Microsoft Flight Sim 2020

[DD_Arthur]

1 hour ago, Uufflakke said:

Or or...

This weeks star prize? Three days in lock down with Raaaid. Bring your own brushes.

[DD_fruitbat]

I'm not that cruel.

[AndyJWest]

Above Painan, on the Sumatran coast:

 

I've just taken off, in 'live weather', unshifted time. Which made it about 6:45 AM local time when I took the screenshot. I'd like to be able to fly inland, and look at the Sumatran fault, but cloud over the mountains rules that out for now, so I'll follow the coast. If the general weather trend follows, the cloud may clear a little later.

 

Edit: More screenshots from this leg.

One reason I was wary of flying inland in all that cloud. Mount Kerinci, the highest volcano in Indonesia, at 12,484 ft. The lower layers of cloud were beginning to clear, but it still seemed a bit iffy. I'm trying to look at things, not fly into them. Kerinci is active, regularly throwing out ash and sulphurous smoke, but this doesn't stop people from growing tea on its southern flank. Volcanic ash is good fertiliser.

 

A few minutes later it was looking better, so I took a sharp turn inland to look at Lake Kerinci, with the volcano in the background. I was tempted to turn back, but decided to press on southeastwards.

 

A low sun and 10/10 overcast made it all rather dark, so the fault line was only obvious in places - like here where a stream flows down it.

 

Arriving at Bengkulu, my destination for the day. Now I'm there, the cloud is clearing. 

 

Next significant volcano on my itinerary is Krakatoa. Or what's left of it, after it blew up spectacularly back in 1883. Not sure if I'll get there tomorrow or the day after - will probably depend on the weather.

 

 

Edited December 17, 2020 by AndyJWest

[ZachariasX]

8 hours ago, AndyJWest said:

Next significant volcano on my itinerary is Krakatoa. Or what's left of it, after it blew up spectacularly back in 1883. Not sure if I'll get there tomorrow or the day after - will probably depend on the weather.

420 km to Krakatoa.. and ~530 km to Jakarta. That is gonna be a longer flight. At least I can do ~190 knots with the Baron. While she is not as good for sightseeing, she provides the bare minimum for polar routes. That is "propeller and full body heater". Will you try the north?

 

I'm so much looking forward A2A's Aerostar. She goes even slightly fatser than the Baron (210 knots) at enonomy cruise of 70% throttle taking 34 GPH.

[AndyJWest]

Yeah, it's a fairly long way for a single leg. I can cruise at around 128 kt without having to worry about fuel though, so even allowing for the climb and a bit of sightseeing, it should take three hours at absolute maximum. There are a couple of airports I can stop at though (WILP and WILL), if I want to do it in two legs. The reason I'm considering the option to do it in one is the variable weather. It would be a shame to miss an opportunity to get good screenshots of yet another volcano if I get the chance (I've missed quite a few already, due to cloud). I'll probably fly along the coast as far as WILP, and make the decision when I get there. If it's clear, I'll carry on.

 

As for polar flights, that'll be something to worry about next spring/summer, when I take the Aleutian route - I'm not going to attempt it until there is good light and at least the potential for reasonable weather. For now, I'm heading southeast, with plenty of time before I need worry about heading north again. I should see part of Australia (probably follow the coast), along with New Guinea, New Zealand, and the pacific islands out as far as Fiji, before heading back towards the Philippines and Japan. As of now though, I've not got any final route planned - just checked that I've got the range to do it. I can manage the specification 695 nm with a bit of a safety margin, in my modified XCub (without the auxiliary tank they've removed from the mod after adding it earlier), so other than not being able to reach Hawaii, range isn't generally much of an issue. And if I'm flying over ocean, I tend to cheat via 4X simulation speed, since looking at nothing of interest for hours on end is taking 'reality' a bit far for me.

[Hoots]

1 hour ago, ZachariasX said:

420 km to Krakatoa.. and ~530 km to Jakarta. That is gonna be a longer flight. At least I can do ~190 knots with the Baron. While she is not as good for sightseeing, she provides the bare minimum for polar routes. That is "propeller and full body heater". Will you try the north?

