Would it surprise you to learn that in the newest multimillion dollar level D simulators, icing is not a thing that "causes airplanes to fall from the sky" unless the instructor grabs the icing tab and yanks it?  This is something that is not bothered with in the box because, well..  it's a box.  Not an airplane.  There are things you can learn in the box, and then there are things you will learn in an airplane.

All this software being discussed... They're all video games.  They're for FUN.  And they are fun!  That's why I like the hobby.  But the obsessing over these things that will simply never be consequential in software, like icing or turbulence in clouds... You're kind of ruining your own fun over nothing, because it's never really going to be consequential, is it?  Anything that does happen in the games (or in a level D sim for that matter) would just be contrived.  Really kind of pointless to obsess about.

21 hours ago, flying_carpet said:

 

As you bring up X-Plane: there you do NOT have to build a flight model, the planemaker does it for you. You enter contours and Planemaker calculates the flight model from them. That's the so called 'predictive' approach, 

Well this gave me good laugh and put this poster in a new light for me.

Cheers!😃

46 minutes ago, Stearmandriver said:

Would it surprise you to learn that in the newest multimillion dollar level D simulators, icing is not a thing that "causes airplanes to fall from the sky" unless the instructor grabs the icing tab and yanks it?  This is something that is not bothered with in the box because, well..  it's a box.  Not an airplane.  There are things you can learn in the box, and then there are things you will learn in an airplane.

All this software being discussed... They're all video games.  They're for FUN.  And they are fun!  That's why I like the hobby.  But the obsessing over these things that will simply never be consequential in software, like icing or turbulence in clouds... You're kind of ruining your own fun over nothing, because it's never really going to be consequential, is it?  Anything that does happen in the games (or in a level D sim for that matter) would just be contrived.  Really kind of pointless to obsess about.

That stuff is absolutely relevant to the simulator (game or not) since having your plane fall out of the sky becomes a consequence of inaction. It's literally how you would learn that flying through a cloud in icy conditions is a Bad Thing™️. The consequence is your 3 hour flight becomes a 1 hour flight and you have to start again.

4 hours ago, flying_carpet said:

In MSFS as developer you have 'to tell the plane': if there are icing conditions, plase fall from the sky. If you don't, it will fly forever like in sunshine. In X-Plane, as developer, you can't even tell the plane to fall from the sky. There is no switch (or whatever else) in planemaker, to do so. It is the The XP 'core engine' (which acts kind of like the laws of physics) and not the developer which tells the plane to fall from the sky.

No question a more elegant solution to these kinds of issues.  That being said I read here it's not really 'automatic' because the dev of the plane still needs to enter all of the parameters involved to tap into the core engine.  So this begs an important question:  we have a new A320CFM to develop for MSFS 2024.  How much coding effort is required to implement icing impacts in 2024, versus how much effort is required for entering contour information (and other elements presumably) into Planemaker?  It would appear in XP devs must use Planemaker else it's not going to function in XP, so they're forced to engage, and presumably happily do so.

5 hours ago, Stearmandriver said:

Would it surprise you to learn that in the newest multimillion dollar level D simulators, icing is not a thing that "causes airplanes to fall from the sky" unless the instructor grabs the icing tab and yanks it?  This is something that is not bothered with in the box because, well..  it's a box.  Not an airplane.  There are things you can learn in the box, and then there are things you will learn in an airplane.

All this software being discussed... They're all video games.  They're for FUN.  And they are fun!  That's why I like the hobby.  But the obsessing over these things that will simply never be consequential in software, like icing or turbulence in clouds... You're kind of ruining your own fun over nothing, because it's never really going to be consequential, is it?  Anything that does happen in the games (or in a level D sim for that matter) would just be contrived.  Really kind of pointless to obsess about.

Moderators - PIN THIS POST. It would make 99% of the posts here absolutely pointless and make your jobs a lot easier (albeit boring!)

A game. It's just a game. 

Edited September 6, 2025Sep 6 by Mike T

5 hours ago, Stearmandriver said:

They're all video games.  They're for FUN.

