I've got flying down, it's the turning and landing that I suck at but apparently FSX thinks otherwise.I am working my way through the tutorials in FSX and am at the tutorial where you have short mountain runways.This image shows how my plane ends up, yet as soon as the prop hit the dirt the game pronounced "GREAT LANDING", and the mission was a success.Huh? What? I guess the game must feel that any landing you can walk away from is a great landing. And since there are no crash and burn, explosion type of crashes, then any crash must be a walk away crash ;)EDIT: Image exceeds our policies on size.

Practice, Practice, Practice - is the only way to get landings down.There are contact points in aircraft where they will land, tip over, but not crash.I even know one flight simmer who can make successful gear up landings in FS consistently with the highest realism and crash settings. Main point to touch down at less than 20 FPM.

My main problem with landings I don't think is lack of any coordination but rather the view points that I can utilize, if I use the fixed spot point it's darn near impossible for me to judge just how far off the ground I really am, and if I use the Virtual Cockpit or 2D cockpit plate then I can't really see enough through the windscreen to know when Im nearing the ground and I get this awful bumpy landing that throws me back up in the air.Don't get me wrong I'll keep at it, but I think the lack of really being there and being able to quickly see what you need to see really hampers the situation for me.

I think it's really hard to land in spot view.For me anyway, I have to be in the cockpit. Sometimes I turn off the cockpit (2D cockpit, 'W' key) on some aircraft, because their forward visibility is not that good.RhettAMD 3700+ (@2585 mhz), eVGA 7800GT 256 (Guru3D 93.71), ASUS A8N-E, PC Power 510 SLI, 2gb Corsair XMS 3-3-3-8 (1T), WD 150 gig 10000rpm Raptor, WD 250gig 7200rpm SATA2, Seagate 120gb 5400 rpm external HD, CoolerMaster Praetorian

As to your "nose in the ground" final attitude ... you found one of the (very slight) quirks in the mission system. The game is watching your landing. In some missions, the designer only cares if you got to the correct airport. In this particular mission, it is watching your landing all the way to "full stop."However ... "full stop" is where the slight quirk is. The mission system actually measures your landing until you get to about 1 or 2 knots of speed, then it decides whether you properly executed the landing. After that, it rewards you and tells you "Nice landing, mission success."It was after this point when (I suspect) you applied so much braking pressure that you forced the nose over ... due to Sir Issac Newton not much caring for that sort of thing.At any rate ... you walked away so, take that Mr. Newton!Lastly ... on your visibility issue: Use the + and - keys in the virtual cockpit to increase your visibility. In this mission, you start in the cockpit, but with the zoom zoomed pretty far in. I suggest hitting the - (minus) key 3 times, until you get this look:With this level of zoom, you should have no problem with visibility into Loon and should be able to nail that landing! Here's what my setup looks like on approach to Loon:Plenty of visibility. Also, if you really get into Flight Simulator, and want to take things to the next level ... consider TrackIR. It is the single best way to improve Flight Simulator.Cheers,Kevin

One thing which is very helpful for me as I made the move from the FS2004 2D panels to the FSX 3D panels is to enable the red V which tells me where my eyepoint is focused. (View > Axis Indicator)It's real easy with a VC to get into an eyepoint which distorts the ground closing in.Another thing I that I want to see the VSI - and see how quickly the aircraft is descending. That helps me not flare so much as to climb. IT also helps me keep from hitting so hard the aircraft bounces.

thanks Kevin that looks much better.

Tom,Just curious why the screenshots were pulled from my post? I believe they were within the guidelines, but if they were not somehow, can you explain so I can stay within the guidelines.Posts with screenshots get read more by a factor of 10x (my view) helping your advertising partners (and your hits) ... and that's one of the reasons why I post so many screenshots.If that's not desired (say, for reasons of bandwidth conservation), let me know, and I'll dial it back a bit.Cheers,Kevin

He put a note on my OP saying that the size of the image was against the guidelines. Since mine was hosted on another server I assume he means to say that because it is 260k or so that dialup people would have to wait too long to view it. I guess I'll have to go read the rules to see what the size limitation is when hosted on a outside server.

"I get this awful bumpy landing that throws me back up in the air."This sort of behaviour is usually due to excessive landing speeds. The key to successful landing is to very nearly stall the aircraft just before you touch down, which is why stalling has always been an important lesson to learn when flying an aircraft. You want to slow the aircraft until the nose is about five degrees above the horizon, and then you extend the flaps which will bring the nose down again, and which allows you to slow even further until you arrive at a suitable landing speed. This speed will vary with the landing weight of the aircraft and the altitude of the runway. Minimal fuel in the tank means you can land even slower, and when landing at a high altitude airport you will stall at a higher speed.Mike.

Keep practicing. You need to get the "feel" of what it looks like from in the cockpit.There are several things you can do that may give you a better view until you get the hang of it. You can move your viewpoint up for the landing. Another is to use the 2D view and add transparency so you can see the see through the panel.Look at your settings, you must have reality setting turned down. If you do this you can bounce off the ground without damage. That's ok if that's the way you want to learn :)Have fun! Gunner

I think there might be something wonky going on here. I just tried to fly from Reno, NV to SusanVille CA and well, crashed into a mountain but I was able to roll backwards and spin the plane around to face the downslope and take off again (who says I need search and rescue to follow me when I fly?) and anyway I never made it to Susanville but found some remote air strip next to a lake.So I went in for a landing, I cut back my throttle to about 20% then the overspeed warning came on, so I cut my throttle all the way back and yet the plane kept zipping along without slowing down at all and I was on a plain (ummm, flat?) so it wasn't like I was nose down diving or something yet the speed refused to slow down.Ill keep trying, there must have been a reason that the plain kept on at a constant speed when the throttle was cut and I was on a level plain.

"I cut my throttle all the way back and yet the plane kept zipping along without slowing down at all." Two questions come to mind. Firstly, are you flying a jet with the autothrottle on, in which case hitting the Function keys won't change anything? Secondly, do you have a throttle slider on your joystick or yoke, in which case the slider and the function keys will be in conflict? In this case you will need to choose which one suits you and disable the other from the Settings/Controls/Buttons or Control Axes dialogue.Mike.

I'm using the Saitex x52 so yeah, it has the throttle which when I say I cut my throttle, I pulled that all the way back to 0 or idle position.I'll have to go in an delete any key assognments to the throttle that I find in the game and try again to see if it was a conflic or something else.It wasn't a jet, I don't know the name of the plane off the top of my head (at 3AM) but it was a single engine prop plane (but not the cesna)

Can you check with the flight analysis after a mission to see what you did? I don't know because I don't use the missions.