 

I'm so much looking forward A2A's Aerostar. She goes even slightly fatser than the Baron (210 knots) at enonomy cruise of 70% throttle taking 34 GPH.

 

Pretty much looking forward to anything from A2A to be honest.

[Panzerlang]

Still waiting for the VR, supposedly 23rd Dec.

[Lusekofte]

15 minutes ago, J3Hetzer said:

Still waiting for the VR, supposedly 23rd Dec.

I might take a couple of cub flights in VR. But I won't use it much in this game myself. 

 

[Hoots]

35 minutes ago, 216th_LuseKofte said:

I might take a couple of cub flights in VR. But I won't use it much in this game myself. 

 

Yeah I think some of the detail that makes it such a lovely place to be will be lost in VR. Keen to give it a try though.

[Lusekofte]

5 hours ago, Hoots said:

Yeah I think some of the detail that makes it such a lovely place to be will be lost in VR. Keen to give it a try though.

To me VR in GB and some DCS nodules give a great opportunity to "be" inside a cockpit you never really will be able to. For complex modules and this game a better system control with a second screen for gps and flight instruments give greater immersion, for me that is. I fly longer in complex dcs modules and in msfs. Making VR goggles very uncomfortable. 

So yes for some jet and cub flights but not at all for longer and more complex flights

[DBFlyguy]

Welp... I know how I'll be spending the 23rd

 

 

Can't wait for this update!!!

[AndyJWest]

My plan to fly onwards to Krakatoa today didn't go too well. ☹️

 

Rain blowing in from the sea. Low 10/10 overcast.  It was worse than this in places, too. I could see the coastline, but not much more at times. In real life, the greatest hazard would probably have been some other idiot doing the same thing in the other direction.

 

On the plus side, I've now got a shorter leg to do to get there, having got as far as Pekon Serai (WILP) and found the runway was visible when I got there. From what I can figure out the weather may be a bit more accommodating tomorrow. Or maybe not. As I discovered earlier on the West African coast, rainy seasons tend to last 12 months of the year around here. Tropical paradises, don't you just love them...

 

[Enceladus828]

Even though the aircraft's registration is LAVA, I don't really think Andy would want his plane to get covered in lava or the volcanic ash from Krakatoa.

 

There was a case where British Airways flight 9, a Boeing 747, inadvertently flew through the volcanic ash of Mt. Galunggung, Indonesia* in which all 4 of its engines quit. After passing 12,000 feet (by which point almost everyone was prepared for a ditching in the middle of the night) they managed to get their engines going (though one later quit), and landed the plane at the Halim airport in Jakarta.

I talked to a former BA 747 pilot about that flight and he told me that he flew with that Captain many times when he was a Co-pilot on the 747.

 

* Aircraft's weather radar normally detects clouds with moisture, since volcanic ash clouds have no moisture, they were never picked up on the weather radar.

Edited December 19, 2020 by Enceladus

[ZachariasX]

4 hours ago, AndyJWest said:

Tropical paradises, don't you just love them...

I always take the weather as it comes. In this sim, it is often enough a substitute for enemy fighters as for posing a challenge. Before takeoff, I usually save the flight plan and in case of the Garmin being my window to the world, I resart the mission after the flight, set to clear weather and daylight and skip to individual points where I  missed points of interest.

 

Taking the weather as it comes, that is Doolittle ferrying mail. The glory days... ...which left few people alive talking about.

[AndyJWest]

Yeah, at some point I'll probably go back and use airstart-magic to revisit the more significant things I've missed, in clear weather. And probably in something capable of flying a little higher. For now though, the weather isn't an incidental to exploring the world, as far as I'm concerned. Or rather, the climate isn't incidental. Here in England (or at least in the softy-infested southeast) we have 'weather', and complain about it incessantly, but in reality, the climate is benign. Cross the arid zones of Africa, and then contrast it with the rainforests further south, and you begin to appreciate just how much the environment is a product of large-scale weather circulation patterns, sitting on top of a topology created by other large-scale circulations as the rocks all move below. And then the rain falls, the sun shines, and the magic happens as it all turns green. Or doesn't, depending on how much rain there is, and how the topology shapes its path to the sea. And how the rain shapes the topology in turn.

 

A couple of weeks back I was looking at a series of parallel ridges on the southern Iranian coast, trying to figure out how a river had managed to carve a path across them at right angles. It didn't make much sense, until I remembered something I must have read years back. The explanation was almost certainly that the river was older than the ridges. All round the Indian Ocean, as the tectonic plate pushes forward, it is creating a 'crumple zone', turning flat land into exactly the sort of terrain I was seeing in Iran, and would see again on the coast of Myanmar on the far side of India. Formerly flat land being compressed, and relieving the strain in the easiest way possible.  If this happens across the path of a river, it can erode away the ridge intersecting it faster than the ridge line rises. At least, that was my recollection of how it works - I looked, but couldn't find anything specific on the geology of this obscure bit of Iran. But whatever the exact process, everything moves, nothing is random, and things are going on at timescales beyond our usual comprehension.

 

Of course on top of this there is abundant evidence of what humanity has been up to: but really only where the climate and terrain permits it. Barring a few probably-unsustainable examples of making the desert bloom through more-money-than-sense pumped irrigation , the crops grow where the rain falls, and where the climatic and geological  processes (erosion, and occasional volcanic fertilising) provide the necessary dirt to grow them in. We don't own the land. The land owns us, and if we try to impose our will on it too much, we may regret it.

 

Anyway, that's my verbose and probably over-philosophical take on bimbling across Microsoft's virtual planet in an XCub. You get time to think. And you get shown plenty of things to think about. If I wanted to just 'fly around the world' I could have taken an Airbus. I want to experience it, in as much as a PC simulation can, and the weather is as much a part of this as the mountains, the oceans, and the flat-and-wet bits we've managed to scrape a living out of, and divide into neat little fields to argue over ownership of. Not seeing the tops of volcanoes is as much a part of the experience as seeing them. 

[dburne]

11 hours ago, DBFlyguy said:

Welp... I know how I'll be spending the 23rd

 

 

Can't wait for this update!!!

 

Now we're talking!!

[ZachariasX]

4 hours ago, AndyJWest said:

I want to experience it, in as much as a PC simulation can, and the weather is as much a part of this as the mountains, the oceans, and the flat-and-wet bits we've managed to scrape a living out of, and divide into neat little fields to argue over ownership of. Not seeing the tops of volcanoes is as much a part of the experience as seeing them. 

Yes, this.

 

To me, flying around the globe is a challenge. I willingly took the wrong way around for that as well as I don't mind it being winter. The aircraft of today are so good and reliable, they pose in itself not much of a challenge, but are in fact a hundred years worth of experience of making flight simple and safe.

 

This sim is rather good at giving an idea of what you call just bad weather and what is actually non-permissible conditions that are systemic to a location and season. Not having turbo engines and not having pressure cabin really puts you right in the middle of that and it shows the heroism (or sheer madness) of the pilots just hopping in an aircraft and flying say from London to Cape Town, across a great variety of climate zones, not just weather.

 

It is something I would NEVER do in real life and doing it in the simulator clearly tells me that it is the sensible approch to flying. But taking the challenge in the sim makes even "boring" longer flights rather interesting. Should the weather clear up and you see all this scenery, then I also appreciate the crate not being that fast 'cos the bimbling is indeed entertaining. Looking at all that, you wonder what it might be, often Alt-Tab'ing to look up particular features. It is just grand.

[Hoots]

22 minutes ago, ZachariasX said:

Yes, this.

 

To me, flying around the globe is a challenge. I willingly took the wrong way around for that as well as I don't mind it being winter. The aircraft of today are so good and reliable, they pose in itself not much of a challenge, but are in fact a hundred years worth of experience of making flight simple and safe.

 

This sim is rather good at giving an idea of what you call just bad weather and what is actually non-permissible conditions that are systemic to a location and season. Not having turbo engines and not having pressure cabin really puts you right in the middle of that and it shows the heroism (or sheer madness) of the pilots just hopping in an aircraft and flying say from London to Cape Town, across a great variety of climate zones, not just weather.

 

It is something I would NEVER do in real life and doing it in the simulator clearly tells me that it is the sensible approch to flying. But taking the challenge in the sim makes even "boring" longer flights rather interesting. Should the weather clear up and you see all this scenery, then I also appreciate the crate not being that fast 'cos the bimbling is indeed entertaining. Looking at all that, you wonder what it might be, often Alt-Tab'ing to look up particular features. It is just grand.

 

This is something I like about MSFS and other details sims. I like to contemplate that each time I do something that I wouldn't do in real life (leaving the ground in poor weather) how it ends up, a lot of the time it can end up with a bit of a crash, at the very least a bad situation and I find that reinforces my view that I don't want to take those risks in real life.

 

There's a very good video doing the rounds in the gliding circle at the mo about an incident in NZ where a ridge soaring glider gets caught out in cloud and lee effect. It's been put up so that others can learn how quickly a good situation goes very bad. Luckily no one was injured but it is a fine example of what one decision and 30 seconds can do.

[ZachariasX]

15 minutes ago, Hoots said:

There's a very good video doing the rounds in the gliding circle at the mo about an incident in NZ where a ridge soaring glider gets caught out in cloud and lee effect. It's been put up so that others can learn how quickly a good situation goes very bad. Luckily no one was injured but it is a fine example of what one decision and 30 seconds can do.

Spoiler

 

 

This one I guess. But seriously, from the beginning them flying along the cloud like that feels likem beimng the little girl taking a walk into the forest with the creepy old man. We have rules for spacial separation from clouds. (And I know, no self respecting glider pilot respects them.)

 

You know It happened to me once that I crossed a ridge in "dynamic weather", but cloud base still at reasonable altitude above the relief. I was flying the reinforced Pilatus B4 (PC-11) that nobody wanted and that was often what was left. Although it glides like a brick, the total confidence in control it airs to the pilot has some appeal. If you have +7 to -5 on the g meter you know that thing holds up. As I could not imagine a flight attitude that would come as a concern to me if I got 300+ m below me, it was the first crate to pull some sh*t in. Nobody cared anyway. Not in the 90's. I knew that crossing ridges low command safe excess speed an ANY aircraft, I adhered to that. And that time, it tiled me over the nose, and before I could react I was looking straight down at the mountain, everything not tighty secured smashing on the canopy next to my face. It was more impressive than dangerous, I had both the speed and (because it was almost a cliff that I crossed) the altitude. All I had to do is hold the controls after it kicked me from the cliff and gently pull out, maintaining a high speed to get away from that downwind. The B4 being such a brick helps in not overspeeding too soon. It surely was a lesson for later on. And that was the moment I swore I would never do paragliding.

 

Some may know that feeling, when you take a flight in a GA aircraft and on the airfield it might look soso, good enough, but barely. Then you take off, fly places... and ahead of you the weather gets nice and nicer.. but after a while you know you have to turn back. And then you look back. Then what you see is that huge grey wall with a tiny slit underneath, and that is where you popped out from. And that is when you are glad that you not only know the direction, but every house, tree and road sign and high tension wires on the way back to the airport.

[Hoots]

Always liked the design of the B4, looks nice to me. But yes, only really any use for trying to beat the tug back down to earth in the most entertaining way.

[ZachariasX]

Some Aerostar love by Scott:

Spoiler

 

 

That will be a grand airplane. ASOBO better improve their SDK such that it can finally be used to generate modules of that quality.

[CUJO_1970]

That is a man with a genuine love of planes and flying.

[SAS_Storebror]

15 hours ago, ZachariasX said:

ASOBO better improve their SDK such that it can finally be used to generate modules of that quality.

Eh... because currently you can't?

Then what about all the 3rd party aircraft being there already?

Especially the Carenado and Indiafoxtecho ones are of stunning quality already, and they keep improving.

Main limitations in the SDK currently are with regards to particularly fast (transonic, supersonic) aircraft.

The the Aerostar IMHO everything should be set.

 

Mike

[ZachariasX]

46 minutes ago, SAS_Storebror said:

Eh... because currently you can't?

As of now, the functionality provided is not sufficient to port Accusim. This is what Scott says about it and why there is no port of any of their aircraft so far. He expects that to change rather sooner than later.

 

Edit: I quote him

 

We are not able to bring the current version of Accu-Sim into MSFS2020 until Asobo / Microsoft make it possible. We expect this will happen soon. We may develop it primarily for P3Dv5, so at least we can work without any roadblocks then whenever Asobo / Microsoft make it possible for MSFS2020, we would then move it in.

I don't want to predict timelines as it's still not even alpha and progress can change rapidly, but it's definitely not this year.

 

From Dec. 6th.

 

Here:

https://a2asimulations.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=71729&start=60

Edited December 19, 2020 by ZachariasX

[Lusekofte]

I do not even know what SDK is. 

.I try to care , get involved in what's not and is. But I always just fly what I like. No matter products name. I fly 1% of the plane I buy, no matter if it's called

3 hours ago, SAS_Storebror said:

Carenado

Or A2A. 

I like A2A b 17 in FS. But I find myself enjoy carencro produced planes more in msfs. Hell they are the only ones able to produce planes delivered to marched place

 

[AndyJWest]

SDK: Software Development Kit. In this case, the necessary software interface and documentation for third-party developers to add new aircraft etc to MSFS. It is all rather unfinished at the moment, apparently, and some developers have been saying that they can't add features that they consider essential to their products until Asobo updates it. A work in progress, like other parts of the sim.

[SAS_Storebror]

9 hours ago, ZachariasX said:

As of now, the functionality provided is not sufficient to port Accusim.

 

Ah okay.

Well in that case, we're rather talking about a missing interface between one 3rd party developer's tool/technology used to create a whole family of addon aircraft, and the SDK provided by Microsoft for doing single stand-alone addons for MSFS 2020.

That's rather a technological thing than a core SDK limitation, but either case, since Microsoft is very concerned about getting all kind of 3rd party developers on board, I agree that they'll listen to what A2A has to tell them and they'll make it possible rather sooner than later.

 

Mike

[DD_Arthur]

On 12/17/2020 at 11:35 PM, DBFlyguy said:

Welp... I know how I'll be spending the 23rd

 

Did I hear him correctly;  I'll be able to use my Rift on the 23rd. too?

[ZachariasX]

So... next leg on my journey, from Panama City (MPMG) to Guatemala City (MGGT).

 

My flightplan.

Spoiler

 

I chose to be on the Pacific side of the continent, weather was coming in from the Carribean.

 

Spoiler

 

But it looked good. Little did I know that this was the most difficult of all flights so far. Not due to any flying challenges but due to RTI and twice FS20 just crashed on me. *POOFF* and gone. Bummer. Anyway, skip to waypoint and resume.

 

But it all stared nicely. I set time such that I took of at dawn. Real weather as usual and as little time difference for daylight as reasonable.

 

 

It was a bit cloudy though, and as cloud were really low, I decided to climb above.

 

 

But it is kind of boring over the could, here above La Chorrera going up the coast. As I was up at 8'500 ft, clouds seemed rather high and I risked it to go below. Here along the coast I don't expect  too many mountains. (Yet.)

 

 

First waypoint, Aeropuerto Internacional Scarlett Martínez. All very green and houses just out there in the forest. The entire place looks like if the countryside was populated by half a millon Thoreaus and sometimes they would coincidentally settle next to each other.

 

 

There are occasionaly cities like Aguadulce here just past that airport. But mostly, as you venture northwards it gets very green.

 

 

Not just green, the weather starts closing on me. Also hills get higher and I climb to 4'500 ft (from 2'000).

 

 

I arrive at the next waypoint, Ciudad de David. Below me Aeropuerto Internacional Enrique Malek.

 

 

Mountains get higher and I climb to 12'000 ft to make it over the ridges to San Jose, Costa Rica just ahead of me. It gets cloudier.

 

 

I wish I could see more of the huge Lake Nicaragua, the 19th largest lake in the World. It drains in the Carribean and was the alternative route to the Panama Canal. Below me the island Ometepe, consisting of two huge volcanoes. The southern one barely makes it out of the cloud cover. Not a good area for blind flying. As I venture on, I get to a flatter area and I dare trying to get below the could cover.

 

 

Just past Lake Nicaragua in break through and at 2'000 ft I get a better idea of what is there to see. Mostly farmland. Lake Managua ahead.

 

 

Managua, it's airport and Lake Managua. Stll of impressive size.

 

 

North of Lake Managua, the Volcano Momotombo, the first of an entire chain of volcanoes along the Pacific coast.

 

 

I turn further inland, direction Tegucigalpa, Honduras, leaving the chain of volcanoes behind me. The hills start to get considerably high.

 

 

I arrive over my waypoint at Tegucigalpa at 7'500 ft. There's more Volcanoes on the way.

 

 

Not far north east, I pass a huge artificial lake, the Embalse Cerron Grande. The dam is on the leftmost tip of the lake. There's still plenty of volcanoes, one being especially prominent.

 

 

The Coatepeque Caldera. It is a fully enclosed bassin with no drainage and a couple of volcanoes around it. That caldera is estimated to be 70'000 years old. Not really places I'd look for when investing in real estate.

 

 

Turning westward to Guatemala City.

 

 

On approach to Guatemala City. It had done absolutely zero research on how the airport was located. But I knew It must be rather high up.

 

 

The airport in indeed rather remarkable. In the middle of the city, at 4'951 ft. altitude. depending on the tubleliner, there's little margin of error here with that approach between the volcanoes.

 

I hope that future patches witll mend the now acute stability issues of the sim on my rig...

 

[Hoots]

8 minutes ago, DD_Arthur said:

 

Did I hear him correctly;  I'll be able to use my Rift on the 23rd. too?

 

Yup. And by lucky happenstance my Christmas present from the wife (bless her*) was 32gb of 3600 RAM and 1 1tb SSD so my computer will be happier.

 

*Obvs she had no idea what she was buying and just shook her head forlornly.

 

[Bremspropeller]

10 hours ago, SAS_Storebror said:

Especially the Carenado

 

Carenado provides nice visuals, while at the same time offering the system-depth of a bronze manhole-cover.

In x-plane you can work-around by buying a fourth-party addon for a third-party addon.

Or not buy Carenado at all and stick to those developers that offer less content, but with increased systems-depth right out of the box.

 

[unlikely_spider]

1 minute ago, Bremspropeller said:

 

Carenado provides nice visuals, while at the same time offering the system-depth of a bronze manhole-cover.

In x-plane you can work-around by buying a fourth-party addon for a third-party addon.

Or not buy Carenado at all and stick to those developers that offer less content, but with increased systems-depth right out of the box.

 

But for MSFS there aren't any yet

[Bremspropeller]

Isn't the 182 by Carenado?

[unlikely_spider]

48 minutes ago, Bremspropeller said:

Isn't the 182 by Carenado?

Yes, there are (maybe?) three Carenado planes in MSFS. I meant there aren't any deeper study-level planes for MSFS yet.

I did buy the Mooney from Carenado, and it's maybe the most fully-realized plane available in MSFS so far. Unless some mods have improved. There is a 152 mod that is okay.

Edit- and maybe the MB-339. I don't have that one.

Edited December 19, 2020 by unlikely_spider

[Lusekofte]

55 minutes ago, Hoots said:

 

Yup. And by lucky happenstance my Christmas present from the wife (bless her*) was 32gb of 3600 RAM and 1 1tb SSD so my computer will be happier.

 

*Obvs she had no idea what she was buying and just shook her head forlornly.

 

My Christmas present was a broken usb plug in my new stick. The producer have organised ups to collect it and fix the stick. It is the best flight stick available in my mind. But I am among first to get it. I told him to stop making them after one day of use and find another place to put the plug. That is how it is to be beta buyer

[AndyJWest]

I made it to Krakatoa today. From what I could figure out online beforehand, the 'live' weather would be ok in the strait between Sumatra and Java, where Krakatoa lies, though I'd be starting off under low cloud. This proved to be correct, and the first 30 nm or so all I could do was follow the coast at 1500 ft, peering through the mire and pretending that flying regulations didn't exist. It cleared steadily later, though I was still having to dodge around it in places.

