Microsoft Flight Sim 2020

[Bremspropeller]

Zach "travelling lite"...

 

Spoiler

 

[ZachariasX]

[Sgt_Joch]

On 12/4/2020 at 2:23 PM, unlikely_spider said:

But no damage model on the ground objects or buildings!

 

As I recall, the damage model and effects were removed right after september 11th when it turned out some of the hijackers had used MFS to train on.

 

I am guessing Microsoft does not want to revisit that decision.

[Lusekofte]

4 hours ago, Sgt_Joch said:

 

As I recall, the damage model and effects were removed right after september 11th when it turned out some of the hijackers had used MFS to train on.

 

I am guessing Microsoft does not want to revisit that decision.

None of the MS fS I had ever had damagemodel

[Sgt_Joch]

They removed all AC crash animations in a patch in 2001 and from all future editions.

Edited December 8, 2020 by Sgt_Joch

[ZachariasX]

Never saw any crash animation in any MS flight sim, back from 1982. Can you show an example?

[ZachariasX]

Some more flying. From the Isla Margarita to Bogotá. As will have to cross the Andes for that, I will not travel as light as @Bremspropeller suggested. I will have to fly high and regardless of how hot he alleges my beachwear to be, I'd need something warm.

 

I must admit, I never cared for longer-range flights in any sim. I picked up on that flying the A2A B377 and the Connie in conjunction with FS Global Real Weather in both FSX and P3D. Flying high keeps the well ORBX'ed scenery tolerable. Yet I often experienced stability issues with the game. You fly for 3 hours and then it gets stuck. Or you save your flight in the middle of it to proceed another day and it won't open the save game. Bummer. Then again, in FSX and P3D i CAN save a flight and continue later on. I even have a "hard" pause that allows me to interrupt a flight without the aircraft crashing while paused such as can happen if you leave "active pause" on for a longer time.

 

Anyway, I could rant forever about the imperfections of MSFS' current gameplay, yet always when I see what they achieved by cleaning all this terrain data, turning it into a consistent 3D world that adjusts according to seasons. I like aircraft as the Baron because it is a useful aircraft to fly low and have a good look at the scenery. It also is an aircraft that is very much affected by the weather. You have to fly low and are usually in the thick of it. Flying it no challenge anyway, but getting places can be a challenge if mountains and weather are against you. In a King Air, you can always fly above the weather. It is no challenge. But the lower and slower your crate, the harder it gets.

 

For me, MSFS is indeed a combat sim. You're fighting the worst of all enemies, the weather.

 

This time from the Carribean to the Andes.

 

 

Taking off direction west, with El Yaque beach to the right and the capital city Porlamar at the foot of the hills. Nice weather. I am crossing via La Tortuga Island, then heading for Caracas.

 

 

Ugh... the mountains on that coast are almost up to 10'000 ft. And I get a cloud layer on top of that? I guess warm clothes are useful.

 

 

I'm crossing the ridge at 8'500 ft. I can cross the Alps at that altitude! Ahead, under the clouds, Caracas.

 

 

I decide to risk it and go lower, at 6000 ft get below the clouds. I always thought this city is oddly situated.

 

 

It is not that there wouldn't be open space. Farther west, just passing lake Valencia, there is a lot of open area.

 

 

But now, cloud levels are dropping considerably and I fly lower in direction south west to Guanare. Not exactly badlands, but deserted nonetheless.

 

 

Passing the city of Tinaco, agriculture starts. Take the Midwest and give it rain forest weather, then you have it. I'm down at 2'000 ft. At least the winds are relatively calm. What is interessing is that this whole area most certainly was never double checked after the mighty "cloud AI" had it's way with all the textures, normalizing colors, canceling out shadows and clouds. It is remarkable how well it worked. There are very few texture errors or coloring errors or roads not matching textures. There are still the occasional clouds in the textures as you can see above, just in front of the aircraft.

 

By now, I also disabled REX Weather Force. If you are not near an airfield, then you get blue skies. Instead of just taking METAR reports and making something from them, they should make a tool to merge these reports with the weather engine provided with the sim. But on it's own... I'd say it has only a very specific use case. All the weather on the screenies is live weather by MSFS.

 

 

After crossing the Andes in a thick layer of clouds, I arrive north at Cucuta, far north of lake Maracaibo where Sierra de Perija and the Cordillera de Merida (in the back) join the Sierra Nevada del Cocuy. I had to climb at 16'000 ft to be remotely safe. I say remortely, as I was passing the Píco Bolivar, with 16'332 ft the highest mountain in Venezuela.

 

 

En route to Bogotá. When doing VFR flight in the Andes, you have to find a slot where you can do so.

 

 

Finally, El Dorado International Airport. The weather also cleared up. There was plenty of other player activity, the controller sent me to a go-around as some would do approaches as you'd approach a tank flying a Stuka. But those high altitude airports are certainly popular for goofing around.

