Kristofski

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!

That's Microsoft's Law for you - when it all works perfectly, that's the best time for them to force a change you didn't need or ask for, through an update you can't control, or revert, which breaks things that worked fine previously. Had the Meta Quest Launcher do an update on the weekend, not even using it at the moment, and it somehow managed to switch my P2ATC sound output to the Quest Headset (which was off) so I couldn't hear any radio voices suddenly, randomly, for a good while until I figured it out. If it ain't broke, don't fix it - should be the standard for PC but seems to be the opposite!

Just the usual suspects - Do you have Chaseplane or any camera mods installed? Have you unplugged all other controllers, like an Xbox controller? I once had the Quest controllers bug out on me, even though I wasn't using VR at the time. I take the batteries out now, since they are always on to search for a connection and they were draining batteries for no reason anyway. Windows updates also mess up things - make sure there's nothing pending. I've had the VR fail to load when windows wasn't up to date. I don't remember exactly how, but there's an option to boot MSFS in safe mode, that might be something to try. Which HOTAS do you have? Are you mapping the controls into a profile in an app or launcher outside of MSFS? I have the Virpil ones and apart from the initial calibration, I dont run the hardware app, I use MSFS hardware settings, seems to work more consistently, in my case anyway. Would try updating the drivers for the hardware. Last step, I'd go through the MSFS control settings for the Camera controls and make sure nothing is double bound. It wont show you if you have a double bind across two peripherals (like a duplicate Keyboard and HOTAS assignment) so you need to check each peripheral one by one.

Spent a good hour trying to set up the AM radio mod in my first post only to discover that the ADF tuner in the H125 is just for show and doesn't actually work :( Unless I'm missing something Oh Well - I ended up just using free internet radio in a window on my second monitor. Looks interesting but is Payware, so I'll stick to the free solutions If only there was a mod to enable those music functions in the Garmin

Finally uninstalled my 2020 version over the weekend to make some space for new things. I find myself fully committed to 2024 now. While 2020 is a great product for Free Flight, I spend most of my time in Career Mode in 2024 - I really enjoy it, plenty of activities, plenty of variety as you grow your fleet and companies. I'm not in it for airliners and 2024 Career Mode seems to be very GA focused, Airliners are End Game stuff that takes a long long time to earn up to. Actually, for helicopter guys like myself, 2024 career mode, with SAR missions, is a blast!

FWIW I did solve this issue, leaving this here if it helps anyone else - Alt+N skip to takeoff bypasses the issue with having to fly over the fence to get to the helipad, and does not subtract from your rep or payout at the end. For the second issue, CYBD pads are just all named wrong. Helipad 0 is actually Helipad 3 at CYBD when the ATC calls out for Helipad 0, landing at Helipad 3 counts as the correct one. I've done a few more missions this weekend at CYBD, and it seems like you'll always be sent out of Helipad 1 and told to land at helipad 0 (which is really #3). Its extra confusing as the actual Helipad #3 when you check the world map (picture above) is Helipad 1 according to the ATC - when you skip with Alt+N you get taken to "Helipad 1" which is really Helipad 3 :(

Does this work in 2024? Doesnt look like it, according to the comments, but the last comment is a year old

Looking for some insight - anyone here using or have used any of the radio mods/addons that let you tune AM/FM/Internet radio stations on the COM freq in sim? The Garmin has the greyed out music button which I assume would normally play music from an SD card or something, but I've seen some mods like: https://flightsim.to/addon/110082/am-radio-streamer Where you can tune a radio station and have it play off the ADF freq in this case. I've been using a Youtube playlist in a separate window but I wanted to see if anyone had any recommendations. An in-sim music option would be nice. I don't like to use Sim rate or skips in the Helicopter missions so having a little background music for the cruising portions of the flights would be nice.

The latest update greatly improved the Career mode Rating system for Uncontrolled airstrips. Previously, you'd spawn on the runway if the strip had no taxi way and you'd immediately get dinged for entering a runway without the proper clearance (if towered) or without making the radio announcement (if untowered). Since the update, the untowered strips no longer penalize you for that, which is a huge bonus for me since I mainly do SAR career missions and am usually operating out of smaller places in the boonies. These smaller fields are now some of the best missions, and I can crush 100% S rank if I get a good search area. My new problem is now the controlled airstrips, which have helicopter landing pads. There's two issues - 1) Helipad 0 is often asked for when landing, but does not exist. I'm cleared to take off from a proper pad (I can even ALT+N skip to the pad so there's no confusion about the numbering), but then on the return, I keep getting cleared to Helipad 0 which doesn't exist, so no matter where I land, I get the Undesignated Landing penalty. 2) To make it worse, If you do not ALT+N skip to the helipad for takeoff, you will get a Radio Communications penalty for 'taking off without clearance' because you entered the pad from the hover taxi, and the game now counts that as taking off. If I'm using the Dolphin with wheels to drive to the pad, I can enter fine - If I use skids however (like the H125) I get dinged. To make it even more laughable, the helipads at CYBD where I'm encountering this problem regularly, are behind a fence, so you have to lift off and fly over the fence to reach the pad, to take off from the pad! (see below, Helipad 3, 2, and 1 are in that area in the bottom left) I cannot cancel landing intentions or ask for a runway to land at either - If the airport has a pad, they force you to land at the pad. Most of the time this isn't an issue - there's plenty of 'Helipads' with no marking in the middle of taxiways for example, but you can find them with the EFB by looking at the flight plan very closely. I wish there was a better way to ask for a different place to land. I have no issues whatsoever at places without helipads, which is a bummer. CYBD is actually a very well modelled place, very scenic area to do SAR missions around and was one of my main operating areas, until this update anyway. Also - I've noticed that now the towered airport asks me in my helicopter for an "Air Start Unit" on approach, and the Quick Reply says this is Clearance to Land, when I hit the reply button, my pilot character says "finished with air start unit" rather than acknowledge the landing clearance. Very weird, to be sure, probably a bug. You can see just how much of a hit this caused to my mission outcome - the difference between an A rank and an S rank: Mainly venting - I don't expect a solution, since Helicopters are way down on the priority list. It is a shame that this wasn't an issue before the latest update

Yeah agreed, I think this fog was a little tamer than it could have been given the mission wasn't considered "Bad Weather", there was no bonus for that. I have been caught in "Bad Weather" that had zero vis and was super disorienting; fortunately I was in the Dolphin at the time and the stability assists and autopilot kept me from pilot induced disorientation. After the mission, it occurred to me that this fog situation was the same thing that got Kobe killed, so I definitely should have aborted. Before accepting missions, I typically use the Free Cam to check out both the search area and the airstrip - but you generally have to turn off the cloud cover to see clearly, so I missed the fog!