environmental_ice

48 minutes ago, carlanthony24 said:

Well If you read anything that is said. V2 did get a hot fix but not for everything because obviously not everything could be fixed straight away and with SU15 being delayed If I remember correctly the dev's were working within the beta so they could take advantage of what would be releasing when SU15 finally released so it would not take as long for them to release with the new stuff coming. A319,21 was delayed and last update they gave which was in April saying it was entering beta fairly soon. 

If you read anything you would have seen my gripe was releasing an update that removed the ability to hide the cabin which the only fix was to log into discord and come across a random dev comment to go in and replace a file in the fenix folders which something I really dont like to do. I understand most people here tweak till their hearts content and dont mind modifying folders left and right but alot of people dont. There were also those who wanted the ability to revert back to the original V2 release as that recent update to appease people on the landing flare/logic/ground effect etc is what broke the ability to hide the cabin and cause the lights to be dark on the outside in the first place. 

Its nice to see people still white knighting Fenix but Like I said there is plenty of criticism to go around for all developers.

My only thing is I am kinda irked their last update they have refused to release a hot fix. I had to go on the discord to get a "work around" to hide the cabin and also the cabin lights don't work at night anymore. Also we were supposed to get the A319/A321 in Q1 and its already June so at this rate we wont get sharklets which were also supposed to be this year until 2025... I enjoy flying the Fenix but there is definitely plenty of criticism to go around for everyone not just PMDG. The one positive I will say for me anyway is I have only had black screens once since SU15 released. That alone would have made me reluctant to buy the expansion. I don't need 3 planes that wont load correctly so hopefully that is behind us. 

I Don't know why people are bashing them for releasing their own SFO. If Flightbeam Loses sales that's their own fault for sitting on their hands for 4 years. All these other projects they did in the meantime nobody was going to do those. This is their flagship airport in my opinion but the days of squatting on a particular airport are over. If this were MK Studios or Vertical Sim I would have already bought it as well and moved on as I like them a bit more than BMWorld. 

4 hours ago, Christopher Low said:

What on Earth are you on about? I fly with PG disabled all the time, and the scenery definitely does not look anything like as bad as it does in FS2004 The terrain mesh of mountains and canyons is very well defined in autogen mode.

Different strokes for different folks then. Looks like word not allowed to me with PG off  😂  but I'm glad it works for you with it off. 

I dont understand how people fly with it OFF. When its off I notice it right away. I was flying into KLAS recently and its not like the mountains and canyons around are expected to be crisp but it literally looked like I was back in FS2004. I then realized that my Photogrammetry had been switched off in the settings.. That is my only gripe about PG is that because of Microsoft's trash servers I have to pause my flight to turn it back on which can be inconvenient on Vatsim and disrupt other traffic. 

definitely not buying this right now 🤣 I just watched 320 Sim Pilot review of it and once he got to the departure runway I was cringing while watching. This thing has a long way to go. All I could feel is my wallet being depleted of Premium Voice funds as he went off track from BATC's designed script

17 minutes ago, camrad1983 said:

Actually for this mement I really want money back 

Wouldn't count on it. Live and you learn. Hopefully your issues are fixed In a relatively short order and those who eventually want AI control and VFR don't have to wait several years. The last two early access products I bought (skypark and a certain passenger addon simulation) were a complete waste of money. I vouched never again will I support EA model. 

The fact I cant ask the controller what he had for lunch is the reason I wont be purchasing this on day 1

I held out for so long before finally picking up the Feel There LGA last fall. Im normally not one to buy the same scenery twice (I own BMWorld KPHX and wont be buying Flightbeam's version) but this looks like a considerable upgrade over the Feel There LGA. I already own MKStudios KPHL and I enjoy it. Hopefully they continue to add more of these high end size 3 to size 4 airports in the USA that are underserved from the bigger scenery developers.

the recent patch is better but I see it broke some cosmetic things like you cant turn off the cabin visibility now. Also the cabin lighting is completely dark when you look at it from the outside at night even if you turn it on from the EFB. Also alot of people are posting about the turn knobs for things like cabin temp looking janky now instead of a realistic smooth turning motion. Hopefully they take care of this stuff shortly but none of it is a showstopper.

2 hours ago, sdirand said:

I don't know. No matter if FSL comes with an A330 and have a brief monopoly on that aircraft, I don't think we still live in a time in which you can sell a product at $149.99 and then ask $60 for each variant and then again $70 for sharklets. This time has come to an end.

PMDG has a monopoly on most Boeing aircraft and I don't think the 777 will cost as much as it cost on P3D.

Even on the A330, I don't think FSLabs would have a monopoly. Fenix might come with an A330 at some stage, maybe even before FSLabs.