 

From here, back north. I dread the Aleutian Islands already.

[DBFlyguy]

Geez...what a beautiful sim.....

 

 

[CUJO_1970]

That video was truly spectacular.

[dburne]

Yeah an amazing video for sure!

[Lusekofte]

Boy, that man can set the mood

[ZachariasX]

Another leg on my journey in this wonderful world. from Bogotá in the Andes to Panama.

 

 

Departing froom El Dorado airport, the weather fit the name. On route to Medellín, that changed rapidly in lieu of the usual thunderstorms. At least, 12'000 ft was high enough to fly above all that, as flying below clouds in the Andes is hard on the nerves. Bogotá is situated on a huge plateau, at about 8'000 ft altitude. Then you cross a huge valley and get above another huge plateau, almost as high. Medellín is placed rather awkwardly, on that plateau but in a valley that is almost a bowl, 1'500 ft below the ridges encompassing it. I couldn't see much of it however, besides some glimpses through the clouds.

 

 

Arriving over Panama, I got bored looking at clouds and figured, that now there must be low lands and I could fly below the clouds. It basically changed uniform grey for unifrm green, just jungle. Even in Google Earth, there is not much to discriminate. I venture on, arriving near Lake Bayano. It is therse areas where this flight sim looks MUCH better than Google Earth. The AI did a grad job making something from a bland template.

 

 

Here, doing VFR is restricted to a very narrow slot.

 

Mountains generally are problematic, as they force you to fly very high for safe passage. Without turbo and pressurized cockpit, that can be a problem. Then you think you'd fly low and below the couds near the sea, because you can... weather often is such that you have to fly the same height as if you had to cross the hump. The clouds would go down almost as far as sea level. I never took the Baron higher than over arctic Canada. No mountains there. But some frozen regards from Mordor.

 

 

  Arriving at Colón. If you ever go there and someone recommends the "Zona Libre" to you for shopping, just don't. Really. I mean it. Don't.

 

 

Down the canal (currently the Gatún Locks as well as the other Locks leave much to be desired in this sim) to Panama.

 

 

You have to be very far for it to look nice.

 

 

On left hand dwonwind, the runway 01 at the end of the bridge, between the hills. At least here, the weather does not play tiks. Just hot and humid as usual.

 

 

I barely came to a standstill, then a black A-Team van drove by and parked right behind me. "¿Dónde está la maleta, c*ño?" All there...

 

Next leg further north, probably Guatemala City.

 

[jollyjack]

The North pole Route was not a success for me .... Happy Xdays BTW

 

Edited December 13, 2020 by jollyjack

[jollyjack]

Something's a little weird here ...

 

[AndyJWest]

Today's leg on my round-the-world trip took me across the strait of Malacca to Sumatra. I wasn't quite sure how far I was going to go, depending on the weather. Kualanamu International airport (below) was one option, but the cloud cover wasn't too bad, and I could see something in the distance I wanted a good look at. Best to go on while the going's good...

 

Predictably, it's another volcano. Mount Sinabung. Very active, with a 500 m ash plume and avalanches down the flanks being reported only a few days ago - there is currently a 3-5 km exclusion zone around it. None of that in MSFS, sadly, and I can't help thinking that the tree cover at the top is rather overdone, considering the conditions.

30 km or so to the southeast of Sinabung is Lake Toba. 100 km long, 30 km wide, with steep cliffs to the sides, and a big domed island in the middle. If you can't figure out what this is, you haven't been paying attention. Yup, it's the collapsed caldera of a supervolcano. Blew its top around 74,000 years ago, throwing up 800 km^3 of ash, and spewing out 2,000 km^3 or more as lava. The consequences of the eruption have been the subject of some debate, with some studies claiming a global drop in temperature of 3° C or more for several years, and possibly even a bottleneck in the human population, though later studies seem not to confirm this. There have been minor eruptions since, and even now there are signs of ominous things going on below. Though this is Sumatra, and things going on below - plate tectonics -  are evident everywhere. Sumatra, along with Java, Bali, and the scatter of islands further east are the visible evidence for a subduction zone as the Indo-Australian Plate forces its way under the Eurasian Plate. Sumatra has an obvious fault line running its entire length, while Java is basically just a string of volcanoes.

 

I decided to land at Silangit airport, which lies on the plateau ahead. 4,700 ft up, which put it above some of the lower clouds, but I got in o.k.

 

 

[Hoots]

@AndyJWest, these trips and the details you add are wonderful. Thanks very much for doing them. 

Edited December 14, 2020 by Hoots
Remembered to add Andy’s username.

