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Enjoyment or Frustration?


glenmornan

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I'd better start off by saying that I only really dabble in flight simulation, and have done so on and off for many years. From time to time I leave it alone, sometimes for years at a time, and recently I've decided to "fly" again. I am 64 years of age and the only experience I've had of real world aviation was during my time in the UK Royal Navy, when I was an electrical mechanic on helicopters. Flying as a passenger was a part of the job as a sort of "quality control". If you had just spent several hours changing an autopilot component or warning system you would often be "invited" on a test flight. I suppose that's where I got the inclination to take up flight simming, as there is nothing more satisfying than looking down on the world from a few thousand feet up. I also did a spell working on the flightdeck of an aircraft carrier, so the marine aspect of flying is also of interest to me. 

 

Having "flown" the PSS offering of the Airbus 319/320 for some years previously, I thought I had most of the bases covered, until I bought the current Airbus packages from Aerosoft.  The difference between this offering and the old PSS software I used years ago is like night and day. 

 

Whilst I appreciate the flight sim fraternity comprises many different people with differing aims, people like me just want to get into the air in the shortest possible time. I've had no real problems with the new look Airbus, until I had recent issues with glide slope captivation. Basically, we have become all sophisticated of late and it seems that successful autolands can be a bit of a lottery. As a lot of my flights feature small Mediterranean islands and places like The Faroes and Iceland, autolands aren't a big thing, but it's nice to be able to do them just the same. I was having trouble capturing the glideslope for the  ILS30  runway at Vagar in the Faroes. I found the answer in a Faroese video that shows the sim pilot entering all the details in the RAD NAV page of the FMGC, and his autoland takes place flawlessly. Very real and impressive looking, except for the fact that Vagar ILS 30 only offers Cat 1 landings.

 

I appreciate that there may be technical difficulties involved, but I would respectively suggest there may be a case for introducing a "learn as you go" approach to coping with new aircraft. This could possibly be achieved by disabling certain features that would require a certain amount of "practical" experience to acquire. The usual ticking of boxes to disable or enable features would suffice, and I'm sure I've owned aircraft in the old days which had a similar facility.  There is obviously a case for "light" variations for those who are a bit deficient in the technical aspects of navigation and flight management, but the hobby media ruthlessly condemns these relatively expensive investments as being "inferior", and nobody wants to buy inferior. However, I used to regularly "fly" an old "Bronze age" Dash 8 and got a lot of pleasure out of it. I therefore bought the latest offering by Majestic Software. It has now been majestically mothballed while I summon up the energy to get to grips with everything you need to do just to start the engines successfully. I see they are offering a "First Officer" package at a substantially more expensive price than the original software, which offers to make the task of flying one more possible for the solo pilot. Yes solo pilot. Flight simming airliners requires us to imagine that we have a colleague sitting beside us. If you reckon there actually is somebody sitting beside you then you may need medical help. 

 

The developers have obviously taken advantage of recent technology and have put a lot of time and trouble into trying to make everything as real as possible, and whilst that may well be what young simmers who are aspiring to be professional pilots are looking for, the rest of us are left in a difficult position as to whether it would be better to spend a fortune on improved scenery and just customise a default Cessna to make our mark as simmers. Airliners are a bit of a challenge, but Aerosoft's latest  Airbus is one of the easiest to assimilate for "dabblers" like myself. If only there was a facility to learn a little bit at a time. I wouldn't even bother with PMDG, as months of learning still wouldn't qualify you to do anything other than fly your little animated model in the sim. Tutorial flights are great, but there is often a lot going on, and it is easy to miss something vital, even in a succession of attempts. 

 

Maybe it's just the case that flight simming is something you should either swallow whole or leave well alone. It's great to be able to do what "real" pilots do, but the only way you can manage that is to be up there with them watching and learning. For most of us that will not be an option, and the computer is our limit. Don't even mention other sims. In another life I was a bus driver for 12 years and I tried the OMSI bus simulator. Now that is about as real as igloos in the Sahara, and if you have a lower spec PC you might need to practice landing your bus on the roof of Spandau town hall! 

 

Despite the rant I'll probably be back at Vagar today persevering with that glideslope. If I ever take flight simming seriously I'll maybe upgrade from my Xbox 360 USB controller. Don't laugh, it's as good as most other cheap joysticks I've had, once you learn how to be delicate with it. I've only crashed a handful of times and real pilots have 9 lives, haven't they? I don't really know. 

 

The point I'm trying to make is you can make it as easy or as difficult as you like, but it will never be the real world. However, we can have great fun pretending. If you really want to pretend better than anybody else a Swiss firm sells an Airbus A320 sim for only $500, with a follow up annual subscription to keep the nav data and aircraft mods up to date.  If I was young and keen I might just consider it, but would be worried my Xbox controller might not handle it all.  

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Hi,

 

regarding your suggestion to start off by disabling many features:
Did you try to use our virtual copilot as it is used in the Step by Step guide?

 

He takes away most of your work and really leaves you pretty much with the basics like programming the FMGS and Autopilot (which is explained in detail in the tutorial, just in case you didn't see it yet).

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Thanks Emanuel,

 

I'm not having many real problems with the latest Aerosoft Airbus. It has much in common with other older Airbus aircraft I have tried, and the virtual co-pilot feature is certainly helpful. Most of the time I end up simming at the kitchen table with the sound switched off, and I know that's not really going to get the best out of the sim. Overall, I'm very impressed with the latest Airbus, and have learned more about the real ones in the last few weeks than I ever did before. I do enjoy learning technical details about aircraft, but my main interest is in the geographical aspect of the sim, especially on those final approaches into exotic or scenic places. I obviously have a lot of reading to do on modern navigation techniques. It wasn't unusual for us to navigate in the old Westland Wessex helicopters by opening the cabin door and reading the chart like you would do with a land survey map! Tall buildings, electricity pylons, rivers, and major trunk roads were the bread and butter of old fashioned helicopter navigation. 

 

Landing in the Wessex could be tricky. You knew you were eventually going to land one way or another, and if the pilot was unsure how far the landing spot was underneath him, the aircrewman just leaned out of the cabin door and guesstimated how many feet he still had to go to touchdown via the intercom! They told us it was safe as every system had a backup. However, it only had one gearbox, and if that went then you landed very quickly indeed. 

 

I'll get those earplugs in and have a listen to my co-pilot. The Airbus is probably the easiest airliner for people like me to "fly", but its very straightforward approach to things can lead to complacency. I learned how to cope with Alpha Floor and Toga Lock from a RW Airbus pilot, and in fact I learned a whole lot more from him, including the bit about managed speed on approach being dreadfully close to creating Alpha Floor condition in some cases. For what it's worth, I think you guys at Aerosoft have done a better job with the Airbus cockpit than the Swiss company I mentioned. 

 

 

 

 

 

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2 hours ago, glenmornan said:

I'd better start off by saying that I only really dabble in flight simulation, and have done so on and off for many years. From time to time I leave it alone, sometimes for years at a time, and recently I've decided to "fly" again.

 

Whilst I appreciate the flight sim fraternity comprises many different people with differing aims, people like me just want to get into the air in the shortest possible time.

 

I appreciate that there may be technical difficulties involved, but I would respectively suggest there may be a case for introducing a "learn as you go" approach to coping with new aircraft. This could possibly be achieved by disabling certain features that would require a certain amount of "practical" experience to acquire.

 

Maybe it's just the case that flight simming is something you should either swallow whole or leave well alone. It's great to be able to do what "real" pilots do, but the only way you can manage that is to be up there with them watching and learning. For most of us that will not be an option, and the computer is our limit. Don't even mention other sims. In another life I was a bus driver for 12 years and I tried the OMSI bus simulator. Now that is about as real as igloos in the Sahara, and if you have a lower spec PC you might need to practice landing your bus on the roof of Spandau town hall! 

 

 

Though I don't share your sentiments, I do understand them and you're not alone in how you feel.  I was recently shocked (I mean REALLY dumbfounded) when a member of other Beta Team I'm on explained that he hated the PMDG 737NGX because all he wanted to do was take off, turn on the autopilot and walk away until it was time to land.  Though he'd purchased the 737NGX< he kept going back to the Default 737 in FSX to fly as he had a free software control panel that made that aircraft even easier to fly than it already is.

 

While my first inclination was to try and figure out what someone like my friend above even got out of flight simulation the way he sort of flies, I also believe that flight sim is many things to many people and as long as someone is enjoying it then who am I to tell them how to fly!

 

There are of course different level products for different flight simmers.  There is a toned down Default Airbus in FSX which flies very much like the say you've asked for, and one uses the GPS rather than and FMS/MCDU for flight plans.

 

I'll join Emanuel is saying that the Aerosoft Airbus Copilot is one of the best features of the aircraft, handling a great many of the functions for someone.  The Airbus also has something that few aircraft have, Connected Flight Deck (Shared Cockpit) where an experienced Airbus Pilot can fly with you in the same aircraft and show you the ropes!  The learning curve in Shared Cockpit is about 1/10th of what it is from just reading.