About the A320, there is so much choice right now (Fenix, LatinVFR, FBW, and soon Inibuilds) that FsLabs would be fool to come with another A320 and even more with their former P3D prices. Most of us bought the Fenix now and only few of us would buy a FSLabs A320 now. It would have to come with specs never seen before in msfs for most of us to switch.

 

FSLabs really should have just pivoted to the A220, Instead they seem to just be sitting on their hands. I really think the A220 market is still very much up for grabs. That Inibuilds/synaptic partnership was good news but the synaptic team started work on the A22X back in 2021 and its now about to be May 2024 and we have yet to see a model. Everything has just been a rendering. That isn't serious in my opinion. Compared with the A380 from FBW they have footage of actual flight in sim. Unfortunately now that Inibuilds is a partner I feel FSLabs have lost the A220 market as well. Fenix has the A320 market on lock and I expect their A330 if announced would come along in quick succession and at a more reasonable price. I appreciate the devs that were pioneers in a way over the years but if you arent going to adapt/innovate you will get left in the dust. Flight Simulation is more popular than ever. In my opinion There really isnt anything left for FSLabs to capture. The PMDG 777 and A350 and likely the freeware A380 will be out already by the time FSlabs were to release an A330. I cant say alot of people would be interested in paying for another longhaul bird in their hanger unless you really love Airbus that much that you need 3 of them. But hey I guess FSlabs will have Concorde.

6 hours ago, edpatino said:

I've always thought that the IniBuilds guys put a lot of gigs in their products, and they're not optimized at all.

Time ago, I purchased their KSAT and it has always been a stutter fest. More recently, I downloaded their Skydive Dubai for free and when put together with the rest of Dubai, including not their OMDB version, but the Asobo's one, my graphics card, which I recognize is not the latest model available, looses the battle and crashes the sim, most probably due to VRAM memory reaching out its limits. 

The KSAT thing is kinda ridiculous. I almost couldn't believe it the first time I flew into it. Their forums dont show any indication FPS will be looked at either. Normally those smaller airports you can take to the bank at being a smooth experience flying into frame rate wise. Comparatively I had decent frames on KLAX before this update with payware KONT nearby so the fact that KSAT is a stutter fest with nothing around is very unfortunate. So far their KSAT and KJFK are the worst airports I own performance wise from any developer, Meanwhile I can fly into payware KORD and KMDW just a few miles down the road and its a smooth experience for me.

Maybe KSAT and KJFK need the SD - Standard Definition texture option in their iniManager. I see KLAX has it as does KDTW but I dont even need that option for those airports. I need it for KJFK and KSAT of all places. Regarding this new Update I felt there was a performance increase when I flew into it and am very happy with T3 being updated. 

Is orbx going to come out with FTXglobal Vector one day? /s 

Other than the slightly rough taxiways in a couple spots on the sloped runway side What is wrong with KFLL? I thought LVFR did a great job considering how hard that must have been. I worked there on the ramp as a Fueler for the G gates and F Gates and The airport looks correct to me. I cant really speak on TJSJ. Its fine to me as well but ive never been there to have a real opinion.

I know its still in beta but BATC looked really raw in the stream Easyjetsimpilot had the other day. However One thing that stuck out to me was how he kept saying the areas where vatsim has no coverage you can just fire up BATC. I cant recall any program Ive ever used that was that flexible. Over the years ive used Radar Contact, Pro ATC and I tried Pilot2ATC for MSFS. All of those programs needed you to start the controlling on the ground. It would be pretty cool if BATC is able to function without that requirement 

1 hour ago, Cyrex1984 said:

because in all players its just a mess of aircrafts everywhere, none is trying to follow any rules and are just spawning on the runways and flying low over airport etc.

are you sure you weren't at an uncontrolled field on vatsim? /s

1 hour ago, Bobsk8 said:

There are over 13,000 pilots flying with A Pilots life, so I would assume that 59 upvotes is a  tiny percentage that voted for this change. 

That's actually a huge number when you look at other suggestions. The fact is there aren't a lot of people that use discord. It's not like you can find other suggestions with 5000 upvotes. This change is actually in the top 3 of any suggestion in the server. There is only 2 other suggestions that have more upvotes. More XP for long hauls has 68 upvotes and adjusting the number of generated flights has 60 upvotes. 
 

Also it's a realistic change in the end. Everyone says APL is simulating the life of a pilot but the simulation drifts from reality as you become a senior captain. Also keep in mind nobody is suggesting to get rid of the random generated schedules but if the Schedule generator won't be improved on then at least reward the most dedicated high ranking pilots with something real pilots get to do.

