bennyboy75

Generally I’m finding this to be fairly reliable now, with a quick flight from Brussels to London Stansted going without a hitch. Nice descent to meet all the STAR restrictions and popped out on the ILS. 
 

Couple of observations - one is that the taxi instructions seem to be quite lengthy because rather than just give you the taxiway designator ‘U’ for example it’ll give you all the intersections along the way U9, U8, U7 etc which I guess is a limitation of the scenery.
 

Secondly - twice now it’s descended me to the platform altitude for the ILS which is below the minimum altitude of the transition, which it then asks me to cross at or above a higher altitude than the platform altitude that it previously cleared me for. Is this realistic? 

On 5/27/2024 at 1:23 AM, MikeH99 said:

Well in the Fenix you have to turn the packs off 20s before take off and turn them back on 10s apart. It's not that easy for some!

You don't have to do that, but a lot of airlines turn off the packs to save some gas as you can (as I understand it) use a higher flex as the engines aren't having to provide bleed air at the same time as takeoff thrust. 

I never do packs off takeoffs in the sim as it's a big distraction at a busy time (thrust red, accel alt, flap retraction all taking place around the time you need to turn them back on), which is why the non flying pilot would do it. 

Be nice if Fenix implemented a bit of help with stuff like this to acknowledge wanting to do realistic ops but flying single pilot for example

- auto packs turn back on 10 seconds apart after thrust reduction, leaving you free to fly without having to look up

- clean up trigger upon landing, where the clean up items such as flaps, lights, APU, wx radar etc are all done while you can concentrate on the taxi. I believe in the real one stowing the speed brakes is the trigger, maybe this could be implemented if there are certain conditions met, say weight on wheels, flaps set in landing config, speedbrakes deployed and strobes are on . 

How about it @amir 😁

Any aircraft without a lot of automation will always be a handful in the sim - the Fokker F28, BAe 146 and DC6 are good examples. Even the 737 NG has a significantly higher workload than an A320 so if you want an easy life then grab the Fenix!

Had a couple of happy flights this morning in the CFM Fenix and then swapped to the IAE for a quick hop to Santorini. Put the beacon on and waited for pushback at FlyTampa LGAV but nothing happened. Everything is ready to go, chocks are off, APU is running but the pushback guy just stands there looking at me. 
 

Eventually restarted Couatl and the aircraft jumped a tiny bit in the air and then came up with ‘use man pitch trim’ so I suspect it thinks it’s airborne. No way to get out of this state without restarting the sim. 

Is it an IAE thing with SU15?

Another couple of flights for me today without issues, vectoring was good and a smooth experience all the way from gate to gate. I can’t fly without it now!

Well dare to dream but it seems to getting there. Two flights this morning - one TLV-LCA and NCE-GVA and both were pretty good up to and including the final vectors. I didn’t use a STAR into LCA but it gave me heading which matched up nicely with the ILS P and then a couple of vectors which out me nicely on the LOC.

I used a STAR into GVA which left me initially a little high but using 320sim pilot’s trick which is if you’re kept high to slow down, I got it nicely in the slot. Sadly whilst fiddling with GSX to choose a gate on final I managed to trigger the go-around instruction which kind of ruined the experience but hey ho it was all going well up until my fat finger moment. 

The voices are really good and immersive - all of the sectors sounded realistic, both in Tel Aviv and Nicosia and then Nice, Marseille, Milan and Geneva although I kept saying ‘Nice’ as in ‘spice’ rather than the correct ‘Neece’ but I’m sure that’s fixable. 
 

Any why oh why can’t we just select the arrival gate in GSX before we depart 😤😤

2 hours ago, sdirand said:

I don't think Asobo will update it now that msfs2024 is not that far. We will see if LFPG is included in the next version.

LFPG is a huge airport and it is deeply missed. We know that the first developer to release a nice version will cranck the jackpot.

The main problem is that nobody want to be undercut on such a big project. Flightbeam has his hands full with KSFO and probably KPHX and Flytampa is too small and if they need 3 years to release it, they will probably be undercut. They surely don't want to see the Montreal fiasco again.

T2G said they were interrested but we know T2G: their KMCO was so-so and after each scenery they turn to hibernation with absolutely no communication. This hibernation can last one year maybe more. But like a dead volcano, they can wake up any time and arrive with screens for LFPG and it probably scare many developpers.

