Just flew the scientific research mission, aka tornado chasing. Disclaimers: I chase tornadoes for part of my irl job, and have even done several irl aerial storm chasing “missions”…
… so I’m a bit of snob here, but will try to provide some fair feedback:
The Good:
Actual thunderstorm structure. While I wouldn’t call it supercell structure, as I can’t really identify any low level mesocyclonic features, it’s really great to see a massive, tilted updraft tower and backsheared anvil, features badly missing from 2020 storms.
The tornado looks dramatic. Classic Wizard of Oz funnel, nice and dark.
Some of the cloud and rain shaft visuals are striking and beautiful.
The Bad:
There’s no wind? Or at least I didn’t notice any. This is a biggie and it’s pretty bad. When you’re chasing tornadoes it gets pretty windy out there, and piloting a small aircraft in such winds is extremely challenging and hazardous. Especially the landing, which should have featured a gnarly crosswind to make it exciting and challenging. Nope, tower yawned as they reported 29.92 altimeter and didn’t bother giving me the winds because there probably weren’t any of note.
The weather poses no actual challenge or threat to the mission, apart from the tornado itself, which is trivially easy to avoid. This was probably the most disappointing part of the mission for me. As long as you’re under the cloud base, visibility can be maintained, and there’s no turbulence or severe updrafts or downdrafts in the actual storm, which makes the mission mind numbingly easy.
The flight plan for the mission is boring at best. Take-off, fly one lap around the tornado, which is 5 miles from the base airport, land. It’s the same thing as the flight seeing mission, except there’s a tornado as the point of interest. I feel bad for saying this, but the design and implementation comes off as lazy. Having to fly to the target storm could have made for some really dramatic reveals and a sense of awe and wonder as you see the true scale of the storm and watch the funnel form. Instead, the tornado is just right there in the distance as you’re pulling your chocks during preflight. The view doesn’t really ever change.
The flight plan path is dangerously reckless at worst. In real life, flying a loop around a supercellular tornado like that in a small GA plane could be fatal as you’re likely to encounter huge hail and extreme downdrafts.
The Ugly:
The tornado is purely a visual device, and static in nature. There’s no actual weather dynamics here, no formation or dissipation. It’s just spinning away on a simple animation loop for the entire mission. It does not affect the aircraft as you approach it. The screen merely goes black if you get too close.
The flight plan path is dangerously low in places, skimming the tops of high terrain. IRL, you’d likely hit severe turbulence and downdrafts flying that low under a storm, causing a loss of control or descent into terrain.
The scoring was badly bugged. I flew into the tornado twice, because I had to see what would happen. I was put “back on track” but ultimately scored a B when the mission ended, as I smoothly flew the initial loop. I didn’t get any aviator performance bonus for my reckless flying. But then it said I got “infinity XP” and “NaN” for something else, which is just a sloppy programming error. But then my grade changed to D for some reason (am I actually being penalized now for my mistakes? I thought that was merely a bonus), and my overall reputation is now a C. The sim then crashed to desktop. This is buggy, incomplete software.
There’s no way to repeat the mission? Apparently you only get to fly it once. I was worried about this, so I made sure to record it and stick my nose inside of the tornado while I still could. The mission said it was only available for a “limited time”. It makes me think tornadoes are nothing more than visual gag for a temporary mission, like the jack-o-lanters in that Halloween landing challenge, and not an actual addition to simulator or weather engine in any actual capacity. Disappointing for a storm chaser like me, but they were so prominently featured in the trailers and presentations that I kind of expected more.
Nitpicks:
No lightning that I saw, unless I missed it.
Mission starts from Prescott, AZ, and while they get a tornado once in a blue moon, it’s a weird starting location for a team that’s doing tornado research. Should have been the western Great Plains.
The tornado is weirdly transparent. A big tube like that should be opaque, and if it’s more of the landspout variety, it needs to look like a hollow tube, not a transparent brush stroke.
Typo in the mission briefing said I have a “chef engineer” on board. Well at least I know the food will be good even if the storm chasing isn’t.
The tornado shouldn’t be in progress before you preflight. Most tornadoes last a few minutes. If you haven’t preflighted and loaded the plane, and there’s one in progress miles away, you’ve definitely missed it. I’m guessing they just didn’t have the time or energy to animate the tornado forming once you get in the air.