[Lusekofte]

Yes these round the world reports from Andy and Zac are medicine  in my non flying period.  almost ready for little flying myself

[Hoots]

1 hour ago, 216th_LuseKofte said:

Yes these round the world reports from Andy and Zac are medicine  in my non flying period.  almost ready for little flying myself

 

I forgot @ZachariasX! Sorry Zac! Between the two of you it's a fascinating time

[AndyJWest]

Thanks guys. Writing things up occasionally helps to keep me motivated - it encourages me to do a bit of research on where I am, and what's going on underneath me. Bimbling along at 8,000 ft and 125 kts I get plenty of time to Google it all on my second monitor while I can still see it, and take screenshots of the more interesting stuff. If other people like reading about it, that's a bonus. 

 

Today I was planning to fly another 200 nm or so down Sumatra, along the fault line I mentioned earlier. Checking the weather though (via Windy.com - recommended) I may have a bit of an issue. I'm flying with 'live weather', but currently having to adjust the time of day by about 12 hours, since otherwise I'd be flying in the dark. Which means that I get live 'night time' weather - adjusting the time of day in MSFS just moves the sun around. Flying in night weather isn't much of an issue in most places (it'll be a few degrees cooler I suppose, and often less windy) but where I am right now, there seems to be an established pattern of cloud build up over the high ground at night, burning off during the day. The satellite image on Windy.com shows a hefty lump of solid cloud cover right over Silangit  where I landed yesterday. And Silangit is at 4,700 ft so the airport is probably in the clouds rather than below them. I'll load up MSFS to check, but it may well be that I will have to wait until the real-time cloud burns off in 10 hours or so. 

 

This night-time-weather issue is likely to continue, from what I can figure out. The same thing seems to happen over most of the high ground as far east as New Guinea. I may have to reschedule myself a bit for a few weeks so I'm flying while the live weather on the other side of the planet is more accommodating. I could cheat of course, and turn off the live weather, but then I'd miss part of the learning process that seems to go with making a trip like this. It's the global weather patterns (along with the ground shifting around, and the volcanoes heaving rocks all over the place) that make the planet what it is. That and us feeble humans, scratching grid-pattern road and field layouts all over it, to try and kid ourselves that we are in charge. We aren't. 

 

Edit: Got lucky with the cloud: ?

 

I think that MSFS may have put the cloud cover a bit low - some of it underground. Anyway, I'm up, and heading southeast. I'll be landing near the coast, so hopefully won't have the same issue.

 

Edited December 14, 2020 by AndyJWest

[CUJO_1970]

If anyone can comment on their system specs, observations or hardware recommendations in regard to MFS 2020 I’d love to hear about it.

[Lusekofte]

9 minutes ago, CUJO_1970 said:

If anyone can comment on their system specs, observations or hardware recommendations in regard to MFS 2020 I’d love to hear about it.

You see my rig on signature and I run FS smooth and dandy with pretty high settings on a 1090 screen. That means a little over 30 close to 40 fps low over cities. And it do not stutter. 

I sold my Honeycomb yoke. Teared down my pot and rebuild it. I now got my 6  Saitek FIP's working.  But my trackir gone missing. So no go 

Just yet for me 

Andy, I read all yours and Zac's stuff. It is like a youtube video to surrogate lack of flighttime

 

 

 

 

[ZachariasX]

39 minutes ago, CUJO_1970 said:

If anyone can comment on their system specs, observations or hardware recommendations in regard to MFS 2020 I’d love to hear about it.

A ~4.2 GHz 6 core (better 8), 16 GB RAM, 8 GB VRAM GPU and you get playable ~30 FPS in 1440p on average in ultra settings. Higher res means faster GPU required, flying between photoscenery skyscarapers ask for faster CPU.

 

Oh, I forgot, get a dedicated 500 GB SSD for it. (If you do not have that space free.)

 

But I must say, it is surprisingly easy on hardware requirements. If your rig does IL2 nicely, FS20 will surely look grand at an acceptable half FPS.

[Lusekofte]

Ok found my trackir. Tested some flights Saitek instruments and gps map on 2nd screen works I am ready to go

[DD_fruitbat]

Lets play guess the city.....

 

Under the cloud of course,

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[AndyJWest]

A couple more screenshots from today's leg. Low cloud in the valleys, but at 10,000 ft I was well above most of it, and could see a way down towards the coast where the cloud was clearing. Always have an exit plan...

 

Mount Ophir/Gunung Ledang. Known since ancient times as a rich source of gold.

A Malay poem on Gunung Ledang. It seems to have been the residence of a mythical princess, who broke the heart of the Sultan of Malacca by making a series of impossible demands in response to a marriage proposal. Started off asking for a golden bridge across the strait, and ended by asking for a bowl of the Sultan's son's blood. Evidently, just saying 'no' to a Sultan wasn't the done thing... 

 

Berapa tinggi pucuk pinang
Tinggi lagi asap api
Berapa tinggi Gunung Ledang
Tinggi lagi harapan hati.

 

However high is the trunk of the betel-nut tree,
Higher is the smoke of fire.
However high is Mount Ophir,
Higher are the hopes of the heart.

 

Danau Maninjau, a spectacular caldera lake. More volcanoes in the background. The cloud is thinning ahead, and I find a way down to my destination without any trouble.

 

More poetry, this time by  Sukarno, the first president of Indonesia.

 

Jangan dimakan arai pinang,
Kalau tidak dengan sirih hijau.
Jangan datang ke Ranah Minang,
Kalau tidak singgah ke Maninjau.

 

Do not eat arai nut,
If not with a green betel.
Do not come to Minang lands,
If you do not stop at Maninjau.

Geology, meteorology, and Indonesian poetry, all in a single flight...

[dbzero]

This is something I would like to see in FS2020

 

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9050845/Could-CIRCULAR-runways-Aerospace-tests-circle-designs-increase-capacity.html

[AndyJWest]

Just now, dbzero said:

This is something I would like to see in FS2020

 

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9050845/Could-CIRCULAR-runways-Aerospace-tests-circle-designs-increase-capacity.html

 

Not until it becomes a thing in reality. Which it almost certainly won't. Too many issues, for too little benefit.

[CUJO_1970]

4 hours ago, ZachariasX said:

Oh, I forgot, get a dedicated 500 GB SSD for it. (If you do not have that space free.)

 

Thank you - no problem on the drive, I am building a rig with this sim primarily in mind.

 

It's a variation of @CanadaOne recent build, similar to his machine with a few variations.

[ZachariasX]

4 hours ago, CUJO_1970 said:

I am building a rig with this sim primarily in mind.

The AMD 5800X is probably the sweetspot for „just the sim as it currently is“, considering cost and FPS. Alternatively, the 10900 in some variation will give you (for practical purposes) equal performance.

 

Personally, on a new build, I would opt for higher core count, as over time there is no doubt ASOBO will continue to unload the main thread and more cores will become handy. As of now, I like a high core count, as it allows you to Alt-Tab from the game and do whatever, while the sim runs stutter free as your background wallpaper. And you are often tempted to switch to the browser looking up stuff you see moving by your windows.

 

On the GPU side, scales pretty linear with theoretical performance of the card as far as the number of pixels to be pushed. Take the 1080 as your 30 FPS baseline and you’ll have good guesses for „ultra“. (The other settings look nice and give you twice the FPS, but only „ultra“ is „ultra“, right?) And you want 8 GB VRAM at least. I usually see up to 7 GB allocated and up to ~5 GB used.

 

32 GB RAM should do it. I‘ve never seen much more than 20 GB allocated.

[scram77]

10 hours ago, DD_fruitbat said:

Lets play guess the city.....

 

Under the cloud of course,

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What plane is this?

 

Thanks

[Hoots]

10 minutes ago, TP_Scram said:

What plane is this?

 

Thanks

This one...

https://orbxdirect.com/product/indiafoxtecho-mb339-msfs

 

It's a nice one.

[scram77]

37 minutes ago, Hoots said:

This one...

https://orbxdirect.com/product/indiafoxtecho-mb339-msfs

 

It's a nice one.

Looks great - and seems to fly very well on your videos.

 

Is it easy enough to install?

 

[DD_fruitbat]

Yes, was pretty straightforward,  using there installer.

[Bremspropeller]

11 hours ago, DD_fruitbat said:

Lets play guess the city.....

 

San Francisco

Florence

Valetta

Miami

 

Amirite?

Edited December 15, 2020 by Bremspropeller

[Uufflakke]

12 hours ago, DD_fruitbat said:

Lets play guess the city.....

 

 

San Francisco

Florence

Sydney

Miami ( I only know ii is Miami because it was mentioned on the radio chat. )

[DD_fruitbat]

11 minutes ago, Uufflakke said:

 

San Francisco

Florence

Sydney

Miami ( I only know ii is Miami because it was mentioned on the radio chat. )

 

We have a winner!

 

Will have to work out how to turn the ATC of for next weeks exciting installment ???

[Hoots]

12 minutes ago, Uufflakke said:

 

 

Miami ( I only know ii is Miami because it was mentioned on the radio chat. )

 

oooohhhh you big cheater!

[DD_fruitbat]

53 minutes ago, Bremspropeller said:

 

San Francisco

Florence

Valetta

Miami

 

Amirite?

 

Almost!

[Bremspropeller]

4 minutes ago, DD_fruitbat said:

 

Almost!

 

?

 

Should have watched the "Valetta"-video longer.

ARRRR.

[Uufflakke]

40 minutes ago, DD_fruitbat said:

 

We have a winner!

 

Will have to work out how to turn the ATC of for next weeks exciting installment ???

 

Hurray!

What have I won?

A toaster

A microwave oven

Or or...