Bigbluss

Personally I'd rather they fix their CRJ's ability to follow a glideslope first. Spent £45 on this aircraft and they've released one minor patch in a month. Working Title and FBW have put their performance to shame, but I guess they have our money now. Not that you can ask this on the Aerosoft forums of course, or the zealots will attack.

Ah yes - 2020. My mistake

That's around the time the Working Title team came on board to handle avionics isn't it?

PMDG released statement saying that the SDK isn't holding them back, and it's just a matter of getting up to speed with new development tools. What's your source for this info regarding the SDK?

Same for me, this is really the only thing I fly at the moment. Considering branching into the WT CJ4 soon too.

I absolutely love this plane. So glad it's getting updates. Load it up heavy and fly it out on a warm day and it feels so weighty and tangible. Fantastic add-on.

Drama aside, this patch has been fantastic for me. Flying the SoCal area is far smoother now. Things are looking better and better from my perspective.

I've been using MSFS extensively for the past few months and I have to say, I'm confused about why people say this is a sightseeing sim only. Using the JustFlight Arrow 3 and Aerosoft CRJ addons, alongside the GNS530 mod, I've been able to complete the PilotEdge Cat-ratings, I-ratings and SkyHigh Charters. For those unacquainted, these are detailed and challenging tests that require internalising a huge amount of information pertaining to instrument (and VFR) flight, and putting it to use on their environment. These courses have required me to fly all sorts of situations, including but not limited to: Class D,C and B departures, arrivals and transitions VFR routes through busy/complex airspace (take a look at the VFR coastal routes around KLAX for an example. Impossible to fly without a capable suite of instruments) VOR/DME navigation. Visual navigation. ODP procedures out of non towered airports. ODP procedures out of towered airports. IFR without sids and stars, with radar vectors to the route. IFR on sids and stars, including ATC required leg activations and direct to routing. Vectored ILS approaches with or without HILT or PTs, RNAV approaches, localiser approaches, VOR B circling approaches, missed approaches with holds. Non vectored full approaches from a feeder point through the IAF IF and FAF, all of which you can discern via DME, radials, GPS or a timer. DME arc approaches using the GPS or radials and DME. Contacting ATIS for the weather and I've found it extremely accurate where I've been flying. As far as I can tell from people more knowledgeable, the Arrow and CRJ have realistic flight dynamics and systems. The point here isn't to list off as many acronyms as possible, but rather to show that there really isn't much in the way of instrument work that you can't achieve to a very high level in this sim. I know people enjoy the super high fidelity jets like PMDG (I'm one of them), but there's far more to instrument flying than turning on the autopilot in a 320 and watching it follow the magenta line down to minimums. There is an absolute wealth of learning and enjoyment to be had from flying the needles or GPS systems. I've found the beautifully dynamic and visceral environment, coupled with flying in poor weather whilst trying to perform an instrument scan and communicate with ATC, to be an immensely rewarding experience. Perhaps if one has mastered instrument flying and refuses to use anything but the most complex add-on airliners, there's an argument that this sim doesn't meet their IFR needs. That said, I feel like there's a contingent who believe that IFR == vnav and autopilot holds. This viewpoint is flawed imo. I bet they could benefit a bit from trying instrument flying by hand in this sim.

So like most tanks then?

Has anyone here tried Falcon BMS 4.35? The AI atc in that is fantastic. I've found it to be the closest experience I've had to PilotEdge. Such a great sim on so many levels.

Hello all, I was hoping somebody could help me. I've been flying the JustFlight Arrow for many hours now to complete all of the PilotEdge ratings. I've done a lot of research and understood many of these things myself, but I have one area of uncertainty. Using the GNS530 mod, what is the procedure to fly an rnav approach? The aircraft has no altitude/vnav autopilot so typically my approaches until now have been: 1: fly GPS to final waypoint prior to arrival airport 2: ATC provide vectors to intercept the localiser 3: handfly the ILS approach once the GS comes alive. This works because using the ILS I get glideslope indications and it's pretty simply to roughly workout my GS descent rate. How is this performed for an rnav approach with this aircraft? As far as I can see, no vertical guidance is given on my instruments. Is it simply a matter of looking at the chart and being at the correct altitudes for each waypoint? Many thanks in advance

Thanks for the updates guys. Actually I managed to get the VOR "working", I think I was simply out of range / light of sight, so that was my mistake. Also interesting to hear about what the autopilot is coupled to. My understanding was that hitting the CDI button switches between GPS navigation and VLOC. I've been using this to switch from my enroute journey on pilotedge (sometimes manually heading a heading bug with VOR if I need a specific radial. From what I can tell, I have all the autopilot capacity I need. What is missing from now knowing about the hidden click spot? Is it perhaps referring to the ability to follow a radial off of the nav 2 radio?

Hello there, I'm hoping somebody can help me. I've been trying to use the Arrow for VOR flights, and I've been following the manual's tutorial flight. I tune the correct VOR frequency, and the DMS responds, but the nav flag won't go from the HSI. I've tried varius VORs at various ranges and altitudes. The nav flag just stays and the instrument doesn't work. Have I missed something?

I didn't mean to say you had a lack of imagination by the way, I meant more generally :) It took me reading about these aircraft to think of these scenarios, I was previously on exactly the same page as you!

I think it makes complete sense that people would like to fly military jets in a civilian sim - if you cant see the interest in it, I think it's a potential lack of imagination. I've spent many hours just flying the Viggen, F-14, Mig-21 and F/A-18 in DCS. Many of them have wonderful, nuanced flight characteristics in their own right. For example the F-14 is a genuine joy to fly without weapons. If you're historically interested in these aircraft I can't think of many more exciting uses for MSFS. What's it like to fly an Mi8 over Chernobyl? What's it like to fly a 6 hour recon over Iraq in an F-15? What's it like to cross the Atlantic in an A-10a without autopilot at night with multiple air to air refueling trips (miserable as hell according to any books I've read that describe it). Remapping the experience of getting a Mirage to Red Flag with hops across the Atlantic, launching Mig23s across Russia towards the Baltic states.. Whatever their design purpose, they're all aircraft (which many of us share a passion for), and the ability to bring them into the environment in which they operated with MSFSs level of fidelity is very exciting for some of us. For example recently I took up the spitfire and recreated the flights from the book First Light. It's very difficult to do that in other simulators. The difference here is that MSFS really let's you see what the real pilots saw (albeit a modern representation). In reality, most military aviation involves nothing but pure flying and observation. MSFSs high fidelity world let's us take that to the next level.