So real pilots do it just for the money?  The fame?  The glory?

Part of the “Fun” can be the challenge.  I don’t see why depth of simulation should be restricted?

1 hour ago, SayAgain said:

So real pilots do it just for the money?  The fame?  The glory?

Part of the “Fun” can be the challenge.  I don’t see why depth of simulation should be restricted?

Being an airline pilot ceased to have fame and glory in the 1960s. There is little fame and glory in a 4 day trip with 5 legs a day, with a 5:30 am check in each morning. None. 

Second, yes, you bid your line to maximize income, or to maximize days off. I don't know anyone who says - ooooh, I'll fly KLGA turns all month, so I can challenge myself by flying Stadium Visual approaches or into KDCA to fly River Visual approaches all month.

I think the point was, if you look at all the posts, there is little about how much FUN anyone is having, or what a miracle of technology FS 20/24 truely is, warts and all. This is especially true for those of us who started this hobby with just a buch of 8 bit pixelated lines at 2 fps on an 8086 machine. Now I can't believe what I see in front of me, every time I fly. I'm in awe. But it's if no one sees that, it's never good enough, there is no fun in the posts here (anymore - what a place Avsim used to be).

I saw a post complaining that there are too many female voices in ATC and everyone knows that's a wrong ratio for female voices in real life! I mean...wow, if Disney World is claimed to be the Happiest Place on Earth, Avsim has to be the most miserable place on earth. So, nothing wrong with wanting the highest fidelity possible in Flight Simulator, but jeeze...stop, look around, look at what we have, and have some FUN!

 

Edited September 6, 2025Sep 6 by Mike T

11 hours ago, FPVSteve said:

That stuff is absolutely relevant to the simulator (game or not) since having your plane fall out of the sky becomes a consequence of inaction. It's literally how you would learn that flying through a cloud in icy conditions is a Bad Thing™️. The consequence is your 3 hour flight becomes a 1 hour flight and you have to start again.

Really?  Is that how you expect someone would LEARN that icing can be dangerous? 

How?  If they didn't know this already, and their plane fell from the sky in the game, is there a popup that teaches the aerodynamic threats of structural icing?  I don't think there is.  I don't think there's any built-in teaching in the game at all, which really is a shame as there did used to be lessons back in the day.

But no, of course not.  It's just a gamey "consequence" that you might have to hit restart.  It's why we don't use these kinds of contrivances in real simulators.  Informing the crew they're in severe icing and then observing response can yield some useful debrief items, but an instructor is certainly never going to make them "crash"... That just wastes time and it's useless.  It's not "teaching" anything.  (By the way, flying through an icy cloud certainly doesn't cause airplanes to fall from the sky.  Even in an unprotected aircraft, you'd have to sit in severe icing for a decent length of time.)

It's like having crash damage turned on.  What's the point?  Let's face it, you know if you crashed.  If you want to enforce "consequences" on yourself, you can always shut the computer off and go get a cup of coffee and contemplate life choices.  Chances are though, you just want to try whatever dumb thing you were doing again 😉.

I'm learning there is a difference between real simulator use, and what folks who style themselves as "serious desktop simmers" want from their software.  The latter group seems to be trying to do something more akin to roleplay.  Nothing at all wrong with that of course, I'm just pointing out that you don't want to confuse it with how "real simulators" are used.  And so, arguing which roleplaying game is more of a "real simulator" is just getting silly.

You can often accumulate a great bit of ice and not "fall out of the sky", lol.  

For me, in 2024, they need to fix the night lighting.  It's way too bright.  The bloom is so bad that a single light source lights up everything around it.  Some cities are bright, yes, but I shouldn't be seeing mountains that look like they have a WWII search light pointed at them.  Landing lights create a haze in front of you.  It's ridiculous.

11 hours ago, Mike T said:

Second, yes, you bid your line to maximize income, or to maximize days off.

Sure, and you can sit in an airport for 8+ hours on standby filler and then have to return home … and if the airport isn’t anywhere near your home, you have to catch a ride on another flight that you hope has a seat or a jump seat available.

Every pilot I know fly’s for fun and enjoys it, if they didn’t they would not go thru the bumps to get from A to B for very little money relatively speaking.  Sure, there are a few that are doing it just for the money.  But I think FUN is the majority case.

I auto raced for “fun” and I used iRacing for “fun”.  I develop software for fun and money.  I’m with you, started flight simulation at my “Dad’s” office, because the was the only place I could “borrow” time on the PC (monochrome) to enjoy flight simulation.

I didn’t really like MSFS 2020 that much, but I really enjoy MSFS 2024.  Anyway, no really sure where this is going … just have fun, be it simulated or real world … the more depth of simulation the more the challenge the more the fun.

6 hours ago, Stearmandriver said:

Really?  Is that how you expect someone would LEARN that icing can be dangerous? 

How?  If they didn't know this already, and their plane fell from the sky in the game, is there a popup that teaches the aerodynamic threats of structural icing?  I don't think there is.  I don't think there's any built-in teaching in the game at all, which really is a shame as there did used to be lessons back in the day.

But no, of course not.  It's just a gamey "consequence" that you might have to hit restart.  It's why we don't use these kinds of contrivances in real simulators.  Informing the crew they're in severe icing and then observing response can yield some useful debrief items, but an instructor is certainly never going to make them "crash"... That just wastes time and it's useless.  It's not "teaching" anything.  (By the way, flying through an icy cloud certainly doesn't cause airplanes to fall from the sky.  Even in an unprotected aircraft, you'd have to sit in severe icing for a decent length of time.)

It's like having crash damage turned on.  What's the point?  Let's face it, you know if you crashed.  If you want to enforce "consequences" on yourself, you can always shut the computer off and go get a cup of coffee and contemplate life choices.  Chances are though, you just want to try whatever dumb thing you were doing again 😉.

I'm learning there is a difference between real simulator use, and what folks who style themselves as "serious desktop simmers" want from their software.  The latter group seems to be trying to do something more akin to roleplay.  Nothing at all wrong with that of course, I'm just pointing out that you don't want to confuse it with how "real simulators" are used.  And so, arguing which roleplaying game is more of a "real simulator" is just getting silly.

Interesting and exciting reasoning.

🤷‍♂️🤣

So, when I e.g. flip the switch for the landing lights, why do the landing lights do have to get lit in sim? What do I learn from it? It's something I already knew before.
So, when I e.g. actuate the landing gear lever, why does the landing gear has to retract in sim? What do I learn from it? It's something I already knew before.
So, when I e.g. pull the yoke, why does the plane has to lift the nose in sim? What do I learn from it? It's something I already knew before.
I could go on and on ...

15 hours ago, Noel said:

No question a more elegant solution to these kinds of issues.  That being said I read here it's not really 'automatic' because the dev of the plane still needs to enter all of the parameters involved to tap into the core engine.  So this begs an important question:  we have a new A320CFM to develop for MSFS 2024.  How much coding effort is required to implement icing impacts in 2024, versus how much effort is required for entering contour information (and other elements presumably) into Planemaker?  It would appear in XP devs must use Planemaker else it's not going to function in XP, so they're forced to engage, and presumably happily do so.

Well, the developer has to specify SOMETHING (e.g. contours) in order to define the plane. But the fact that each developer has to write things 'into the flight model' (if at all) individually and for each aircraft over and over again, which could also be calculated automatically by the core engine, is a bit silly. 😁

16 hours ago, Mike T said:

there is little about how much FUN anyone is having, or what a miracle of technology FS 20/24 truely is, warts and all. (This is especially true for those of us who started this hobby with just a buch of 8 bit pixelated lines at 2 fps on an 8086 machine.) Now I can't believe what I see in front of me, every time I fly. I'm in awe. But it's if no one sees that, it's never good enough, there is no fun in the posts here

Totally agree. In fact, I put the bit about 8 bit 2fps in parenthesis because I never did any of that as it never did strike me as fun at the time - it's only since things started to get visually entertaining that I took up with this.

There's obviously a lot that goes on with people and their simming habits, some of it way beyond anything actually sim-related and purely human psychology and even biological/chemical level stuff. But even so, it strikes me that there is one thing about flightsim that is not often acknowledged, and that is that for some people it isn't really a simulator, it's an RPG (Role Playing Game). The role, of course, is "pilot", and for those people the requirement is accuracy and realism being as high as possible. 

But "flight" simulation also covers the somewhat more simple pleasures of moving good looking models of favourite (or just interesting) aircraft around in the sky, above a hopefully realistic looking environment. And in this mode such concepts as the effects of weather, ice etc on the aircraft are not particularly relevant.

How much any particular sim should aim to satisfy each of these requirements is really either a purely commercial decision, or maybe (for example with something like XP) it's more a function of the main author/driver of the software.

From my own point of view, I'm sometimes horrified (speaking hyperbolically of course) by some of the posts in here when debates about some of the (to me) more obscure issues of flying crop up and rage on for pages with people obviously getting their underwear well twisted, and then turning into endless school playground yah-boo posturing. 

As to the original post, and reason for this thread, there are just a couple of things missing for me since SU3, and those are the continuing LOD issues (scenery and objects popping and the fairly obvious demarcation line where the scenery just blurs in the distance) and the problems with vegetation in the photogrammetry (the dreaded green obelisks where once were trees). But even with these issues (and a whole bunch of other minor but irritating things), this is still a breathtakingly gorgeous environment to fly in. And it is HUGE fun, or at least it is to a guy like me who doesn't even know (or care) what most of that stuff in a cockpit actually does.

I've said before, and I'll repeat it again now, this is a flight simulator, and that's all I want to do - but fly like a bird, not like a pilot.

11 hours ago, Stearmandriver said:

Really?  Is that how you expect someone would LEARN that icing can be dangerous? 

How?  If they didn't know this already, and their plane fell from the sky in the game, is there a popup that teaches the aerodynamic threats of structural icing?  I don't think there is.  I don't think there's any built-in teaching in the game at all, which really is a shame as there did used to be lessons back in the day.

But no, of course not.  It's just a gamey "consequence" that you might have to hit restart.  It's why we don't use these kinds of contrivances in real simulators.  Informing the crew they're in severe icing and then observing response can yield some useful debrief items, but an instructor is certainly never going to make them "crash"... That just wastes time and it's useless.  It's not "teaching" anything.  (By the way, flying through an icy cloud certainly doesn't cause airplanes to fall from the sky.  Even in an unprotected aircraft, you'd have to sit in severe icing for a decent length of time.)

It's like having crash damage turned on.  What's the point?  Let's face it, you know if you crashed.  If you want to enforce "consequences" on yourself, you can always shut the computer off and go get a cup of coffee and contemplate life choices.  Chances are though, you just want to try whatever dumb thing you were doing again 😉.

I'm learning there is a difference between real simulator use, and what folks who style themselves as "serious desktop simmers" want from their software.  The latter group seems to be trying to do something more akin to roleplay.  Nothing at all wrong with that of course, I'm just pointing out that you don't want to confuse it with how "real simulators" are used.  And so, arguing which roleplaying game is more of a "real simulator" is just getting silly.

By that logic you might as well not have a simulator at all since you already know an aircraft can fly so what's the point in pretending to do it?

A simulator which adds the jeopardy of potentially finding yourself in a situation that needs to be managed to get out of it seems far more rewarding than sitting down to have a completely a bland experience unless manually triggered. 

You do you though I guess.

On 9/3/2025 at 5:26 PM, abrams_tank said:

The files for the default Standard planes are not encrypted. You can use the VFS projector to show the content of the files. And if you duplicate the file structure in your Community folder, you may be able to modify the CFG values and get MSFS 2024 to load them. Read this for more information, including the link to the thread where it shows in detail how to use the VFS projector:

It's not very user friendly, but if you want to modify the CFG files, you can check out the steps above.

Could you please tell us which page in that thread the details of the 'VFS Projector' are?  The link dumps me to Page 1 of an 26 page thread.   Thanks so much if you can.

Edited September 7, 2025Sep 7 by JYW