Kristofski

Glad to hear the other pilot is taking responsibility Reminded me of this scene from Bob's Burgers https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MTLL_6A2fA0

Where I am in Canada/Toronto, many accidents are dealt with privately so as to not raise insurance premiums, most of us are paying some of the highest rates in the world already :( I'm guessing hitting another plane during taxi would raise his insurance through the roof, to the point where it might be better to just cover the repairs privately? I've not idea what insurance costs for planes however, but I assume its not cheap!

Were you in the plane at the time? It sounds like the other pilot hit you while you were parked, which is even more frustrating I'd imagine. I dont fly IRL, but I'm curious what insurance would do for you here, obviously the other party is at fault, but is this the sort of thing that just gets handled out of pocket? How bad was the damage?

For me, my favorite feature is Career mode not being a race to the end-game, but a slower, build your fleet kind of journey. I have about 15 planes/helos now across 5 or 6 companies, and just started my first Ag Spray company this weekend past. There's a lot of variety in the mission types and it really gives you something to DO other than just fly around and sightsee. Least Fav is related - there's no way to practice a mission in career mode without impacting your reputation. Employee missions shouldn't impact your rating as much as they do, since they are designed for you to try the mission mode before starting your own company for that type. I'd love a no-stakes option to practice. My first Ag Spray mission got an A with 70/100/100 on the performance criteria and that still dropped me all the way from high S rank to a middle A rank, in 1 shot :( Reminded me of my first hoist rescue. Though arguably, regaining that S rank is part of the appeal to keep at it.

Wanted to share with the AVSim users who might not be aware. If you're into helo flying at all, you absolutely should join the group flights that Matt Crawford hosts, every Saturday evening it seems. I've only done two so far, having missed the timing for the Octoberfest flight two weeks ago, but I managed to get the whole experience this past Saturday, where we flew from Stewart down the Hudson through New York, stopping by the ol' statue and LaGuardia before a sunset beach fly-over on the South Shore, ending at Brookhaven. About 30 pilots or so, plenty of new faces, the group seems to pick up a few new bodies every week. Discord is optional, you can join the flight just by showing up; there's some extras like a downloadable .pln file and some settings/instructions to help there, so worth checking out. As a resource for MSFS Helicopter news (new models, scenery, map and mission packs etc), the discord has been quite valuable. Note: to see others in the group, you'll need to set your servers to South-East Asia, since Matt is Australian. I had no lag or any issues with that, tuning in from US East. Here's some screens from the flight - link to the whole stream at the bottom; links to the discord are in the info there. Here's the whole stream:

I fly helo mostly these days, and agree that the Taog quality is higher - however, CS has variety; no one else has the updated avionics for the H225, H125, R66/R22, etc, as far as I am aware. My only hesitation on the CS helos is that they don't support career mode, where I want those updated avionics the most. It bugs me how good the stock H125 and R66 is, but I have to use the EFB to navigate due to the older avionics. On the R66 especially, the cyclic blocks the view of the whole screen!

+1 going to be hard to resist this bad boy Can it be used in Career Mode? Shout out to CYBD in the video, gorgeous place to fly, I do SAR missions out of there regularly

Amazon Prime Days has a couple on sale, the Saitek/Logitech button/switch panel seems like a good deal for 175 CAD. There's also a generic button box for racing sim that has rotary encoders, toggle and momentary switches etc, for around 150$ which seems like it has more options that the logitech, even if the labels are not for flight sim. Meza Mounts has a button box on sale as well, looks a bit more robust than the Saitek one, but is also more expensive. I do have the Logitech Yoke already, so I'm leaning in that direction. I also have the Gladiator Evo, and VIRPIL makes a button box as well, so I could go that route, and stay in that ecosystem. Anyone use a button box? What do you have and do you recommend it? I fly mainly Helicopter and GA planes, so having some dedicated switches for the start up and shut down makes for a more immersive time, currently using the 6 buttons on the Logitech Throttle Quad to act as my battery/gen/avionics/fuel pump etc.

Had another foggy adventure this past weekend; I was able to make it around the low fog, descending through an opening, then had to creep over to a very very tight landing area to make the rescue. Was so focused on the limited space that I forgot about the fog overhead during my full power take-off, and got the cloud penalty on my way up and out :( After all the effort to avoid it on the way in! Aside from the rep loss, another successful mission at least!

I was reading other reviews about this one, and I've played one of the previous Ace Combat entries, might have been 5 or 6 back in the day. The realism goes about as far as the map and the plane's appearance, but because its an arcade game first and foremost, the planes themselves only follow the rule of cool - ammo is weightless and you carry WAY more than you would normally be able to, for example. Going to wait for a few patches and probably a sale. Still have so much to do in MSFS anyway

Saw this post on Reddit today - some good pictures. Apparently the new Ace Combat 8 features Toronto as one of the set pieces for missions. https://www.reddit.com/r/toronto/comments/1wttb4o/in_the_eighth_and_latest_installment_of_the_video/ I wonder how much better the mapping is compared to MSFS. The screenshots seem to be a mostly pre-rendered buildings, no PG, but they definitely started with the google maps data. Missing some of the towers north of the downtown core (Yonge and Bloor area). The Water looks fantastic, would need to try the game to see about the weather. I suspect due to the arcade nature of the game, most of the time you'll be VFR lol. Some buildings appear to be somewhat destructible as well. I haven't looked into this game at all yet, but feel somewhat obligated to now:

I run two extensions on every browser I use, mostly Chrome but I'm switching over to Firefox on older PCs and Laptops for the performance boost: Adblockplus Ublock - or Ublock Origin if you can still get it, unsure Never paid for either, although both offer a paid version, the free version of each works well enough, provided you run both at the same time. Haven't seen an ad on Youtube or banner/sidebar ads or pop-ups in a while. Even with the recent Youtube changes to try and circumvent adblockers, both of these work. Mobile is another beast, but on desktop, these are my go-to. I dont have any issues with Flightsim.to

Its a setting under accessibility - Screen Reader, or something to that affect. If that's turned off in MSFS, it may be turned on in Windows settings (also under accessibility options). There is a windows shortcuts that turns it on as well, you may have it double bound by accident; here's the google list of shortcuts to rule out: To quickly turn the built-in Windows screen reader (Microsoft Narrator) on or off, press the Windows logo key + Ctrl + Enter. [1] Basic Narrator Shortcuts Turn Narrator on or off: Windows logo key + Ctrl + Enter Stop reading: Control Start continuous reading: Caps Lock + Spacebar (to enter scan mode), then Down Arrow or Caps Lock + Plus sign Read next/previous item: Caps Lock + Right/Left Arrow Exit Narrator: Caps Lock + Esc [1, 2, 3]

No weather addons for me, the default live weather is plenty impressive in free flight. I do most of my flying in Career Mode however, so weather for me is whatever the mission calls for - often that means calm or light winds and clear skies, daytime missions. But not always! This past weekend there was some crazy wind and MVFR in the Death Valley area where I was doing some SAR rescues, just to keep me on my toes

Unsure what caused it, but this area in London was one of the worst PG offenders for me. Reminded me of the movie Inception lol But most places are fine!