 

My group used to teach a General Aviation to Airliner conversation course in which I've probably taught 60 or 70 people over the years.  About 70% to 90% of the people who completed this free course were up and flying on their own in a 737 after the third session (the course had three, three hour sessions).  Sadly, I lost all the files due to a zipped folder that became corrupted, and to be honest I don't have the time any longer to really teach the course - though doing something like that is what provides me with the most enjoyment in flight sim!

 

Best wishes.

 

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Thanks for that Dave,

 

I suppose there are a lot of us attracted to flight simulation by what we perceive as  the "arcade" element of it, just like the guy who only wants to take off and land. I should have said that I'm not really a stranger to the more advanced elements of flight simming, having used Level D 767 and suchlike in the past. One of the reasons I put it to bed for a while was the laptop I once had just wasn't up to the task, and decided I wasn't "into" flight sims enough to justify a laptop upgrade. Now, I know a laptop is far from ideal for flight simming, but I discovered the current one I have with a mediocre dedicated graphics card is well up to the task of running all the fancy add-ons to FSX.  

 

A while ago I bought the PMDG 777 and was surprised that the software included an in-house time compression feature linked to the FMC. It did a fantastic job until I was asked to do a step climb from FL380 to FL400 while the sim was running at x8 speed. I stupidly attempted the step climb at x8 speed and surprise surprise it never worked. However, the FMC flipped out of "CRZ", and I was unable to use the FMC to speed the sim back up again, as you need to be in cruise mode for it to work. No problem, I'll just use the default FSX version to run at x8. Then, when I was about 30 miles away from landing at Dubai the sim starts alternating between x4 and x8 before the 180 degree final approach turn, and the flight plan is trashed. I managed to perform the turn using heading mode, then switched off the autopilot and somehow managed to hand fly it into Dubai without breaking anything. The toilets would probably have been full on a real one all the way down despite the seat belt signs were on! Now, that sim actually explains how things work as you go in the tutorial, and I remembered enough from my Level D and Captain Sim days how to wrestle with a big Boeing that's not behaving the way you want it to. If I can ever pluck up the courage to try out the time compression feature again I'll have another go at it. However, at the end of the day it is a case of:- Set it all up, get it airborne, put the time compression into place, do all the fancy bits regarding the ETOPS rules, press all the right buttons to effect the descent, and after maybe 10 hours of "flying" be there to make sure it does what you have told it to. I know some people do get immense satisfaction from that, although I am definitely one of those who prefers to try those "dangerous approach" type scenarios, just for the hell of it.

 

Now believe it or not, I found that 777 "disaster" to be fun, despite the fact that it would be as far removed from the real world as it is possible to get. I'm actually starting to get back into it again, and also use a Kodiak bush plane when I'm feeling like nudging tree branches and slicing off the tops of mountains. Airliners are definitely the more serious side of the hobby, and you can learn a lot from You Tube videos these days. I actually "flew" Airbus 319/320 as a BA Virtual pilot about 20 years ago, but got tired of endless flights on the Glasgow/Manchester/London route. I gave up after a few months of family grief over the time I was putting into it, and still never really learned much about the more technical aspects of FMGC programming during that time. They put a tracking device in your system to make sure you were actually completing the flights you signed up for. I had more fun on A320s withThomas Cook (Belgium) VA, and the A330 with Cathay Pacific, although a lot of the default FS 2004 Asian scenery was pretty dire.  

 

I haven't got round to doing a flight with the Airbus co-pilot yet, and if I can stop our two kittens from destroying all my earphones I'll certainly give it a go. Their favourite trick is to jump onto the laptop keyboard, grab the earphone cable in their mouths, then leap off the table with it, yanking the plug out of the side of the laptop. They are coming up for 11 months and I've only lost two cables in the last month, so things are looking up.

 

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On 9/24/2017 at 3:01 PM, glenmornan said:

 

I haven't got round to doing a flight with the Airbus co-pilot yet, and if I can stop our two kittens from destroying all my earphones I'll certainly give it a go. Their favourite trick is to jump onto the laptop keyboard, grab the earphone cable in their mouths, then leap off the table with it, yanking the plug out of the side of the laptop. They are coming up for 11 months and I've only lost two cables in the last month, so things are looking up.

 

 

 

Haha, man I am glad I never had cats like that. Caused plenty of OTHER problems but never absconded with computer peripherals.

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