garwig3

How would you feather a prop on a cockpitless twin in a game with no support for throttle quadrants or independent engine controls? Flying a twin with an engine out is such a great challenge so it's a shame to think we were so close and yet so far. - Gary Letona

Did you land at Wiley Post or just takeoff from there to start the job? - Gary Letona

I checked out Afghanistan, the other side of the world from me, and the charts look very good there. The weather information will make long haul flight planning a treat too. Time to dust off the A2A Stratocruiser. Thanks a bunch to the people at SkyVector. - Gary Letona

Maybe someone can find a way to do it using the glider tow rope? Also, the real magic in banner towing in real life is picking up the banner. I think that would be really fun to try. They don't take off with the banner on the plane. Instead, the banner line is strung up between two poles and the pilot catches it with a hook. This requires a sudden drop of the tail at just the right moment. I remember seeing a video on youtube, I'll have to see if I can find it. - Gary Letona

My suggestion is to learn the navigation in the GA planes first. You really need to understand how to fly from VOR to VOR and ILS approaches. I think it is also good to learn how to program the default GPS and navigate exclusively by GPS too. Once you have that down in GA you might step up the a King Air and try several flights from LAX to Las Vegas to learn SIDs and STARs and how to work at faster speeds. Then you can step up again to the default 737 and practice at even faster speeds. Then you'll slip into a high-detail and high-dollar Add-on with high confidence.

I would love to see a DC-3 or C-46, but I agree completely that we shouldn't expect a twin any time soon. And I think it's time for a turboprop, so that leaves a Caravan or a PC-12. But I imagine we are likely to see more taildraggers for the bush, so a DHC-3 Otter would be nice. But to get a little crazy, how about an AN-3? - Gary Letona

My guess is that they go international next, but staying in the Pacific to maintain some continuity. Maybe Australia, Western Canada, New Zealand, or Japan. My second guesses would be Western US (Washington, Oregon, California). I also predict there will be at least two more aircraft before any further terrain. - Gary Letona

Just stunning. If Flight got one thing right it's the look of the terrain and its lighting. - Gary Letona

I'm so glad they fixed the toebrakes, I thought they might ignore that since relatively few people have them available. I also like the UI updates. I never used TrackIR before but I might have to give it a go now. - Gary Letona

This is probably true, however there are 747's that fly within Japan, and I once flew in real life on a 747 from LAX to DEN, so you don't necessarily need a long haul flight. Another thing to keep in mind is that the 747 is instantly recognizable even by the general public. When I first got FS95 my girlfriend saw a 747 addon at the store and she thought it would be the coolest thing to fly even though she was not into flight sims at all. So I think we will be seeing a 747 from MS eventually. - Gary Letona

The trick is that you need different amounts of rudder as your airspeed and your engine's torque change. You have to time it right and get a feel for the timing. The best advice I can give is to practice on a long runway by slowly and gradually adding power and use rudder to keep it straight. Once you get the hang of it practice by adding throttle a little faster and faster until it feels natural. Another trick if you're really having a problem: don't use full power unless you really need it. Full power makes all the turning effects even stronger. So if you have enough extra runway available, and there are no terrain concerns taking off with less than full power will make it easier to control. - Gary Letona

You're not doing anything wrong, all single-engine prop aircraft have a tendency to turn when you push the throttle forward. This is caused by the forces of the prop turning in one direction, which puts some assymetrical forces on the aircraft. If you want to know the details do a search for the terms "torque effect", "gyroscopic precession", "asymetric thrust", and "spiraling slipstream". To counteract this add throttle slowly so you can maintain control of the aircraft and use right rudder to keep the nose straight. You do have rudder pedals, don't you? - Gary Letona

A004 - 50 Autopilots E002 - 25 More weather options (Especially real world weather) A006 - 13 Failures E006 - 6 A.I. Planes E001 - 6 ATC I also liked all of the suggestions for more lessons for beginners since that would be very beneficial to the game. But my $100 only go so far, so I voted just for the stuff I want for me. - Gary Letona