Our best bet is honnestly Inibuilds. They showed that they are not afraid with such huge airports (Los Angeles, Heathrow, Dubai, etc) and they can produce it quickly. They will sit on a gold mine if they can release a good LFPG quickly. Of course, their sceneries are not as good as Flightbeam or FlyTampa but they will surely fill more than the void for many simmers.

Inibuilds would be better than nothing for sure but I find their airports to be…how to do I say it…copy and paste? They seem to feel a bit Asobo generic to me and lack those little touches of the top flight like Flytampa etc. The ground textures in particular at Dubai and Abu Dhabi seem very basic. 

I’ll probably buy it to support Flytampa and have a nicely modelled regional airport but it is a rather random choice. The only scheduled stuff of any note is KLM’s daily Amsterdam connection. 

For me it’s either pretty spot on or an absolute dumpster fire, around 50/50 at the moment.
 

It seems to work best when there’s a STAR followed by a transition to the approach so it can pretty much leave you to get on with it, which is fine but not entirely realistic as rarely would you fly the whole STAR and transition. I have tried giving it routes where the last waypoint is quite some distance from the airport to force it into vectors but the results are generally very poor with it getting very confused or giving me headings and a descent to the platform altitude when I’m still 100 miles away. It’s very satisfying when it works out though! 

Like most, I’ll buy this on day one but the lack of any real innovation since 2013 on the triple is slightly disappointing. We saw pretty much this exact model 11 years ago and it was pretty cool back then. Not so much now. 

The UFT for one is embarrassingly mediocre when you compare it to the Fenix, for example.

GSX integration, cabin sounds, opening windows, new textures, cabins etc are all where the bar is now. Let’s hope they deliver. 

Last couple of flights haven’t gone particularly well to be honest. On the way into Dublin it left me too high, no vectors and then didn’t hand me off to tower at all. Still work to do. 

Another flight for me, from Larnaca in Cyprus to Beirut and it was pretty flawless, although it helped that the STAR led directly onto the RNAV for runway 03 at BEY.

The only two quibbles I have is that the clearance didn’t give me an initial altitude (there isn’t one on the chart for that SID) so I just picked the first minimum altitude restriction on the departure.
 

Secondly when I checked in with Beirut radar, my copilot gave our altitude as something weird like flight level one three one hundred (you don’t get very high for this 20 minute hop). Given that the aircraft was in ALT CRZ so will float up and down by a small margin, I imagine that BATC is taking the cruise altitude a little too literally. Also it should be flight level 131 for a hundred feet above 130.
 

That all said, the Greek and Arabic accented premium voices were superb, very immersive! 

11 minutes ago, Cpt_Piett said:

I think that would be too much to expect, as there much be thousands of different local variations. 

There might have been other flaws during my flight, but to be honest I don’t have enough knowledge of ATC to know for sure. I was cleared for the Lambourne transition to 09L into Heathrow, but never got a descent clearance from 7000ft IIRC. Because of this I had to declare a missed approach. In hindsight I was wondering if somewhere within the ATC instructions, it was implied that I should descend to, say 3000ft. 

I believe that if you’re cleared for the transition then technically you can fly the published arrival, as long as you respect the altitude constraints of the FAF etc. BATC had me fly a transition into Belfast in my flight yesterday and basically just left me up to my own devices after that for the ILS. I think the answer might be to not plan a transition off the STAR in the simbrief flight plan to force BATC into vectors. 
 

The issue is that some routes will end with a VOR or similar on or near to the airfield and it’s very unrealistic to fly to this waypoint and then get vectored. Every ATC add on I’ve ever used back to the FSX days struggles with this. Usually the tidiest option is a STAR that feeds onto the LOC from its last waypoint, meaning that the route is simpler to plan. However even then as with those very long downwind legs such as in Germany where almost always a shortcut will be given, BATC will have you flying the whole thing. 
 

If they can nail vectoring, this will be an amazing program. 

Flight number two for me from Abu Dhabi to Dammam in Saudi Arabia and impressed again. Arabic accented voices were spot on and less shouty than some of the English accents I’ve heard. Got handovers to Bahrain and Jeddah FIRs at exactly the right spots and then some slightly weird vectors that left me quite low but it did work out in the end. I’m not sure whether it was trying to fix my not very optimal descent planning but we made it.

My meh payware Dammam didn’t have the required taxiway layout for instructions but no big surprise there. 

All in all, nice job 👍🏻 

From my (very very limited) time with it today then it does seem like a pretty polished and very useable product.