6 hours ago, Alti said:

Requests to the developer can be entered on the Discord server. If enough fellow pilots upvote, such a request could be realized.

Someone already suggested it over 30 days ago with 59 upvotes. As usual most of the mods come off as against it which makes no sense at all. The only thing I will add to my last post is I do see an issue with being a senior captain at say AAL and changing jobs to work at UAL and picking your own schedule as a new pilot for UAL. That's not how it works in real life. Sure some airlines do hire direct entry captains but 99% of them will make you start as a first officer where obviously you wouldn't be picking your own schedule on your first day. 
 

either way hopefully this gets added in some shape or form other than "flight tickets"

On 3/30/2024 at 4:34 AM, Bobsk8 said:

The program is trying to simulate flying for a real airline pilot. I doubt if an Airline Pilot can tell the airline which airports he wants to fly to. 

Actually high Senior ranking Pilots do choose what routes they want to fly. A lot of airlines have a preferential bidding system (PBS) that pilots tell the system a ton of things they prefer or want to avoid. I won't bother going into all of them as it doesn't really matter to us virtual pilots but the short stick is the system will attempt to generate a schedule for you with your preferences as long as you can hold seniority wise what you entered into the bid. For example a new hire pilot asking for a long layover in Cancun can enter that preference but he/she most likely won't get anything close to that.

Senior pilots bids are alot less complicated. They don't need to enter generic requests like a long layover in Cancun. A senior pilot can simply look at every single trip in the bid package and just enter the exact rotation number/trip they want to fly. 
 

Which is why it never made sense to me why senior captain L1 or higher cannot pick their own routes. Aren't I a Senior Captain? It's a hobby and we are all here for fun so I'm not saying a seniority system is what we need but the compromise would be senior pilot levels being able to pick their own routes to build their schedule how they want. Now it can be up to the dev if that level needs to be L1 or L5 or L10 which I don't even think anyone is at right now but to say pilots have literally no choice as a senior captain on their flying is completely false. The ability is already there with the flight tickets. We just don't want to pay for the flights and instead get paid to work them as long as it's the airline we currently work for. In my opinion  Junior Pilots should be the ones paying for flight tickets. This change would at least give a perk to making senior captain as well as there really isn't any right now to be honest. 

For camera shaking during turbulence does this mean it's time to retire FS Realistic? 😅

paying for early access with "promised" features down the road. Seems the community will never learn it doesn't benefit the customer at all and only benefits the developer. There is no reason to release an unfinished product as others have said all it will do is lead to complaints about bugs and it being unfinished at some point with constant request of when it will be updated. Also What is the point of having ATC if it isnt controlling any traffic around you? NO MORE EARLY ACCESS! 

It feels like you are on an ice rink when trying to taxi and overall still flies like a toy compared to something like the Fenix. I actually really enjoy flying the FBW A32NX. I dont really enjoy the LVFR A21N even with the mod. but I will say the mod makes the purchase not a total loss. 

this was written by a staff member in the discord before Block 2 was released regarding wingflex:

"for what it's worth, we based it off of actual measured deflection under load, so the total amount of deflection is definitely on point. As mentioned before, the above mod simply takes a 'long way round' approach to changing this value in the flight_model.cfg
wingflex_scalar =0.75

higher value = more flexy, lower values = less flexy - much easier to tune to your own personal preference that way too 🙂
for whatever reason, the mod does this change in the model.xml instead by changing the scalar there.

changing the value of wingflex_scalar from 0.75 to 1.0 will have the same effect as the above mod, but with less chance of it breaking things"

For what its worth I am assuming Block 1 had a wingflex_scalar =0.75 and I checked Block 2 now has it at 1.0.  Regardless it seems you can adjust this value yourself and tune to your liking.

1 hour ago, MrBitstFlyer said:

Have you used SayIntentions?  As others have said, the beta is progressing quickly, but its already useable.  I like Vatsim (I used to be Satuk London Chief before it became Vatsim).  The big drawback of course are dead frequencies much of the time.

this doesnt even control AI traffic so im trying to figure out how "dead frequencies" on vatsim is a selling point. If I want to hear fake traffic calls I can tune live atc and play it in the background for FREE. having canned responses that dont care about what aircraft are actually doing nor vectoring me around said traffic isnt what I would pay anything for personally. Different strokes for different folks but Why would anyone pay 30 dollars a month for that especially if you mainly fly Airliners is beyond me. 

im so thankful for Vatsim. The only thing I can look forward to with all these programs is getting rid of those who fly online Silently and those who drive controllers nuts but not answering radio calls. Skies will be a little emptier but hopefully its less of those kinda pilots. All these progams look terrible to me so far but I am personally intrigued by BATC.