'win' for them and us.

Unfortunately I think the horse has left the barn on this one. Undoing, fixing, updating, and correcting the IFR environment in this game/scenery simulator is infinitely more difficult than having done it correctly to begin with. That's why I was and am pretty incredulous about the whole process they used to develop and alpha test this game (we're in the beta now, let's just be honest). That they got the very basics of the IFR system - ATC phraseology, altitude and heading guidance - so laughably wrong is inexcusable, and frankly tells you all you need to know. 

They really needed to get the foundation correct from the start and they didn't. To what extent the errors they've made are fixable, we will see. But it's really unfortunate. I'm not so worried about them having made hash of the G3000, for example - that just messes up one airplane that people may or may not use. And we've already seen community fixes for things like that. But we can't get community fixes for the foundations of the game. 

Edited by mtr75

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If any software developer on any platform finds a way to create an accurate ATC system which provides proper phraseology along with vectors and altitude assignments, I'm sure the FAA would really like to talk to them. If simmers wants accurate ATC, there are excellent online platforms that provide it. For example, there are around 80,000 active members on VATSIM, a totally free global network.

Also, be aware that Meteoblue has a web-based interface to its global model, e.g.,

https://www.meteoblue.com/en/weather-maps/witham-field_united-states-of-america_4178594?variable=wind_streamlines&level=surface&lines=none&mapcenter=27.1105N-79.1757&zoom=8

This map format provides both model-based and METAR-based data representations. Where the model seems to diverge most from the METAR data is in the representation of cloud layers, and that's pretty consistent with my own observations when immersed in the FS2020 sim environment. It seems that it's hard to pull cloud layers out of the global model, so the sim produces something that might or might not correspond in some way with cloud coverage. The vertical structure seems arbitrary at best.

Good luck and let us know what you find out.


John Wiesenfeld KPBI | FAA PPL/SEL/IFR in a galaxy long ago and far away | VATSIM PILOT P2

i7-11700K, 32 GB DDR4 3.6 GHz, MSI RTX 3070ti, Dell 4K monitor

 

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Actually sim is missing many aspects to practice IFR flying.  Position of aircraf to repeat multiple approaches.  Frequencies for nav aid display on may.

 

Flight tracking on map along with vertical tracking.

 

For ATC, no use trying, the best is to use Vatsum, IVAO or Piloteye and that will give you a sense of IFR flying in the real world

 

My 2 cents

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2 hours ago, DJJose said:

There an free mod called "unreal weather" that is a WIP that could be the answer to our prayers, but my tests have shown which is  the mod to be problematic. I like the idea of getting all pertinent metar info, but we need smooth cloud & wind transitions, and stability. 

There's also REX WF (payware) as an option, but not enough good has been said about the mod to justify a purchase.

Both mods will be at the mercy of the ASOBO SDK and monthly updates. We are slowly getting there.

Yah, I'm such a weather nut that I got the REX add on and it does what it is supposed to do - in fact if flying "local" I think it's a great fit. I just open it, bring in the real weather then turn off the synching until I feel like I need to update it again.

But there is nothing quite like the feel of the real weather engine when it's "working". And another thing, the real weather seems to work pretty darn good from around 12:00Z until 00:00Z. Between 00:00Z and 12:00Z for some reason seems way off, and noticed real traffic is affected as well.

But back to the topic here I think IFR is not represented well and agree there should be improvements outlined asap, but may be well past that "stage"... MS/Asobo may decide to add serious IFR as a paid add on like the Helos?

Edited by KERNEL32

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4 hours ago, Virtual-Chris said:

I agree but I suspect their resources are fully consumed getting this game ready for the new X-box platform and VR support.  I hope once those are done, their productivity level on addressing SIM issues will increase because it’s been pretty abysmal since launch. 

This.... ^^^^

 

The sales are in VR and the XBox not so much on the IFR Serious simmer side...!


Chris Camp

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51 minutes ago, jrw4 said:

If any software developer on any platform finds a way to create an accurate ATC system which provides proper phraseology along with vectors and altitude assignments, I'm sure the FAA would really like to talk to them.

I'm not talking about modeling PAR approaches, I'm simply talking reasonably accurate (e.g. non hilariously unrealistic) altitudes, for example. I mean for crying out loud, I get handoffs saying "Tune to center on OH-N-E-two-two-decimal-seven", where they actually spell out the word ONE phonetically. Honestly, it's pathetic. 

They could make some very, very basic changes to improve the system vastly. That any of these errors made it into the release version is really just sad. 

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