FPVSteve

Oh wow - this looks incredibly good. Seeing the comparisons side by side makes it much easier to see the changes and it's amazing what trees add to the scenes.

You know, not so long ago this would have been considered an AAA addon. It's beautiful and obviously tons of effort has gone into it. Credit where credit is due, LVFR - nice work by the looks of things.

The only thing I dislike about Chaseplane is how it seems to make my sim "hang" when I first go into the cockpit (presumably while it loads my profiles from the cloud since I have absolutely terrible internet here). Other than that it's superb. I only bought it because I missed the X-Plane camera system so much whenever I used MSFS. Bonus feature: a reinstall of MSFS is frustrating enough - not having to set up my camera views ever again is worth the money on its own.

"Dropping the kids off at the pool".

I forgot to add there's www.diyfpv.com which has a "builder" where you can source all of the parts you might need to get started. Great community.

I didn't post that video it was someone else :) There's honestly so many paths you can take it would be impossible to cover on a forum post but some of the best channels for learning are: https://www.youtube.com/@CurryKitten/videos https://www.youtube.com/@painless360 https://www.youtube.com/@Xjet/videos (although he is currently embroiled in arguments with his local council lol) - he has some superb older videos from explaining how FPV actually works (antennas / transmitter / receivers etc and the theory behind it) to making very cheap "backpack" style FPV systems that you can simply velcro onto an aircraft and get flying - plus making your own aircraft out of hobby foam for pennies (plus electronics of course).

No this is North Lincolnshire near a place called Eastoft 👍

it's not a VR headset as such ... it's a set of video goggles which have a video receiver in them that outputs to a screen (or screens) inside them (or indeed a screen on the ground if you prefer to use a groundstation). The video is transmitted live from the aircraft so you can pilot it as though you're sat onboard. I still have my first pair of goggles (Fatshark Dominators) which only support analogue video but they're super-reliable and the aircraft I fly with them have a range of approx 2km with a simple circular polarised antenna or ~5-6km with a patch or similar direction antenna attached to the goggles and a ~200mw transmitter onboard the aircraft. I also have some newer digital goggles from DJI which someone has tested out to 10km but I find flying at range or altitude (besides being illegal) really boring - close in, low down flying is way more fun. The quality of the video via the HD link is absolutely beautiful though. Here's a video I made while testing a plane I built a few years ago, I think I flew it out to just over a kilometer in this one but I was just testing the autopilot system to make sure it would turn home and not nosedive into the ground if I lost signal 😆. You can see me take the goggles off my face at the end after my "landing" 😆 The autopilot/on-screen display my goggles during this flight looks like this in the live feed to the goggles (that above video is a HD recording from a separate camera I stuck onboard): In the centre you can see a line which is pointing to home so you don't get lost - if you do, just flick a switch and the aircraft will come home as it knows its launch point relative to its current position via GPS. I also made a headtracker for the goggles linked to a channel on the transmitter so I could physically turn my head / look up and down and have it remotely control a couple of servos on the aircraft to move the camera and look around. Pretty cool hobby that I used to do before work (you'll note the timestamp on the video says 5:50am)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8heJBJmUh8s

Yep, still got all of my kit - however I much prefer flying fixed wings, it's way more relaxing and far less expensive if (when) you crash 😅 Some of the guys flying freestyle have the reflexes of a cat, I was never that good 😆

I used to fly freestyle drones and I used to really enjoy practicing on a mod I had for GTA V purely because the scenery was so varied and detailed. Los Santos is massive!

Some of those "real pilots" used to claim the 2020 flight model was great, only to hang it out to dry when 2024 came out. I have a rule in life to never listen to "the general consensus" without trying something out for myself. That goes for films, books, rollercoasters and my simulator settings. All I know is my FS2024 now matches fairly accurately what I see on numerous real life videos and more to the point, it feels better to me which is what I went looking for since I was disappointed with the awful "FSX" feeling it had previously.

I read the other day that disconnecting the GPU outside before switching in the cockpit can cause lots of errors that cause the real plane to have to be powercycled - so maybe it's not a bug!

Passive mode just means ActiveSky adds some atmospheric effects (like turbulence) into the existing weather rather than actually controlling the weather. It's not that it "bounces around all over the place" it's more that it looks like it's actually flying rather than a camera moving through the air.

Have to say I was disillusioned for a while having had the recommendation to turn the Turbulence to "Low" in the sim .. the "on rails" feel was really offputting. Turning it back to Realistic and letting ActiveSky do it's thing is a game changer. Airliners + Realistic Turbulence + ActiveSky in passive mode is superb and really transformed FS2024 for me with all of my addon aircraft. Sometimes it feels like you really have to fight it all the way down. I watch channels like "Approach and Departure Videos" and the setup I have now really replicates what I see in real life on those videos which is what I felt I was missing.