Of all the scoring gimicks they've put into Flight, I think they got this one right. I love going for better and better scores on the landings and the 3 criteria were good choices. - Gary Letona

But does it have a cockpit? :P

Is there still speculation about a biz jet coming with Alaska, or did I imagine that? - Gary Letona

I would suggest flying at higher altitudes as well. When flying over water you want to be high enough to be able to glide to the nearest land if possible. Sometimes you just can't do that, but the higher you are the better chance of gliding to land. I would suggest 8000' might be better in this scenario. - Gary Letona

A good way to learn landings is to try to keep the airplane from landing. Just as you cross over the begining of the runway you should be less than 50 above it, pull the throttle all the way back slowly as the airplane continues descending. When you get to about 5 ft above the runway try to hold it level there by pulling back on the yoke. As the airplane slows it will want to descend and you will want to keep it from descending which will slow you down even more. The plane will descend because you have no power and will touch the runway on the main wheels. Practice like this several times and eventually you'll get a better feel for the airplane. - Gary Letona

Does anyone have a link? Navigation on that home page feels odd to me.

I agree completely, I want to see a variety of airplanes when we get Alaska. Even if they are static I would be happy with that. - Gary Letona

Let's see, you have the Alleutian Islands which is a huge chain of mountainous islands with tough approaches. You have Juneau which is a big airport in a mountainous valley, In real life one of the approaches to Jeneau curves through the valley and you follow the curved path of the lead-in lights. That wasn't modelled in FSX but would be neat if they have it in Flight. You have Anchorage which is a huge airport used by cargo carriers as a fuel stop between the US and Asia. You have Hood Lake which is the busiest seaplane base in the world and it happens to be right next to Anchorage. You have Denali National Park which is huge. On one of the airports in the park the runway is part of the main road running through town. You have several snow and ice runways in the North. The mountains in Alaska are so trecherous that building roads through them is impossible, so the whole state depends on aircraft for supplies. Many airports are in valleys so they have placed beacons on the mountains and the traffic pattern curves around the beacons. The unpredictable weather is the icing on the cake, but since Flight doesn't have Real World Weather, that may be a disappointment. - Gary Letona

I can only hope that Flight's strategy is this: "New users were scared off fromf FSX when they started a flight staring at a bunch of gauges that they didn't understand, so they turned it off and never came back. So for flight we'll make it so they start with no gauges at all flying some fun familiar warbirds from outside. Then with the Icon they can put their toe in the water with a limited set of gauges that are easy to read. Then we'll offer more and more complex gauges and systems until we get them into airliners and supersonic birds." If they follow this strategy then it would mean we are done with the cockpitless warbirds soon. And maybe it means we'll see some twin-engined pistons soon. That strategy would seem reasonable to me. However when I first fired up my first sim, FS95, I felt overwhelmed by all the gauges in the C172 but there were some great lessons and reading material included, *and* knowing that I could work my way up to a 737 made it seem worthwhile. A new user now has no lessons on gauges and no way of knowing if there will be something as cool as a 737 to aim for. So my interest is still there, but I don't know if they're doing the right things to keep the interest of the new guys they're going after. - Gary Letona

This is why I so wish for real world weather. Real pilots don't ask themselves, "What kind of clouds/winds do I want at my destination?" Instead they look at the forecast and plan accordingly. - Gary Letona

I agree that there is an audience who would enjoy cheap cockpitless planes, and they are certainly allowed to be served. The problem is that MS is the only one who can publish for Flight right now and if they find it easy enough to make money with cockpitless planes they may decide that investing the time in planes with cockpits is not worth it. They may decide there is no reason to add functionality to the cockpit. *That* is the problem with the cockpitless planes. I love to fly A2A planes in FSX, but the only reason why we got to that level of quality was because different publishers wanted to compete for the dollars from simmers. Since MS has no competition there in no reason to hope they will strive for better quality if they are happy enough with cockpitless planes. - Gary Letona

Very interesting. What else does he have in his collection? That should tell us what else is coming up. And what does he own that has a cockpit? That should tell us something too. - Gary Letona