 

Arriving at Krakatoa. Or what's left of it after the August 1883 eruption. MSFS was clearly having graphical issues with near-vertical cliffs, and Anak Krakatau ('Child of Krakatoa') in the centre was looking decidedly odd too. Before it blew, the 'old' Krakatoa filled most of the space between the outer islands. The tall one to the right is all that's left of it!

 

I circled down to look. The cliff-face glitches reduced somewhat as I got nearer, but poor little Anak seems to have been rendered as an overgrown swimming pool or something. To be fair, this is a (very) active volcano, and Asobo's AI may be having trouble modelling terrain that changes every time you look at it.

 

Anak emerged above the waters in 1927, and seems to be attempting to grow as big as its parent. And lava-bomb a tourist boat or two as it gets there: ?

 

Definitely not right, shouldn't be water in there, and there is too much greenery.☹️ In the background is Sebisi, another island volcano, though no longer active. About the same size as Krakatoa was before it blew. 

 

Onwards to Java. The world's most-populous island, with over 140 million inhabitants. And lots of volcanoes hiding beyond the clouds to the right. And lots of volcanic ash to fertilise the fields to feed the inhabitants.

 

I decide to land at Budiarto (WIRR) on the outskirts of Jakarta, rather than at the international airport. These smaller airports are generally better suited to light aircraft, and you don't usually have so far to taxi to a parking spot.

 

Wikipedia has a passable article on the 1883 Krakatoa eruption, and anyone interested should probably read that. For everyone else, a summary:

 

* Multiple explosions so loud they were heard in Perth, Australia, and Rodrigues, near Mauritius. 
* Pyroclastic flows, volcanic ash, and tsunamis killing over 36,000 people.
* Energy release estimated to be equal to about 200 megatonnes of TNT. 
* Climatic effects apparent worldwide, the result of sulphur dioxide emissions which affected the reflectivity of the atmosphere before precipitating out as acid rain.
* Red skies worldwide for months, a consequence of microscopic ash particles. Possibly the inspiration for the red colouring to the sky painted in Edvard Munch's 1893 painting The Scream. 

 

Weather permitting, I'll be inspecting more volcanoes in the next few days, as I head down Java, and to Bali and beyond.
 

Edited December 19, 2020 by AndyJWest

[AndyJWest]

10 minutes ago, raaaid said:

if besides location you could set time in fs 2020 i would be in

 

You can select the time of day in live weather - though all that does is move the sun, moon etc around - the weather remains fixed to whatever MSFS thinks is happening now. Custom weather settings allow you to set the date as well, though you are then restricted to having the weather the same everywhere.

[ZachariasX]

A short intermezzo. A quick jump to the southern hemisphere. They say it's nicer there in winter.

 

 

In Fiji. Humming "Eye of the Tiger".

[AndyJWest]

Ah yes, the joys of the tropical marine climate. Not really much difference in temperature between seasons, and the 'dry' season is only 'dry' in that it rains less in comparison. And you're there in the wet one. Climate of Suva, capital of Fiji, from Wikipedia:

 

If you want summer, head a little further south. Or somewhere not surrounded by ocean. To be fair, Suva is wet, even for Fiji, but the pattern applies more or less anywhere that an island of any significant size sticks up enough to cause the water-saturated atmosphere to give up trying to hold the wetness. 

 

From a look at Windy.com, you're also on the edge of a tropical cyclone. One of those weird southern-hemisphere ones that rotate the wrong way like water going down Australian plugholes is supposed to (but doesn't really, or at least, not enough to notice).

 

As I said a post or two back, I'm heading in that direction myself, and am probably going to catch the worst of the rain. Not much I can do about it though, since trying to do a world tour while only going through places during their optimum flying seasons can't really be done.

Edited December 20, 2020 by AndyJWest

[Bremspropeller]

IIRC, the climate of Suva is a lot more humid than the climate around Nadi.

It's been some time, though...

 

BTW: You might want to stop over at Malolo Lailai in the Yasawas...

Edited December 20, 2020 by Bremspropeller