I’ve been using FS products for years and some are a basket case on day 1 and remain that way forever. On first look this is very promising indeed. 

Quick hop to Belfast for me and I had the connection issue so ran as admin, no issues after that. I couldn’t work out how to change my call sign but apart from that I’m very impressed. Some of the phraseology is a little weird - ‘maintain runway centreline’ in the clearance but was changed to ‘maintain runway heading’ in the takeoff clearance. I didn’t really get any vectors at the end but rather cleared to the LOC via the transition that basically left me to fly the whole DME arc, not something I’d expect to do but it did work out.  
 

The voices and functionality of it are really good though. Too soon to say, but this definitely is game changer territory. 

5 hours ago, rutrA said:

 

Looks great, but the vector to the localiser didn’t get him lined up. It looks to me like he had to vector himself a bit further around as the video jumped at around 18 mins. 

Another couple of flights with this and I really like the nice simple way that it handles things. I tried a quick departure out of Belfast City to Newcastle which has no SIDS. As expected with no SID I was given a clearance to maintain runway heading on departure.

Unfortunately after departure I was given no further instructions to make a turn and had to send myself off to the right to the first fix on the flight plan, otherwise I’d have ended up flying out into the North Atlantic! I’ll keep trying. 

I tried FS HUD for the first time this weekend and apart from the rather torturous install (needed to install run times and do stuff in powershell to make it start) I actually really like how it works. The voices aren’t bad at all and it’s very easy to use.

The only drawbacks for me were it absolutely hammered my frame rate even at small airports, although I’m used to running with minimal AI due to my rig being quite outdated these days. Hopefully my 7800X3D/4080 Super combo arriving next week will solve that.

Secondly and most disappointing was the vectoring to final was hopeless. Not just poor, but on both flights literally I had vectors from downwind that put me 150 degrees off the localiser course. As I’ve read that one of the strengths of this program is very realistic vectoring, it’s a bit of a bummer. 
 

Weird choice for them - especially as MK are one of the more renowned developers and did a great job with Lisbon. 

17 hours ago, JYW said:

Yes, the RJ brings integrated VNAV but more starkly (in my opinion) brings the vast increase in situational awareness afforded by the EFIS.   (The lack of a navigation display on the 146 is the main point that prevents me from enjoying it - that's no criticism of the product as it's realistic.  The tiny map that appears in the radar screen is non-adjustable and doesn't help much).

With the RJ, we'll have all the fun of the 4 engined Jumbolino but with decent RNAV, VNAV and situational awareness through the EFIS.   The RJs use the same Honeywell MCP as older 737NGs.

 

....then of course there's AUTOTHROTTLE! 😉

I have to agree with you about the nav display. 

The fact that we have to self vector a lot of the time in the sim is made much easier by being able to visualise where you are in relation to the nav course/localiser etc without having to twirl a bunch of courses and VORs and build a mental picture. Autothrottle also takes a lot of the workload away. I passed on the 146/F28 for precisely the reason that they’d barely get flown. Am very excited about the RJ and Fokker 100/70 though. 

4 hours ago, JYW said:

Can you spot the paint-based oddity going on here? 😄

The funny thing is, I'm sure I've flown this (official Ini) repaint before and never noticed that gremlin with the DHL logo.

 

I had exactly this problem and also wondered the same thing! 

Nice to see the return of another big name from the FSX/P3D days but I’ll sit this one out until some reviews are in. Unpopular opinion, but I find the weather engine in MSFS to be pretty solid at this point. AS’s metar to metar injection model is well behind the tech under the hood already.

As previously pointed out, we are also getting back to the stage of bloating the sim with lots of third party apps (I’m running fs realistic, real turb and the FPS LOD program already) so am reluctant to keep adding more unless it’s really good. 

Looks like we won’t have to wait too long to find out.

AI traffic is more trouble that it’s worth. After a long flight the last thing I want is a plane landing on the opposite end of the runway I’m using, which is quite a regular occurrence. 

I now use FSLTL to spawn traffic at the gates so I don’t feel lonely but I have the IFR traffic set to almost zero. 

Anyone who can fly the Q400 will be able to handle the UNS FMC in this which is a good thing. Unfortunately I’m quite a lazy flier these days due to the wonderful scenery in MSFS that I enjoy sightseeing instead of grappling with flying old iron so the lack of glass and autothrottle means I’ll probably pass this time. 
 

I will be all over the Fokker 70/100 and RJ like a rash though!