NPCs don’t actually seem that excited or interested in the tornado. They look from side to side at things other than tornado like they’re mildly bored lol. This is super nitpicky, but it does kind of make the mission and characters feel kind of lifeless.
Some blowing dust, and dust clouds would have been a nice addition.
I had a weird issue today during two separate Certification flights. Both times all was well until after landing. I was asked to stop at Hold Short as always and ask for taxi to parking. Did that, the mission goal switched to wait for clearance. When ATC stopped talking, it bugged, penalizing me for not confirming the instructions and entering taxiway without authorization, couldn’t even answer the ATC. Just had to taxi and take the penalty.
I had the exact same issue with the initial tornado hunt! I flew it perfectly all the way, Got an S, but with the same bug, same CTD, and a drop from low A to mid C in rating
Wow. No LLJ, RFD, inflow? It’s like baking a cake with no ingredients.
Oh god. Really? Yavapai County (a really big county) has averaged about 0.4 tornadoes a year since the 50’s - 85% are EF0. There are much better places to do this. Just have it go out of Norman, OK.
None, that I noticed. Maybe somebody can prove me wrong showing some flow lines. There isn’t even any environmental surface flow away from the storm. It would have been trivially easy to just set the weather for the mission to have a se wind at 20 knots gusting to 35. But nope, it’s like butter from take off to touch down. Wish I had that smooth of weather on a nice day IRL, let alone flying a circuit around a tornado.
There are rain shafts under the storm, but they aren’t organized in any particular fashion, and you can see through most of them so they don’t really pose a challenge to visibility either. In other words there’s no precip core you’d associate with a FFD or RFD. I wouldn’t expect them to nail supercell structure like that, but the weather under the storm does seem rather banal.
The orientation of the storm is also unusual, as is the mission location, but this is another nitpick.
The lack of any weather challenge in the mission is much more dam(n)ing. Trying to fly a neat circle around that tornado with an extreme crosswind could have made this an actual interesting challenge of a mission. Instead, it’s just “Gee whiz look at that tornado, isn’t that neat. Ok I’ll do the next thing in the game.”
There’s also this. I’m assuming there some ranch airstrip underneath me. But yes, let me tune the CTAF for Rancher Bob’s dirt plot, announce my position and intentions while in the middle of circling this tornado. Wouldn’t want there to be a traffic conflict as I’m sure the pattern is so busy at that bustling airport with weather like this.
Flying the Norden on a ferry flight, the windows iced up even though it was clear skies. I tried to open the windows but wound up opening the door, which instantly crashed the airplane. The “back on track” kept spawning me inside of a house. Welp that’s the end of that mission lol
Sadly, I agree here. I’ve passed all my checkrides and endorsements with zero prep, and many times it was the first I’ve flown that aircraft or used the skills that are being tested. The examiner does not seem concerned that I’m hunting for the switches on the engine start-up checklist. They’re more like introductory flights than they are checkrides.
I realize they didn’t want the checkrides to be an onerous burden preventing you from playing the missions you really want, but they’re seemingly way too easy. Every single one of them also has glaring issues, which ruins a lot of the experience.
I wish they had taken their time and did a nice job instead of releasing this thing so half baked. Even if it’s fixed in the future, I’ve already now gone through the whole career process so it’s already spoiled for me.
Crickey, the Aus one also makes no sense. There is only desert and scrub on the dot??? Although I have not tried any of this new stuff in the sim, is the dot the actual location or does it just mean the country? It could be Alice Springs town fire I suppose.
Just flew a mission to Modena Marzagly airport in Italy and i am literaly seasick with the movement on screen. And i can stand my man on a real boat.
Further i turn off clouds, but they are still popping up after a minute of 5 into the flight
Did you complete the IFR checkride? I believe missions use Live Weather by default after that point unless you change it. I flew VFR into LIFR conditions on a ferry flight, was not penalized for it (actually given a bad weather bonus), and somehow also escaped the entire plane icing up. The headwind nearly caused me to run out of fuel though, but thanks to the “Add Fuel” control binding cheat that won’t be a thing anymore.
Hilarious. Many times in career mode I’m reminded how half-baked this thing is.
I think that cloud switch is only supposed to be for the mission profile preview before you start.
Today’s crop of fun bugs as I pay to beta test Microsoft’s product:
